Large Hadron restart delayed again -- you can relax until October
By Tim Stevens 
posted June 22nd 2009 7:27AM
posted June 22nd 2009 7:27AM
[Via MSNBC]
posted June 22nd 2009 7:27AM
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Lol, this reminds me of that 4chan motiovational poster photoshop where they titled it: Large Hard-On Collider, and there's pic of 2 giant hardons and the caption says: "If the balls touch, we all die"
Anybody got a link, lol?
I remember I read about a russian scientist who got exposed to a beam of particles during similar experiment. He actually survived and didn't actually feel a thing and survived. However, a brain scan showed that a whole part of his brain, where the particles had passed through was dead (the braincells were destroyed). So getting exposed to high energy radiation won't get you superpowers for sure.
Now about the black-hole-doomsday thing.... Well I certainly hope they are delaying the experiments due to safety precautions but my bet is it's because of insufficent funding. 21122112 sound pretty good for a doomsday RC but I highly doubt it will be a date so specific. It was scheduled for 31.12.2000 remember? I just don't think you'll be lucky enough to seize to exist in a blink of an eye. It will be much longer
and painful kind of an end of humanity in real life opposed to hollywood reality.
this doomsday joke is getting old...
You're getting old...The End Is Nigh!
Guys seriously there is no chance of it creating a black hole. There are millions of particle collisions of much higher energy that happen in the upper atmosphere every second due to cosmic rays, if it was going to create a black hole don't you think we would have noticed one by now!!!
Oh and I recently watched a film called angels and demons - a crap film made worse by the made up science of storing anti-matter, if you could somehow store all the antimatter created during CERN experiments since it's beginning (and no you can't store it) and were able to react it with matter at 100% efficiency then you would have enough energy to power a light bulb for 5 mins!
You got a PHD?
wrong. Multiply 0.005 times 9.0E16 and then divide by 100 to realize that it will power a 100 watt light bulb for 4500000000000 seconds or roughly 143 thousand years
also equal to about 104 kilotons of explosive about 5 times the bomb on nagasaki
@hello
his kung fu is superior to yours...
I have got a masters degree in physics, and here is the website that will give you more information about it. BTW I was right about the lightbulb as very small amounts of anti-matter are produced.
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html
I saw a video yesterday on bbc about this six billion dollar experiment and can't wait to see this being turned on. I am quite a believer of evolution and would like to know what happened at the Big Bang
Please keep us updated on this LHC.
Aye Aye Capt'n! Timmy Stevens will take care of posting updates here on Engadget, I'll take care of running trough the streets naked shouting THE END IS NEAR! SAVE YOUR SELVES...
2012? Black Holes? You people watch too much TV. The world isn't coming to an end on some whimsical date, and the LHC won't be generating any evil black holes.
I can haz good black holes?!
It wouldn't necessarily be an incomprehensibly small piece of matter, I don't think. If it were too small to be comprehended it would probably take a century to absorb an apple. I think you were going for incomprehensibly dense or incomprehensibly massive.
Ack! The stupid hurts my brain!! The LHC is not going to end the world!! It is one of the most important scientific experiments in well... ever. We have the potential to unlock some of the deepest secrets of the Universe and answer a great deal of questions about where we came from and where we are going in the future.
Oh, and there is nothing special about 2012, ok? It is going to be a year just like any year. Sure, the Earth might be destroyed in 2012, there is always the chance that we could be struck by an asteroid, gamma ray burst, rogue black hole, etc. This is, however, just as likely to happen in 2011 or 2013 as it is in 2012. If you want to talk about your loony ideas in an astrology forum, that's fine. but please keep ancient superstition out of scientific discourse. The reasonable people of the world thank you.
I think they must have already fired and tried. These delays are just to calm all the paranoia.
exactly my thoughts.
Great... a few more month of safety.
Why dont people or a government storm their lab and force em to shut down.
Cant believe these nuts want to do this. Threaten all life on earth ... just to settle your curiosity.
How much money have they wasted on this thing now?
Who are the dolts who continue to fund this?
lets just hope that if this thing goes up in smoke that it has a small range on destruction *prays*
Like the Bible says in Revelation 11:18 - The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great — and for destroying those who destroy the earth.
