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Helio must have loved this experiment. We're sending objects that only exist in theory around a large metal tube - in theory. We don't know what to predict exactly, but we predict that we'l be able to make some interseting predictions prettysoon. But don't worry. If we destroy the world it will only be in theory.

GV

Modern physics goes bankrupt in the search for GOD as they become lost in a black hole in Geneva. The scientists that are looking for God the Creator of the universe are looking in the wrong place a hill side in Geneva instead they should be looking to a hill side called Golgotha translated Calvary.

The Hadron Collider (LHC) of which the total cost of the project is anticipated to be somewhere between €3.2 to €6.4 billion is a total waste of money and resources.

Fiction is being lived out regardless of the financial cost.

People the world over are suffering from fuel poverty while money is being wasted on the Hadron Collider project, the resources could have been used to find alternative energy sources to alleviate the problem of fuel poverty the difference could be whether people eat or heat.

Going round in circles chasing the light will not provide the answer to the primoral broth or the big bang theory there will always be missing links just as Miller found out in his amino acid experiment where he had to provide the missing link of the spark to complete his flawed experiment.

Faith has the answer to the biggest of all philosophical questions, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. But scientists can’t accept that because they perceive faith to be irrational because they work by sight and can’t believe that which they can’t see because they don’t here the Word of God. Faith is the conviction of things not seen


Rom 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

"Post Tenebras Lux"

The world didn't end! WOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

YEAH! YEAH!!

We didn't get swallowed by a black hole! WOOHOO!

Puritan, maybe you can see protons then? I think the LHC is great, but I absolutely share Sir David King's viewpoint that there are more important scientific questions that should be addressed, particularly to do with the state of our planet and ecosystem. From the point of view of physics, what is needed is not new data, but new concepts (there's a short opinion piece in this week's Nature to that effect).

Personally I don't think there is a Higgs boson; I think our concepts of quarks and gluons etc are artefacts of our imperfect understanding of what's really going on. You never see quarks travelling alone - only in 2s or 3s. That is an important issue to sort out. Until we know the answer to that one, the LHC may provide more confusion than illumination...

-H

John

Whoooooow Neddy. Not so fast.

As far as I am aware nothing has bashed into nothing yet. In other words it's big but not bang.

As for Sir David King, sounds like a compassionate sort of chap.

I'm with King as well. A 32 billion euro investment in tackling malaria would have been more humane. A 32 billion investment in GM crops would have been humane, productive AND annoyed Middle England.
Or an investment in studying the Human Proteome. Knowledge has a value in and of itself - but 32 billion on a boson?
Maybe the Scholastic Philosophy department should put in for a grant.

GV

If only there were such a department!

Oh, there's still a chance we may all get sucked into a lava pit of anti-matter? Shit.

Solving global warming will have to wait. The Europeans spent their research money and talent on CERN, the A380, Galileo, and a few other toys. When the end comes, won't it be nice to know that scientists figured out how it all began because that's where their priority was. Hey all you believers in god, why don't you pray that global warmiing comes to a halt by some miracle. Prove that your magic is more powerful than science's....if you can. Hahahahaha.

Marcus

Is 'hahahahaha' the magic word I should use?

I knew I had seen a film where this was in fact the plot, seriously. The sci-fi film is called "The Quiet Earth":

from wikipedia:

The Quiet Earth (film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The Quiet Earth
Directed by Geoff Murphy
Produced by Sam Pillsbury
Don Reynolds
Written by Craig Harrison (novel)
Bill Baer
Bruno Lawrence
Sam Pillsbury
Starring Bruno Lawrence
Alison Routledge
Pete Smith
Music by John Charles
Cinematography James Bartle
Editing by Michael J. Horton
Release date(s) October 18, 1985 (U.S.)
Running time 91 min.
Country New Zealand
Language English
Budget $1.000.000
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

The Quiet Earth is a 1985 New Zealand science fiction Doomsday film directed by Geoff Murphy and starring Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge and Pete Smith as three survivors of a cataclysmic disaster. It was based on the 1981 science fiction novel of the same name by Craig Harrison.


