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'Doomsday Machine' Lawsuit Tossed Out by Judge
Fox News ^

Posted on 09/29/2008 10:14:51 AM PDT by cups

HONOLULU — A federal judge in Hawaii has dismissed a lawsuit trying to stop the world's largest atom smasher.

U.S. District Court Judge Helen Gilmor ruled Friday that federal courts don't have jurisdiction over the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, near Geneva.

Two Hawaii residents sued because they feared that the machine could create small black holes or other phenomena that could destroy the planet.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Education
KEYWORDS: hadroncollider; lawsuit; lhc; physics; ruling; stringtheory
People really need to calm down over this. This is an amazing scientific achievement people!

Besides, if this does end the world. WHO CARES ABOUT MORTGAGE BAILOUTS!!

1 posted on 09/29/2008 10:14:54 AM PDT by cups
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To: cups

Hadron Colliders are way overrated!


2 posted on 09/29/2008 10:18:10 AM PDT by Ancient Drive
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To: cups
LHC Webcams
3 posted on 09/29/2008 10:20:41 AM PDT by justlurking (The only remedy for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.)
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To: justlurking

LOL!!!

That’s funny


4 posted on 09/29/2008 10:29:25 AM PDT by cups
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To: justlurking

LOL!!!

That’s funny


5 posted on 09/29/2008 10:29:30 AM PDT by cups
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To: cups

I hear some say that if the universe was full of advanced civilizations, surely they would have found us by now. Others say that the fact that they have not contacted us is proof of their intelligence. But you’d think that SETI would pick up signals...

Another or... they’re all inside of the black holes that they eventually created. Just sayin’.


6 posted on 09/29/2008 10:33:48 AM PDT by MarineBrat (My wife and I took an AIDS vaccination that the Church offers.)
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To: MarineBrat

CAN YOU IMAGINE?! A UNIVERSE DEVOID OF DEMOCRATS?!

A man can dream...A man can dream...


7 posted on 09/29/2008 10:40:13 AM PDT by cups
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To: cups
Hawking has a theory about small black holes, basically if the mass is less than Lunar, it will evaporate.

The hole evaporates by quantum tunneling (called in this case Hawking Radiation), and the rate is inversely proportional to mass so the smaller the mass, the higher the rate.

If LHC smacks two protons together and they make a black hole, the maximum mass is the relativistic mass of the two protons combined, which will be quite small.

The evaporation rate will be quite large, and the hole's lifetime very brief.

So if you integrate over the mass mu (hole mass to zero mass) and from time zero to time tau, you get

tau= C^2/(3K)mu^3

The evaporation time is proportional to the cube of the hole's mass.

K is the hole's Hawking temperature in K, and I neglect charge or spin.

The Hawking temperature is

T= (hbar C^3)/(8 pi G k m)

The larger the mass of the hole the lower the temperature. If the hole T is higher than the cosmic background, it will emit energy via quantum tunneling (this is the likely source of the 511 KeV radiation from Sag A*). The emission of Hawking radiation results in a mass decrease of the hole. Small hole, short lifetime.

I think a 100,000 kg hole would wink out in a second or less.

8 posted on 09/29/2008 11:19:07 AM PDT by DBrow
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To: DBrow
So in order for there to be black holes at all, the black holes that exist had to have achieved critical mass rather quickly?

So I guess there is no way to aggregate a black hole. It has to be the result of some almost instantaneous phenomenon such as the rapid collapse of a star.

9 posted on 09/29/2008 11:23:47 AM PDT by who_would_fardels_bear (The cosmos is about the smallest hole a man can stick his head in. - Chesterton)
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To: who_would_fardels_bear

I think stellar collapse of some sort would be the only practical way, or we could snag six neutron stars and collide them.

If we could confine our accelerator-made hole to a very fine degree, maybe we could feed it more protons until it grew. But the accelerator-made hole will be very, very small with respect to a nucleus and it will have a charge, making this difficult.

I’ve read theories in which most large masses already have micro or mini holes. They evaporate at a high rate and this is balanced by the rare interactions with baryonic matter (there is a huge space between nuclei in normal matter, making collisions rare).

Making accelerator holes that are at relativistic speed, if it’s possible, may mean that we could take a mass like the Moon, and zap so many microholes at it that we’d condense or collapse it, then we can feed it chunks of rock to grow it. Relativistic velocity will make it last longer as seen in our reference frame, like accelerating neutrons extends their 11s half-life. Making a hole by collision leaves a hole with low residual velocity.

These concepts, though, are well beyond our current capabilities. They make fun for science fiction writers, though!

Frederick Pohl’s Annals of the Heechee is a good example, and short stories like “The Hole Man” are good.


10 posted on 09/29/2008 11:42:48 AM PDT by DBrow
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To: cups

`
That’s it!

I’m going to the nearest bakery and pigging out on pastries like there’s no tomorrow.

(I’d party like its 1999 — but that was a lousy year for parties.)
`


11 posted on 09/29/2008 11:45:39 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: MarineBrat
I hear some say that if the universe was full of advanced civilizations, surely they would have found us by now. Others say that the fact that they have not contacted us is proof of their intelligence.

My Advanced Physics professor who taught us Special Relativity, believed that God in his wisdom has separated all advanced civilizations via vast interstellar distances to keep us from killing one another. We have to learn to live with ourselves in peace and get to know Him before we meet His other children. That was his belief.

I find the animations of the "stranglets" and the earth being sucked into a man-made black hole on YouTube hilarious! People are so mislead by Star Trek and movie land and they know nothing of real science.

12 posted on 09/29/2008 12:11:16 PM PDT by Clock King (Under revision...)
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To: SunkenCiv

Collider ping!!


13 posted on 09/29/2008 12:24:33 PM PDT by BBell
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To: BBell; AdmSmith; bvw; callisto; ckilmer; dandelion; ganeshpuri89; gobucks; KevinDavis; ...

...and ironically, the LHC won’t be back up for a year, perhaps more. Thanks BBell!


14 posted on 09/29/2008 3:42:45 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile hasn't been updated since Friday, May 30, 2008)
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15 posted on 10/09/2008 6:54:08 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile hasn't been updated since Friday, May 30, 2008)
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