In other words, LEAVE THIS SHIT ALONE!!! If it hasn't worked now with all of the implications that it can lead to, then it must not be working for a purpose. This is mans sorry ass attempt to disprove that there's a God, and they will fail miserably.
What? First of all, I can't see what that Bible verse has to do with the LHC. Second of all, I can't see why we should let your bronze age superstitions hold back Scientific progress in the 21st Century. Seriously, that book was written by goatherders before the scientific method was invented. If you want to believe it and disavow yourself from science -- fine. Stop using your computer, stop going to the doctor, go live in the woods somewhere and leave the rest of us alone while we move into the future.
So if someone holds different views they should live in the woods? Wow talk about being a prick.
different viewpoint? You are joking right. That is like calling intelligent design science because it has a clever name. Oh wait it is just that. This will not rip a whole in time or cause a black hole or anything. It is science. It is what has brought up every advancement we get to enjoy. Some hobbled together book written thousands of years ago has nothing to do with the Large Hadron Collider at all. There is a difference of view and there is lunacy and idiocy. Stop letting the lunatics shout us down.
What makes me sick are all of the people who make comments on this site as if they graduated with a degree in Physics from MIT and went on to become nuclear physicists. I made a comment based on my feelings and I'm entitled to that. Don't knock me because I'm not a atheist or agnostic, or I don't believe in Darwinism. I'm not the only one who believe that this experiment should not be conducted. I suggest that all of you that proclaim that there are no risk, do some more research.
You can start here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL2ghqv5mCg&feature=related
And then read about the lawsuit against CERN to stop the experiments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL2ghqv5mCg&feature=related
Based on the information that I have read, "I" do not agree that we should proceed with this experiment. If you don't agree with me, I could give two shits. It's my opinion and I'm entitled to it.
@ therodt Wow you completely missed my point which I'm not even going to bother to explain.
Without God there would be no science :D The natural world and physical laws are not sufficient to come into existence independently. The scientific method is what tells us that life, information, matter, and energy can't come into existence from nothing or without a cause. While the scientific method can't be used on anything beyond science, that does not remove the possibility of anything beyond the natural world existing.
But that quote has nothing to do with the LHC IMHO. Science experiments aren't what destroy the earth.
@ Ed - The whole quote from the Bible doesn't pertain to it per say, but the end part of "and for destroying those who destroy the earth", merely pertains to the people who take what God has given to them and they destroy the earth by not taking care of it, and that their day of reckoning will soon be here. That's just the way that I interpreted the verse. But thank you for understanding :-) It's amazing how many nuclear physicists and doctors and lawyers exist on Engadget and other sites that allow people to leave comments lol.
bit off topic here but...
North Korea launches a test nuke, Japan builds a gundam...Why is noone alarmed?
because we all know the world is going to be destroyed by the LHC anyhow so it doesn't matter?
(JOKING.)
hmmm theres another particle accelerator thats been running for over 40 years... this ones just a bit bigger... I dont think the scientists would switch it in if there was any doubt in their minds that it would implode the Earth.. unless all of them are suicidal... or they are all under the leadership of a bond-style villain.
and please.. dont say they dont know what they are doing.. I'm almost 99% certain that they know more than you about what will happen :P
So i still have time to sell all my belongings and live richly for a day! Engadget, you always make my day.
The Grand Start will be delayed untill 2012.December. Just watch. Thats when the "end" will come. =)
umm... no
i do have to say this proves that really smart people can be stupid people..
Geez. Oct?!
20yrs to build. 1mins of operation, another 1.5+ yrs (and counting) to fix.
This is typical academic+gov't collarboration work. Ready in Oct? Sure I bet we'll see ANOTHER delay pushing it to next year. In the name of science this is a great effort. In the name of human history and evolution, this is utter failure (all the cash, people's time, resources, etc... == 1 min operation, 15yrs development). As a physicist, I'm appalled.
The academics+gov't should have spent the last 15yrs figuring out how to return to the moon/Mars effectively and improving spaceflight + space exploring than building a 'facility' on Earth. Considering the Earth offers a 'non-pure' environment to do subatomic tests they would have been better off spending billions on spaceflight, then conduct LHC-'tests' in space: at a cheaper cost, in a better environment, less risk to people and more energy to use from the surroundings (space solar power for instance). And likely more knowledge to be gained.