[edit] Plot
July 5th begins as a normal winter morning near Auckland, New Zealand. At 6:12 a.m., the Sun momentarily darkens and a red light surrounded by darkness is briefly seen (as if through a tunnel). The Sun then returns to normal.

Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence) is a scientist working for Delenco, part of an international consortium working on "Project Flashlight", an ambitious energy experiment. He awakens abruptly in his bedroom, appearing somewhat surprised, gets dressed and drives into the city. On the way, he notices that everyone seems to have vanished. Investigating a fire, he discovers the wreckage of a jet, but there are no bodies inside, only empty seats with the seat belts still fastened.

He enters his underground laboratory workplace; a monitor displays the message "Project Flashlight Complete". The mass disappearance seems to coincide with the moment that Flashlight was activated. He notes on his tape recorder:

"Zac Hobson, July 5th. One: there has been a malfunction in Project Flashlight with devastating results. Two: it seems I am the only person left on Earth."
After several days without finding anyone, his mental state begins to deteriorate. He puts on a woman's slip and alternates between exhilaration and despair. Eventually he breaks down altogether. He places cardboard cutouts of famous people (such as Adolf Hitler, Richard Nixon, Alfred Hitchcock, Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II) and addresses them from a balcony. He declares himself "President of this Quiet Earth", then goes on a destructive rampage. His insanity peaks when he bursts into a church wielding a shotgun and wearing his woman's attire, shoots the crucifix and announces that he is now God. Finally, totally despondent, he puts the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth, but then backs away from the brink of madness.

He establishes a more normal routine. Then one morning, he comes across a young woman named Joanne (Alison Routledge). They eventually become lovers. Later, they find a third survivor, a large Maori man named Api (Pete Smith). The three determine why they survived the Effect: they were all on the verge of death when it happened. Api was being drowned in a fight with another man, Joanne was electrocuted by a faulty appliance, and Zac took an overdose of pills. He had figured out that there were serious dangers with the experiment and was guilt-ridden for not speaking out.

A love triangle develops, but Zac is more concerned about some very disturbing observations: several fundamental constants of the universe are changing, causing the Sun's output to fluctuate. Zac fears that the Effect will occur again and decides to destroy the still-running Delenco facility in an attempt to stop it.

The three put aside their mounting personal conflicts and drive a truckload of explosives to the installation, only to be stopped at the perimeter when Zac detects dangerously high levels of ionising radiation that could prematurely set off the explosives. He tells the two that he must return to town to retrieve a remote control for the truck. Once he is gone, Joanne and Api make love. Afterwards, Api tells Joanna that he is going to sacrifice himself by driving the truck; he doubts that Zac's device will be capable of controlling a big semi. Then they see that Zac has reached the same conclusion. He drives the truck onto the weakened roof of the underground laboratory, which collapses under the weight. Just as the Effect reaches a maximum, he sets off the explosives.

Once again, a red light is seen surrounded by the dark tunnel. Zac finds himself lying face down alone on a beach. There are strange cloud formations, resembling waterspouts. As he walks to the water's edge, an enormous ringed planet slowly rises over the horizon. The film closes on Zac's bewildered face. He holds up his personal tape recorder as if to speak, then lowers it. He has nothing left to say.

This film was shown on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ a number of years ago.

petermorrow, doesn't your magic incantation being "A spectre is haunting Europe" and end with "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Proletarians of all countries, unite!"

I wonder who killed more innocent people in conflicts of conquest fought in the name of saving humanity, Communists or Christians.

#2
Yet another
"science doesn't provide the answers therefore god wins by default argument"
No he doesn't, the problem with the bible and all the other religious texts is that they presume the existence of god, they don't prove it.
Sam Harris says that using the bible to prove the truth of the bible is creating an epistemological black hole.
But to get back to the other potential black hole, as much as I enjoy reading about science and struggle to understand it, this level of investment in alternative energy would have been a wiser way to spend the dosh. It's only with the increased demand for solar that we have seen real progress with it's efficiency - imagine what this size of investment could of acheived.

