As the LHC is cooled down in preparation for its activation, I am getting a little more worried about strangelets. Care to dispel my fears?
As the LHC is cooled down in preparation for its activation, I am getting a little more worried about strangelets. Care to dispel my fears?
If I am right, then religious fundamentalists will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
-Isaac Asimov
Ands my fears still have not been calmed.
WE IS ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!!!!!!1
If I am right, then religious fundamentalists will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
-Isaac Asimov
Sure:
First and foremost: If strangelets do indeed exist and can be formed by the LHC in sufficient number to destroy the universe, the upside is you'll never know. It'll come pretty instantaneously.
Second: I invoke the Anthropic principle. The planet's been around how many billions of years? In that time it's been bombarded with enough ultra high energy cosmic rays that anything that could be produced in the LHC has already been produced in large numbers in the earths atmosphere. We're still here. If strangelets do exist, they either a) require such high energies that they haven't yet been created in cosmic rays in the earths atmosphere, and are thus out of reach by the LHC, or b) they are harmless.
Third: When it comes to physics, there are lots of kooks who are eager to tell you why the next major experiment will kill us all. The gentleman raising the "ZOMG! strangelets!" arguments has (unsuccessfully) sued to try to stop several other accelerators from turning on. All of those machines have turned on, and, again, we are still here.
Works for me.Originally Posted by Ike
If I am right, then religious fundamentalists will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
-Isaac Asimov
I will be selling tinfoil hats to concerned citizens starting two days prior to the first experiment. Starting price is $2k per hat. Hats are one time use only, of course.
Of course, you could also say that we don't exist along another path.
Because of quantum.
"The choices we discern as having been made in the Constitutional Convention impose burdens on governmental proceses that often seem clumsy, inefficient, even unworkable, but those hard choices were consciously made by men who had lived under a form of government that permitted arbitrary governmental acts to go unchecked." INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983) (Burger, C.J.)
Oh, and it's possible I'll be there for the first collisions...
I was always under the assumption that strangelets formed by cosmic rays would decay to a positive charge, and thus would be repelled normal matter. But, if we make them with collisions we could create negatively charged strangelet states that could interact with normal matter.
Is that baseless?
If I am right, then religious fundamentalists will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
-Isaac Asimov
Thats apparently the claim. Although at this point there is exactly zero evidence to back it up. In the manner that stranglets could most likely be produced, the LHC is comprable to RHIC, which has seen zero strangelets. (they did do a search for them)
As long as there are no ice-9 scenarios, GO SCIENCE!
If I am right, then religious fundamentalists will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
-Isaac Asimov
Ooh! Take pictures of the Bosons!
Is this right?
LHC + RHIC = RLIMC
They'll look the same as the bosons here. Just more Frenchified.
They wear little berets?
Do not take our le picture!
We zurrender!
People don't know what it is to be a champion.
Oklahoma INVENTED it.
You guys need to see Wall-E.
You'll see just how we're polluting the Earth.
Our existence depends on Space Cruises!
We must start buidling our SPACE ARKS!
Who's with me?
WAS IT OVER WHEN THE GERMANS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR!?
People don't know what it is to be a champion.
Oklahoma INVENTED it.
so any strangelets that form will just surrender quickly and we won't have to worry?
“If a team is to reach its potential, each player must be willing to subordinate his personal goals to the good of the team.”
Bud Wilkinson
What about The Oklahoma Strangelets?
Oops...wrong thread.
Sorry.
We may have to worry about them tripping over themselves as they run away
If I am right, then religious fundamentalists will not go to Heaven, because there is no Heaven. If THEY are right, then they will not go to Heaven, because they are hypocrites.
-Isaac Asimov
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