It's Monday, and I'm in my armchair: the LHC is an, FTL!, sink-hole and could have been done easily in another configuration (i.e. in space). We wast
ed (engadget got a problem with the comment system again today?) a lot of resources, people's time and brain power on this project....
I can't be the only one who sees "hardon" every time I look at the word Hadron.
No, some people see your mom.
Too many people are making dramatic comments over something they quite obviously know nothing about. To put it in tech terms, it's like announcing loudly that people shouldn't buy an iPhone because it's made by Microsoft, who are the biggest oil producer in the world and oil is made from human blood.
The LHC is not going tto end the world. To imagine it would is to have hubris on a huge scale. The belief that the human race is nigh unto gods, bestriding this poor world with our mastery of it is absolutely wrong. The energy require to destroy the world is phenomenal, immense. If you detonated every nuclear warhead we have you couldn't do more than scorch a small percentage of it's surface. The LHC is not a phenomenal super-powered mad-science death ray device. We're still a primitive race playing at the "ooh, fire hot!" level of development. Worrying about the LHC is like worrying about the dangers to space-time of cars that travel more than 30 miles an hour.
If it did produce a black hole - and note that that "if" is a bit like "if" I win the lottery this weekend, and then again next weekend - the very theory that predicts that black holes might possibly be created also predicts that they won't last long enough to find the next nearest atom. On top of that, black holes don't have super-gravity, that's a common misunderstanding. Black holes are super-dense objects that have an escape velocity faster than light. The gravitic intensity is indeed enormous right by the event horizon, but it's the same as any other object of similar mass further away. A black hole with the mass of the earth, at a distance equivalent to the surface of the earth from the center, has the same force that we experience stood on the surface. A black hole with the utterly tiny mass that the LHC could create would have the same gravitational force that a similarly-massive subatomic particle has - i.e. it's no more going to suck everything in than a passing hydrogen atom is.
On top of this, please remember that particle collisions thousands of times more powerful than the LHC will produce happen at the edge of our atmosphere every day when enormously energetic cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere. Not one of these has ever, in the last few billion years, destroyed the planet. The reason we have to build the LHC is that hoisting several tens of thousand tons of detector to the edge of the atmosphere is impossible - the ATLAS detector is 7000 tons all by itself.
Finally, to answer recharged95, there's no way with current technology that we could build all those detectors in space. We have a hard time lifting tens of tons - tens of thousands are still way off. And as for the "utter failure" of the project, many many commercial projects, software releases and construction projects finish well over a year past their original deadline, and they are all utterly trivial in comparison. The LHC is an Apollo-scale project on a relative shoestring budget. It is an investigation right on the very edge of science, using engineering at the limits of what we can do and tolerances as close as we can make. This slip is unfortunate, but when compared to, for example, spaceflight, which even after 50 years of work still regularly has failures, it's doing really well.
I predict they will finally get it working at full power on Dec. 21st, 2012.
D-ZEU sa ne ierte!
http://www.shop-bucuresti.ro/
Something to keep in mind "Dr." Walter Wagner the guy who wanted to stop the LHC and got his case throw out of court. He also tried to stop the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2000. Is not physicist or a qualified scientist in any other field. In a interview with The Daily Show it was obvious that he has no real grasp of physics the guy is crackpot.
Walter Wagner on the daily show
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225921&title=large-hadron-collider
Can this thing run Crysis smoothly?
And why 2012, isn't 2012 the end of the world? http://www.whowillsurvive2012.com/
Why do I always read it as large hardon collider :(
*sigh*
And I was so looking forward to having a hadron of my very own :(
We should really pump more money into projects like these. We also need a manhatten project for Fusionreactors.
Too bad some asshole bankers and insurance companys made the financial system a mess.
You know, if the world is primarily populated by people that are such paranoid whack cases that they think the Hadron Collider will destroy everything, then I really hope it does. It wouldn't be any loss.
People are too worried about this thing causing the world to end -_- and half the people believing it don't know what exactly it does. Though I will admit I'm not exactly sure either. Yet i don't seem to remember a fuss about the Tevatron particle accelerator in Illinois.