Without apologies, I will borrow Simplicio, a character from Galileo’s work for a while, in order to have a small dialogue.
Simplicio- So what is this thing called physics all about?
D.B.- Physics is the study of nature. We try to unravel the mysteries of nature, and with that underestanding we can make predictions about the future.
Simplicio- You mean you look at the sky, you make guesses and look into a crystal ball?
D.B.- That is Astrology. That is not considered a science.
Simplicio- Soooo, you can predict the future? Hmmm? Go ahead make a physics prediction for what will happen tomorrow.
D.B.- The sun will rise tomorrow.
Simplicio- That’s it? I could have predicted that as well.
D.B.- How can you be so sure?
Simplicio- It happens every day. Therefore, it will happen tomorrow.
D.B.- But how do you know that the sun will be there tomorrow? Isn’t it possible that the sun would decide that it is tired of shining on, and that it would decide to take a vacation?
Simplicio- I never thought about that. Now I’m getting scared. However, if the world is just, that can not happen.
D.B.- So you are trying to tell me that your morality requires that the sun will rise tomorrow?
Simplicio- Most certainly…. Hey there, wait a minute! I have the suspicion that you are trying to make a fool out of me! You did the prediction, and now I’m the one justifying it? I smell a rat! If you’re so clever, then tell me how you are so certain that the sun will rise tomorrow.
D.B.- The earth is a massive body spinning about itself. It carries quite a bit of angular momentum. Seeing as there is only negligible torque applied to the earth, there is no mechanical force in action that will prevent it from spinning or slow it down to a halt in the interval of a day.
Simplicio- So… let me assume that what you said is correct… what about the sun being there?
D.B. – The sun is a big fusion reactor. We understand the laws of physics of how the sun works well enough to know that after many billions years of operation, it still has fuel for many biliion years to go before anything dramatic can happen.
Simplicio- That sounded like quite a mouthful. By the way, I hear that this evil machine called the Large Hadron Collider will be turned on tomorrow and that a black hole that will swallow the earth is going to be made there. What do you have to say about that?
D.B.- That will not happen at all.
Simplicio- How can you be so sure?
D.B.- I am as sure about that as about the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow. And if you have any lingering doubts, go check this website * to verify if the earth has been destroyed by the LHC yet.
*Spotted at Asymptotia.
Click here for some more live blog coverage action of the LHC .
Excellent conversation! The link really made me laugh.
Right now it’s 11pm in Mexico city and 6am at Geneva, so I am guessing they will start spinning the
beanbeam very soon. The collisions will not start for another while (days? weeks?), but I will keep on checking the web page.Great bolg David. I will send all my students, who have been asking about the LHC, to check it out.
Well, sure, but they’re not colliding anything tonight.
First collision, though, you can kiss Geneva goodbye.
I once had a somewhat wandering conversation with Adrian Kent (a Cambridge physicist) about what was the acceptable risk of a large collider destroying the earth. IIRC, it hinged on the question of how much we should weight the loss of future generations. This is a tricky problem–if you count them equally with currently living people you get impossibly low levels of acceptable risk (plus you have to wander around singing “Every sperm is sacred,” which is embarrassing), but not counting them at all doesn’t seem quite right either.
Fortunately, the LHC energies are still lower than the highest-energy cosmic rays. So if the earth is likely to be destroyed by that kind of thing, then it has probably happened already. In which case, this must be the afterlife, and if so it’s a bit of a disappointment.
I think I know a DB I share coffee and physics/politics/life talks with… and ocasionally soccer too
I liked the spherical cow, and the link was pretty hilarious too, but I think a ‘YEAP [Choose *a* religion and proceed to hell]‘ would have been funnier
I ended up here by complete accident though, didn’t know you were sailing at the shores of the Dirac sea…
Speaking of soccer, 0-1!!!! you know what I mean… :p
R
Boy, I am happy I was right!
Have you seen the source code for hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com?
if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == “undefined”)) {
document.write(“YUP.”);
} else {
document.write(“NOPE.”);
}
and
commented out
if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn’t yet updated
please email mike@frantic.org to receive a full refund
(hehe the comment got commented out in the above comment
)
18.09.2008
LHC progress report, week 1
Geneva, 18 September 2008. After a spectacular start on 10 September, the LHC enjoyed a mixed first week of commissioning with beam. To get beams around the ring in both directions on the first day exceeded all expectations, and the success continued through the night, with several hundred orbits being achieved.
The next step in the commissioning process is to bring in the radio-frequency (RF) system that keeps the beams bunched, rather than spreading out around the ring, and will eventually accelerate them to 7 TeV. The RF system works by ‘capturing’ the beam, speeding up the slower moving particles and slowing down the faster ones so that the beam remains bunched into fine threads about 11 cm long. Without it, the beam quickly dissipates and cannot be used for physics.
On Thursday night, 11 September, beam two, the anti-clockwise beam, was captured and circulated for over half an hour before being safely extracted from the LHC. The next step is to repeat the process for beam one, and that is set to begin this week.
The intervening time has been spent recovering cryogenic conditions after the failure of a power transformer on one of the surface points of the LHC switched off the main compressors of the cryogenics for two sectors of the machine. The transformer, weighing 30 tonnes and with a rating of 12 MVA, was exchanged over the weekend. During this process, the cryogenics system was put into a standby mode with the two sectors kept at around 4.5 K. Since the beginning of the week the cryogenics team have been busy re-cooling the magnets and preparing for operation with beam, which is currently forecast for today. The next stage of the commissioning will be single turn studies using beam one, followed by RF capture and circulating beam in both rings.
The LHC is on course for first collisions in a matter of weeks. Next update 24 September at the latest.
Source:http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam/News/lhc_080918.html