What can we expect to see from the LHC?

Question

I know there are alot of things scientists are going to be able to study more in depth with this. I'm just asking what can the common man expect to see from this. Will we be seeing anything really life changing coming from this?

On a side not im not asking this in a " I think its worthless kind of way "

Answer 1

good question, and the short answer is "we don't know". nobody does. if they knew what they were going to find out, why would they bother spending all that money?

initially, they want to validate (or refute) some theories in particle physics. they will think of other things to investigate.

even if they found something really interesting, it may not be immediately clear what it means. as an example, ppl looked at interesting properties of materials like silicon and germanium, but it took a while to turn those results in to transistors. then they got to figure out what they could do with transistors.

Answer 2

>I'm just asking what can the common man expect to see from this. Will we be seeing anything really life changing coming from this?

Probably not immediately, at least so long as it doesn't accidentally destroy the Earth. :P

Any technological devices designed on principles discovered using the LHC will probably take at least ten years, and quite possibly much longer, to become available to the public. The most likely application of any discoveries made there will be in the field of quantum computing, which could conceivably enter the market within the next decade and quite probably within the next two decades, although conventional computers may remain more powerful overall for some time after that, depending on how development goes. It is remotely possible that the discoveries made using the LHC will also allow for the design of more radical technologies such as free energy devices, superluminal spaceship drives, portals to other universes, etc, but even if these are possible they would still probably take a long time to develop. But one thing we can be sure of, and that's that more knowledge of the principles of physics cannot in itself make things worse for us; it's just a matter of using that knowledge in a responsible manner.

Answer 3

It's funny how humans measure intelligence by their own perception of it.

And they don't know what it would create, they make a machine instead of discovering what they are looking for themselves. Proves how human mind and body is nowhere near as good as we like to think we are.

The reason I'm saying, there's too many risks, and in science there should always be margins for error, in all experiments, and there is, however others use the excuse of the possible risks to have a party, so we should, something good come out of it, we may even restart this horrible build of a universe (too bad we might lose out lives).

But if all goes well, we can only expect greater studies on how possibly space-time warps around some kinds of matter and their forces towards other atoms, and the characteristics of anti-matter, anti-energy, dark-matter, dark-energy, and even gravitons.

Including the Higgs mechanism exploration. Basically, finding the 'building blocks', which were once existent, according to the 'Standard Model' of the universe, when matter first existed, just after the big bang.

We can only hope the best revolution on how we can use matter and energy will come out of the research for it, but NASA, BSA, ASA and other Particle and Space agencies just want to scare you, into standing for your human rights, so they can shut down LHC, so they can discover it themselves and take pride in it themselves...

But that's humans for you!

Answer 4

The LHC will produce... data. That's all - just data.

It is just like Galileo's telescope. All the telescope did was produce data - data that changed the world - or rather our view of the world.

Magnetometers dragged across the oceans in the 1960s produced data. Analysis of that data lead to a confirmation of Plate Tectonics.

Darwin came back from the voyage of the HMS Beagle with data. He used that data to formulate his theory of evolution.

The LHC is probing energy levels that haven't been probed before.

Just looking for new data...

It is impossible to predict the effect of new data.  Sometimes data lays around for many years - like Mendel's pea data or  Edward Lorenz's work on weather prediction.  You can't tell.  Obscure investigations into heat engines by Carnot lead to the industrial revolution.