Is the Large Hadron Collider really the end of the world?

Question

So far what I've heard about this thing is that it combines proton rays to study the effects of black holes and other stuff. What's REALLY going on and is there really a chance that Earth as we know it will come to an end?

Answer 1

tHE PROBABILITY OF SUCN A CALAMITY IS NEGLIGIBLE, BUT NOT ZERO, OF COURSE

Answer 2

Yes, they have doomed the earth.

They have already created "mini black holes". Mini black holes are so tiny that they can pass through the earth with almost no chance of hitting any particles, so they travel to the center of the earth and stay there, hitting nothing. But then all of a sudden SLURP! it will hit another particle inside an atom, and grow a tiny bit bigger, then SLURP! it will hit another and grow a tiny bit bigger and have more and more chance of hitting more particles each time it absorbs another. The growth of the black hole will be exponential, starting out very slow, but eventually devouring everything remaining in a split second.

So, in about 40-200 years, out of the blue the earth will all of a sudden be sucked into the black hole! It would be rather neat to see, since the moon and anything orbiting the earth such as space stations will behave as if nothing happened, since the gravity remains the same. But imagine the poor b******s up in space when that happens! Enjoy starving to death! Me, I'm mashed together with all the hot supermodels (and everything else) in the singularity of the black hole!

Answer 3

Heck no !!!    

It collides protons, and antiprotons, and creates a very, very, very, high energy collision.  Yes.  It is designed to probe the properties of matter and energy at a very, very high temperature, probing the fundamental structure of matter in regions where there is very little to no difference between matter and energy!  Wow, huh?  But will it produce a black hole that will consume earth? No, that's just science fiction, and bad science fiction, at that.   It won't produce black holes.  If by some chance it did (because the diameter of the 'hole' was so very small) then that hole would 'evaporate' quickly.  This is a famous Stephen Hawking result.  Black holes do emit energy, and such a small one would emit its energy quickly, and no longer be a black hole.... IF it could be created by the collider, which is doubtful.  

Answer 4

The LHC is intended to look for the Higg's boson and physics beyond the standard model of particle physics such as super symmetry and dark matter/energy candidates. The standard model does not predict that the LHC will produce mini-Black Holes; however, if physics beyond the standard model is found to hold, then mini-Black Holes might be possible. These mini-Black holes might be produced at a rate in the order of one per second. According to the some calculations, these ‘holes’ are harmless because they will quickly decay via ‘Hawking radiation’ and explode into a shower of particles. The problem with ‘Hawking radiation’ is that it too is unproven physics and, thus, might not be a correct explanation for the disappearance of mini-Black Holes. An unlikely, accumulation of mini-Black Holes could be a ‘small’ problem.

Below I will detail some of the physics that the LHC is attempting to explore.

The weak interaction is mediated by spin-1 bosons which act as force carriers between quarks and/or leptons. There are three of these intermediate vector bosons, which were all discovered at CERN in 1983. They are the charged bosons W+ and W- and the neutral Z0. Their masses are measured to be: -

M(W) = 80.3 Gev/c² and M(Z) = 91.2 Gev/c²

which gives their ranges as: -

R(W) ≈ R(Z) ≈ 2 x 10^-3 fm

Their decay modes are as follows: -

W+ -> l+ + vl

W- -> l- + vl'

Z0 -> l+ + l-

Where the l's stand for leptons and the v's for neutrinos with the prime ' indicating an anti-neutrino.

This introduction sets the scene for what follows!

The intermediate vector bosons gain their mass from the Higgs boson. Please allow me to explain.

During the nineteen-sixties the theoretical physicists Glashow, Salam and Weinberg developed a theory which unified the electromagnetic and the weak nuclear forces. This theory is known as the ‘electroweak’ theory, it predicted the neutral vector boson Z0, and weak nuclear force reactions arising from its exchange, in what are known as neutral current reactions. The theory also accounted for the heavy charged bosons W+ and W-, required for the mediation of all observed weak interactions, known as charged current reactions. These particles were discovered in 1983.This unified theory is a ‘gauge invariance’ theory, which means that if the components of its underlying equations are transformed, in position or potential, they still predict exactly the same physics. Because the force carrying particles (Z0, W+ and W-), of this theory, are massive spin-1 bosons a spin-0 boson is required to complete the theory. This spin-0 boson is the as yet unobserved ‘Higgs’ boson.

The masses of the force carrying bosons (Z0, W+ and W-), for the electroweak theory, are derived from their interaction with the scalar Higgs field. Unlike other physical fields, the Higgs field has a non-zero value in the vacuum state, labelled φ0, and furthermore this value is not invariant under gauge transformation. Hence, this gauge invariance is referred to as a ‘hidden’ or ‘spontaneously broken’ symmetry. The Higgs field has three main consequences’. The first, is that the electroweak force carrying bosons (Z0, W+ and W-) can acquire mass in the ratio: -

M(W) =cosθ(W)

_____

M(Z)

Where θ(W) Is the electroweak mixing angle. These masses arise from the interactions of the gauge fields with the non-zero vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field. Secondly, there are electrically neutral quanta H0, called Higgs bosons, associated with the Higgs field, just as photons are associated with the electromagnetic field. Thirdly, the Higgs field throws light on the origin of the quark and lepton masses. In the absence of the Higgs field the requirements of gauge invariance on the masses of spin-½ fermions (quarks and leptons etc,) would set them at zero for parity violating interactions (non-mirror image interactions). Parity is a conserved quantity in strong nuclear force and electromagnetic interactions but is violated in weak nuclear force interactions, which would make quark and lepton masses zero in this later case. However, interactions with the Higgs field can generate fermion masses due to the non-zero expectation value φ0 of this field, as well as with interactions with the Higgs bosons. These interactions have a dimensionless coupling constant g(Hff) related to the fermions mass m(f) by the expression: -

g(Hff) = √ (√2G(f)m(f) ²)

Where G(f) is the Fermi coupling constant and f is any quark or lepton flavour. However, this theory, that the fermion masses are mediated by their interaction with the Higgs field, does not predict their mass m(f). However, with the future discovery of the Higgs boson the above equation can be used to confirm the observed coupling constant g(Hff).

At CERN, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will search for the Higgs boson at an energy of up to 1 TeV by colliding protons in the reaction: -

p + p -> H0 + X

Where X is any state allowed by the usual conservation laws.

The upper atmosphere is a more energetic 'particle physics laboratory' than the LHC. If cosmic rays, slamming into the upper atmosphere, create mini-black holes then these decay rapidly! However, it may be that mini-black holes are not produce - at all - in high-energy particle collisions.  

Answer 5

.forever and  for innst ance.

Answer 6

So basically what they're doing is making a massive particle accelerator. What they want to do is make tiny particles go incredibly fast to learn more about really unstable (that is, they break apart really fast) particles. They want to learn mostly about quantum physics- as much as you hear about it, it's still not very developed.

The concerns come from the fact that- well, no one has ever really made the collisions that they want to happen occur like this before. So people are scared because they just don't know. But all the scientists who have analyzed the risks agree that the collisions that will happen there "present no danger".

Answer 7

Its been blown out of context (pardon the pun).

Answer 8

No.  If black holes were created it would not be that big a deal.  They would have such small mass that they would only influence matter extremely close to them.  It is possible that some exotic form of strange matter could be formed, but the same thing could happen in the atmosphere due to cosmic rays and nobody worries about that.