What do you think of the LHC?

Question

safe or not? what if the dangers are true?

Answer 1

"Less than 10%" is a severe understatement of the insignificance of the probability.  Most reporters who claim this are unable to think in terms of astronomically large or infinitesimally small numbers (eg. 10^22 meters or 10^-9971 %)

When people say that there's a small chance that the Earth could be consumed by a mini black hole or annihilated by a strangelet, it's kind of a joke.  There is a finite nonzero probability that that would happen, but at that level of physics, there's always a finite nonzero probability of anything happening at any given time.  The probability of it happening is such that if you were to do the test a trillion times per second for a billion years, you'd still have less than 1% chance of it happening.

Either way, if something does goes wrong, we won't even know it lol.

Answer 2

there are no dangers asociated with the LHC. the simple truth is, we've been performing the same type of experiments with other atomic accelorators for a couple of decades. we've been making microscopic black holes and making antimatter for a while now. we started making microscopic black holes a lot about 10 years ago, but the first one was made around the late 80's. we have made antimatter before. infact we just made some in swiss a while back. its nothing new, but it is being publicized.

did you notice that ever since the 2012 myth got started, yahoo has been posting a lot of news articles about exo planets, and "planet x", and the possibility of life on other planets, and now the particle accelorator? its all a matter to gain attention. they know there are tons of people out there who believe in this 2012 nonsense, and they are going to push it as far as they can.

the LHC is perfectly safe. it is the most powerful one ever built, but it is still extreamily safe. a routine saftey examination was performed in 2003 and tested what it is going to be doing in August, and everything turned out fine.

these microscopic black holes aren't as bad as you think. first of all, when you think of black holes you picture this black hole in the middle of space, warping the matter and light all around it. well, the truth is, it doesn't look like that. it is invisible... its dark matter. dark matter is invisible. we think of the world ending whenever someone mutters the words "black hole".

here's some prespective. if the sun were to suddenly disapear, and a black hole of the same size and mass was put in its place, we wouldn't get sucked in. we would continue our normal orbit. we would die because of no light, but the point is, the world won't get sucked into the black hole.

these microscopic black holes are smaller than a water molecule. and they almost instantly disapear after they are made. they are so small that the universe will basically fix it itself in a matter of miliseconds. they won't suck anything in. they will have the same gravitational pull as they did when they were still normal atoms.

so i hope that puts it in prespective.

and if there was a real problem, astrophysicists, such as myself, would be the first person on the plane to the LHC to stop it. but the truth is, nothing is going to happen. its going to be one of the most groundbreaking modern scientific endevors, and people should be embracing it instead of fearing it.

Answer 3

I think such experiments are necessary for us to understand our most fundamental questions, but I also think we are trying to outdo our own intelligence. We are attempting harder and more dangerous by the day. The question is are we prepared for it? Are we intelligent enough to use it wisely? Let's not forget Chernobyl.

In case something goes wrong here, it would be disastrous. And a lot can go wrong with such a big, powerful and complicated machine.

Answer 4

I was raised in a family in which new things were not interesting and useful...they were just potentially disastrous! So, I understand the mindset.

I tend to reflexively reject this manner of thinking because for all of recorded History, the End of the World has been the most common and popular prediction. Oddly, it doesn't seem to matter that these predictions have always been wrong.

This newest LHC hysteria should adopt the slogan: "It's The End Of The World!!! We Really MEAN It This Time, Dammit!"

Answer 5

Absolutley safe. What do you think is going to happen, a black hole is going to be created? No. They are recreating the big bang on an atomic level. They are throwing particles at each other and having them collide in a huge detector. If every time this happened a black hole formed, then the real big bang would not have worked because black holes would have formed and sucked up everything in nano seconds. I personally can't wait to see the results. It is this kind of tests that we need to do more of to really understand the universe.