"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

^says physicist Brain Cox.

Scientists get death threats about LHC.

Also, LHC rap.

[YT="LHC rap."]j50ZssEojtM[/YT]




Science.

It works. Bitches.

Well, let's apply the Precautionary Principle in an even-handed manner...

If we don't know with certainty that global warming WON'T be catastrophic 100 years from now, we should still act to prevent it...

...then...

If we don't know with certainty that LHC WON'T destroy the universe, we should act to prevent it.

Would be valid if that was the argument for acting to limit human influence on the environment.

On the LHC though, we already do know with certainty that it will not destroy the universe, as there is nothing particularily special about the situation it is going to create, it happens all the time in our atmosphere naturally and over the length of the entire universe there should be countless trillions of similar collisions occurring every single second.

The only thing special about the LHC is that it will enable us to control where and when one of these collisions happens, and makes it easy to observe what is happening.

Invalid argument. You are talking about completely different levels of uncertainty.

I think the 'verse may be a little tougher to destroy than we imagine...

I think if it was possible to destroy the 'verse on accident, it would have been done before by somebody else.

Even if in the 100's of trillions galaxies and billions of trillions of stars (in just the observable universe) intelligent, technological life is rarer than rare, all it would take is one race to do it. Just one time.

Not even that. Just one weird collision of high energy cosmic rays in Earth's (or some other planet's) upper atmosphere.

(Then again, there could be a wave of universal destruction heading for us right now at 99% the speed of light, and we wouldn't know it...until it was here, then we wouldn't exist for long enough to know that something had even hit us, so why worry? But given the tremendous age of the universe, I think it would have happened long, long before us...)

Ummm, yeah. That part can happen when I'm drunk, sleeping, or mid-orgasm, thank you very much.

Then again...wait...

Tamar, detonate the reality bomb!

(Quick, before 14th Doctor can stop us!!!)

I for one plan to find some naive and desperate young virgin girl on the night of the 9th, and tell her; "You know, the world could end tomorrow.."

Okay, I feel stupid.

What is LHC?

Large Hadron Collider?

Leroy's Hooptie Cadillac

One of it's sensors!

The little black dots are people.

CNN must be having a slow news day, they ran this as the lead: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/08/lhc.collider/index.html

Anybody brave enough to watch the "rap" about it?
I think that will bring about the end of the world, rather than crazy science gone wrong!

I will be VERY pissed off if I get laser eyesurgery on Tuesday and the world is destroyed on the Wednesday.

Just wait until a cup of coffee in the keyboard + a freak blast of lightning combine to give it sentience, and it decides to open a wormhole to the anti-universe so it can slam the Earth against the anti-Earth and consider its job to be done! You'll all be sorry then!

I had a weird dream about a year ago that the Earth suddenly rotated off it's normal axis. And not just a little...it was like 90 degrees off, so the equator would now be the axis - Kenya would be the new North Pole, for example and Anarctica would be the new Equador, if you get my drift.

And it happened all at once - no warning! You could just feel the incredible force and you had to hang on to whatever you could, like a ship capsizing. The feeling of panic was overwhelming!

That would really suck!

If I were in charge of the LHC, I would so get myself a Nehru jacket and a white cat and a big brushed steel and leather chair to sit in while I stroke my cat.

They're only colliding at injection energy on Wednesday. That's 450GeV--well below what's been done before with other machines. Commissioning the ramp will take until mid-October.

Big Bang Day on BBC4.

*serenely strokes cat*

Very well then. To show you I am serious, I shall cause the International Space Station to collapse in on itself unless I am given the sum of ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

I'm doing that right now...it's not as fun as it sounds.

Do we know what time it will be activated?

I, for one, eagerly await either scientific advancement or oblivion.

Well if it's oblivion, we fucking earned it.

"Say goodbye to all this and hello to oblivion..."

Come the supernova.

"Supernovae are industrial accidents."

I just want to say to the world, that if the Universe ends tomorrow, that I REGRET NOTHING!!!

(Well, except not fucking Amy, the cute chick from downstairs, in the 9th grade. If he LHC does open a wormhole to the past, that's where I will be...)

Also, I want to confess that I never really like any of you fuckers.

Now, before it's too late...

[yt="EVERYBODY PARTY!!!"]KmBDgAcIt-0&[/yt]

WHOOO-HOOOO!!!!

(Shit, I hope the world ends tomorrow morning, because I am going to have such a bloody hangover...)

I'm not worried about the universe. But what happens if it creates a black hole and Hawking is wrong about his eponymous radiation? It's a bad day for the Earth (not really anywhere else) if so.

I for one welcome the oblivion!