In fairness, leveraging alternative energy sources is being accomplished quite effectively by the simple expedient of making oil so expensive.

What are we all complaining about??

not sure if it was worth all the money myself. but there is much more to this than the discovery of some particle.

what about all the technology that has to be developed this will surly have a spin off value in industry? also with all the money we continue to invest in new theory is it not responsible that we check them? also the project has been financed by countries from all over the world, it is a global project showing us the potential for humans to work together, so its got positive political repercussions, in contrast to the "space race".

maybe we cant be sure how much value this particle theory will have in the long run, but if its anything like the nuclear particle's we found before it could change the world in ways we can not even imagine.

MarcusAureliusII

You're going to have to be less obscure.

"A spectre is haunting Europe".

The only response I can think of at the moment is, "I must be dreaming."

It sounds better if you say it with a Scottish accent.

Thanks Mgnbar for a little bit of insight in to how science develops over longer periods of time. Several of those who think the LHC is wasteful seem to think that something like a cure for a virus costs only the development of that single item. Not realizing that before a specific application that brings practical benefit comes about, it often first requires the long development of an area of science.

Perhaps these people should consider for a moment how the world would look now if their short-term mentality had prevailed over the development of Quantum Mechanics in the first half of the 20th century.

'Niels Bohr wants funding for another postdoc at his institute?! Haven't we already funded the position of that Pauli guy in his group? And what is all that doing for us? No patients are getting cured by what they do. No pensioners are getting their house heated because of it. No no, enough is enough.'

But then I doubt if those moaning about the cost have any clue of what the world would have missed if all that fundamental theoretical research that brought about QM had been canned to pay for kidney machines, cleaning up city parks, etc.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

petermorrow, it was first said with a German accent...in German.

Funny thing about creating a black hole at Cern. If they had or did, we'd never know it. At the very moment it could be detected, we'd instantly be dead. One moment everything is normal, the next.....nothing. Better even than dying in your sleep.

l

What the heck happened? How did my post turn into "l"?

PK

I'm having debate with Heliopolitan. HE believes the particles are just theoretical constructs, I take them a real. I was having some fun with the debate.

graham

Hi Graham - ah, so that's what it was about. Protons don't bother me that much in my day-to-day life. I don't *have* to believe in them.

By this I mean that if someone came along with a theory that said quarks are actually 90-degree twists in a lattice that fills "space", and particles are more akin to bubbles or defects in that lattice, where three such vertices coincide, I would not be so hidebound by my preconceptions as to reject the possibility out-of-hand.

A proposition may be true or untrue. Our knowledge of whether it's one or the other is rarely absolute, and I'm happy to leave open any avenues of enquiry, rather than block them off out of mere thran "belief". Belief is too concrete, and it's usually either not the whole story, or just plain wrong.

H
I might leave you to duke this out with PK for a while. And then take the side of whoever's winning the argument.

GV

(I don't think we mean the same thng by "belief" here. I think belief comes in degrees - I believe in Protons, but not as firmly as I believe in the external world or that there was a past.
And faith involves much more than belief in a set of propositions (although it should include that). I don't think anyone could have something like faith in protons, no matter how rabid their belief.)


GV

I think you hold to "entity realism" - which would be unfortunate, because we'd end up agreeing.
Don't let that stop you havi a dig at PK though.

Graham

Far more scary than the Cern atom smasher is the attempt to build a fusion reactor in France. When nuclear reactors based on fission first appeared, the public was assured they were perfectly safe. Then came Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. But what most of the public never heard about was the near misses such as Browns Ferry. Every type of power conversion power plant has some waste heat. Coal and oil fired certainly do, conventional nuclear plants do. So much so that the environmental impact statements required in the US for a nuclear plant have to explain how raising the temperature of a river will affect its ecology. For a fusion plant hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful, they risk heating the oceans. That's what it will probably take to cool them, being on a sea or ocean. But far more frightening is what would happen if one went out of control and all of its fuel were consumed at one time. Explosion of a fusion reactor could take out most of south central Europe. They say it can't happen. I wouldn't be so sure, I'm just glad it's not being attempted anywere near wheri I live.

