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Author Topic: Update: Big Bang experiment fails to end world
aka Mycroft
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posted 10 September 2008 06:56 AM      Profile for aka Mycroft     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Looks like the experiment has come to pass without the earth being sucked into a black hole of our own creation - contrary to the predictions by fearmongers.


'Big bang' test a success

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]


From: Toronto | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 10 September 2008 07:03 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Let us know when they find the Higgs boson.
From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 10 September 2008 07:07 AM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This is amazing.

The start of the LHC, it's the feel good story of 2008, and very possibly the only thing about 2008 which will be noted in history books in a thousand years.

For good analysis, I highly recommend Peter Woit's blog: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

He's known for being a string theory skeptic, but in general he does good collecting quotes and going to a lot of conferences.

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
Pogo
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posted 10 September 2008 07:12 AM      Profile for Pogo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
When I listened to the fearmongers they didn't say that the catastrophe would happen immediately. Instead they said that this experiment may create an anti-matter particle (or some other thingy-dingy) that would over time dissolve the earth.

Reminds me of Slaughterhouse Five where the universe is destroyed by an experiment with rocket fuel.


From: Richmond BC | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
Catchfire
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posted 10 September 2008 07:15 AM      Profile for Catchfire   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
My memory's a bit foggy, but I think you mean 'ice-nine' from Cat's Cradle, Pogo.
From: On the heather | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged
Pogo
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posted 10 September 2008 07:19 AM      Profile for Pogo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I will check.Slaughterhouse Five review
quote from the reviewer, not the book:
quote:
The death of all those innocent people

could not be stopped, it was predetermined by some unknown force just as

the destruction of the Universe, by a Tralfamadorian testing a new fuel, is

also predetermined and unstoppable


[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: Pogo ]


From: Richmond BC | Registered: Aug 2002  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 10 September 2008 07:20 AM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The google main page celebrates this historic experiment:


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 10 September 2008 07:22 AM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
String theorist Lubos Motl on the prospects for seeing supersymmetry at the LHC:

quote:
Supersymmetry (SUSY) would also count as the first experimentally confirmed prediction of string theory that was historically not a postdiction.

Its discovery would double the spectrum of elementary particles in a way that is not obvious, that was was qualitatively predicted for decades, and that some people still find unbelievable. It could be interpreted as a discovery of new, anticommuting dimensions of space. The discovery of supersymmetry would surely be considered as one of the most amazing discoveries of experimental science of all time.

It sounds fantastic. It sounds too good to be true.

Nevertheless, some of us are now predicting that the LHC is more likely to see SUSY than not. A figure "60%" has recently become popular as a description of our confidence that SUSY will be there. Of course, if you evaluate many arguments, it is extremely unlikely that you end up with a posterior probability that is so close to 50%. So what many of us actually expect may be a number close to 90% or higher. We just want to be modest and cautious so we artificially reduce the estimate to 60%. We mix our qualified opinions with the sociological priors. ;-)

In this text, I want to explain why I think that supersymmetry is more likely to be found there than not.



From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
Papal Bull
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posted 10 September 2008 09:57 AM      Profile for Papal Bull   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
OCT 21 IS WHEN THE WORLD ENDS
From: Vatican's best darned ranch | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 10 September 2008 10:29 AM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
??????? Do you have this on papal authority?
The thread title is misleading. The actual collision experiment will not be held for months:
quote:
...Now that the beam has been successfully tested in clockwise direction, CERN plans to send it counterclockwise. Eventually the two beams will be fired in opposite directions with the aim of smashing together protons to see how they are made...

[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]


From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 10 September 2008 10:31 AM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by martin dufresne:
??????? Do you have this on papal authority?


From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
Papal Bull
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posted 10 September 2008 10:36 AM      Profile for Papal Bull   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by martin dufresne:
??????? Do you have this on papal authority?

yes


From: Vatican's best darned ranch | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 11 September 2008 06:42 AM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Large Hadron Rap
Check it...

From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
remind
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posted 22 September 2008 10:45 PM      Profile for remind     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It's broke and has a helium leak, which will not be fixed for at least 2 months, and then it has to carry on testing from there so, it will be longer than a few months yet.
From: "watching the tide roll away" | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
remind
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posted 23 September 2008 06:34 AM      Profile for remind     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Was thinking about this machine all of sudden breaking, if I believed in Divine intervention, I would say that this might be an example of it!
From: "watching the tide roll away" | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
martin dufresne
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posted 23 September 2008 06:43 AM      Profile for martin dufresne   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Maybe the machine WAS started up and immediately shunted us in a parallel universe where everything is slowly going awry while in the original one, property values are stable, Harper is trailing the NDP, NATO has agreed to leave Afghans and Pakistanis alone, climate change has stopped, Sven's 'puter blew up... (Aaaah... Philip K. Dick!)
From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
500_Apples
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posted 23 September 2008 09:04 AM      Profile for 500_Apples   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Apparently the Superconducting Super Collider that the US government canceled in the early 1990s would have been ~2.5x more powerful. They canceled it because it was expected to cost US$ 15 billion. They had what they considered to be more important priorities.
From: Montreal, Quebec | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged
GOD
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posted 23 September 2008 09:20 AM      Profile for GOD     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by martin dufresne:
Maybe the machine WAS started up and immediately shunted us in a parallel universe where everything is slowly going awry while in the original one, property values are stable, Harper is trailing the NDP, NATO has agreed to leave Afghans and Pakistanis alone, climate change has stopped, Sven's 'puter blew up... (Aaaah... Philip K. Dick!)

Good guess Martin, but it was the only universe in which the Leafs were going to at least make it to playoffs in'09. Sorry, but I've just had so many prayers, and a God's gotta do what a God's gotta do.


From: I think therefore you are. | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Tommy_Paine
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posted 23 September 2008 12:58 PM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Actually, the helium leak is not an accident, it is a test result. By confirming Murphy's Law, this now paves the way to confirming that the fundamental building block that makes string vibrate in however many dimensions it vibrates in, and is the unified field that manifests itself things like magnetism, gravity, banana peels and suspended pianos and safes is, in fact, irony.

Explains about everything you see and experience rather parsimoniously, doesn't it?


From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged

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