“in any case, saying that the LHC was made (partially) to look for tachyons seems somewhat misleading to me, given my (VERY basic) knowledge (since it seems that discovery of tachyons, even looking for such particles, would be a nice sife effect/effort, but hardly a main focus, since we’re fairly certain tachyons dont exist)

and theres a 50% chance I could be 100% wrong, i certainly dont presume to know anything:E

in any case, saying that the LHC was made to look for tachyons seems somewhat misleading to me, given my (VERY basic) knowledge

No question it would suck. Here’s a thought, if it would take a long time, maybe it already happened.

Relax Maggie, ain’t gonna happen.

If anyone doesn’t believe this, try explaining what Knowledeable just explained to someone & see how much it holds their interest. Then, try explaining how the Universe might end thanks to this new fangled gimmick mad scientists are using. I rest my case.

Sorry but if people are terrified by this, then they’re the sort who get scared from every new report that comes out from the dangers of caffeine to the possibility that you’re doomed to be a psychopath because your first grade teacher told you to stand in a corner. People like that should sell their computer & stick with watching reruns of some lame 50s TV comedy like I Love Lucy if they want humour & leave the internet alone.

thanks!

the only way i have survived this long is by having a TON of help with it, so yay for that.

my inner little kid? scared shitless. but that is pretty much most of the time anyway.

blessings,
maggie

Not true. IF a black hole is created and IF it survives long enough to start chewing up the earth it will actually be a drawn out event. We will be able to watch as the earth is consumed for quite some time before the damage is bad enough to kill us. Which it would inevitably do.

The media likes overlooking the fact that these are scientists who want answers, not the Heaven’s Gate cult looking to ride off on the next comet. If I had to place a bet, the bet would be that the scientists in charge of the LHC aren’t out to kill themselves and take the world with them.

I might be wrong.

Even if I am wrong, the graph is funny.

I call shenanigans on plagaristic OP.

it’s what I mean by the media hype – making people believe that they’re gonna die!

Even so, I have to admit I lol’d =]

The reason we need to build this £5,000,000,000 machine (about US$9 – 10,000,000,000) is that we can’t easily measure these, as lugging the great big detectors miles high would be impossible, and even if we could the collisions are random and unpredictable – we wouldn’t know where to look.

HOWEVER – do not panic! the black holes, if created will be too small to create any large amount of damage, and will dissipate within a fraction of a second anyway. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. To squish the earth down enough to be a black hole (a black hole is just a very dense object) it would be less than 1 centimetre across. The black holes that probably won’t be created would be a fraction of this distance across, and the event horizon (how close light can get before being unable to escape, and the bit we see as black) would be smaller than the inside of the pipe, so there is no need to worry. Because of the concerns about safety, a body of independant and neutral scientists were charged with assessing the risks involved. They gave it the all clear.

As the late Douglas Adams (RIP )= ) would say in large, friendly letters:

DON’T PANIC

On a more personal note, I do find this funny, and lol’d when I saw it, but it’s just the way that the media puts it across to people that really depresses me. If someone who didn’t know that there was nothing to worry about saw this and heard all the media crap, they would understandably be worried.

And, one more time in case you are just reading the bottom lines of the posts: Don’t worry. The world won’t end. SERIOUSLY! I mean, do you really think that the people who know most about what will happen would turn it on if there was any real risk?