Hello Mark,

Some bits of post #26 sound rather alarmist to me. In particular, where does the number of hundreds or thousands come from? It would suggest that all of a country like France or Germany would be powered by one or only few reactors?!

And would the waste heat of a fusion reactor be a dramatically higher percentage of the energy that is put into the grid than than for a nuclear plant or coal power station? If that is not so, as I think you may be off a bit on the power of a fission reactor, I also doubt if cooling away the waste heat will be such a dramatic problem that it would require sitting on an ocean.

On the explosion scenario, do you know what amount of tritium an deuterium will be present at any time in a fission reactor? Would it even be enough to reach the critical mass of even a single fusion explosion? Again, it sounds unduly alarmist to me.

Peter Klaver, I worked for a large (1800 employee) engineering consulting firm for awhile in the mid 1970s and I worked in project management for the design and engineering contract for a nuke. It was to be an 1150 megawatt BWR that was supposed to have been built near Omaha Nebraska. It was cancelled. Yes there is a lot of waste heat from fission reactors. Enough to be of concern to the NRC. Fossil plants also throw off considerable waste heat. Hydroelectic power plants only produce an insignificant amount and are not a concern (the heat of falling water.) Didn't one famous scientist try to measure that back in the 18th or 19th century in the early days of thermodynamics but it came up so low he couldn't detect any change in temperatrue? I seem to remember that but I'm too lazy to look it up. Maybe it was Lord Kelvin.

There is every reason to believe that a fusion plant would throw off enormous quantities of waste heat. I remember studying MHD plasma reactors back when I was in school (completey academic of course, I don't think such a thing was ever built even on an experimental basis. Fusion could generate plasma for an MHD.) I suppose it depends but that's my gut instinct, that there would be so much heat, only a sea or ocean could cool it. I'd expect a fusion plant to be hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than a fission plant. Calculatons for MHD power generations were expected in hundreds of Hoover Dams. Only a few would be necessary to power the entire United States.

The question of safety often relates to both containment of the reaction and the risk of a ruanway reaction where the fuel is consumed too rapidly, a kind of cascade failure. The meltdown of a fission core is this type of accident. But the quantities of energy released would be staggering. The question arises about how safety systems would meter the fuel in such a way that this could never happen. Frankly, I don't know. This is way beyond me but this has been billed as a panacea just like fission nuclear energy once was. I'll believe it when I see it but for now, I remain skeptical and cautious about it ever being practical. Even optomists are talking 2040 to 2050 at the earliest for working technology. Remember you are talking about something which will be around 100 million degrees contained in a magnetic field. Much hotter than the center of the sun. The reaction at the center of a fusion explosion only lasts one or two millionths of a second.

testing testing - anone having problems posting?

Hi Allybalder:

Good to hear from you after such a long time.

Oh come on Mark,

"I remember studying MHD plasma reactors back when I was in school "

"I suppose it depends but that's my gut instinct"

"I'd expect a fusion plant to be hundreds or even thousands of times more powerful than a fission plant."

So post 26 was purely alarmist then.

No, I'd be concerned. They will be playing with the most powerful and concentrated form of energy we know of. And experimenting in areas where groping might be a more accurate description. You'd be surprised at how little they actually know about what they are doing.

Do you know that in the testing of the H-bomb, in a test called Castle Bravo, scientists added Li 6 as an afterthought at the last minute. They didn't expect it to do anything. To their shock and amazement the yield was 2 1/2 times greater than the most optomistic estimate and was the worst radiological accident in US history. Japanese sailors 90 miles away received 3rd degree burns. Yes the will be groping, playing with the hottest fire we know how to make. I'm just glad I don't live near it. NIMBY.

The Large Hadron Collider has just discovered the big bang as it crashes to shut down.