Large Hadron Collider - sounds risky

[airbolt]

Given the fact that the Large Hadron Collider is being switched on in may , what are the riskdsinvolved ?. ie wormholes , tears in the fabric of the universe and so on.

[Dagman]

I thought it was switched on last November. I haven't read much about it, looks like a scientific waste of money to me, billions spent! Probably fail dismally anyways. I don't go for the scaremonger stuff either, just papers thinking of something to print or tv companies when they've nothing else to show. The scientists running the project must have brilliant agents to press governments for money when most countries are in a mess and could put it to useful things instead. How do they do it? "we want some money so 2000 scientists can muck about inventing erm...finding erm...anyways can we have it?" reply... "ok!"

[Zen]

Here's an interesting possibilty of what might happen,

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the- big-question-is-time-travel-possible-and-is-th ere-any-chance-that-it-will-ever-take-place-77 9761.html

[ACtheTROLL]

we're all doomed! Doomed I tell ya

[fo3nix]

Oh dear.

Why do so many uneducated people thing they know better and spread weird rumours about rips in the fabric of spacetime and other rubbish, scaring others?

airbolt: no, it won't do any of that. They're just seeing if they can find new particles that might explain other things.

What they're trying to find is the Higgs boson. It's thought to be (under the standard model) at the centre of particle theory, explaining mass and other things like that (to some simple definition anyway).

It hasn't been found yet because you need to get to a certain energy to find it, theoretically. No other accelerator so far has been able to do this.

Don't worry.

Dagman: no, it's been subject to a few delays. Meant to be starting some time this year though, if all goes well.

[airbolt]

Hi Fo3nix , us poor uneducated folks are extremely grateful for your answer . Why , Heavens, the world isn't going to end. ( That's irony in case you were wondering )

Have you heard of "Tongue-in-cheek"? It's in the dictionary after "Postgraduate qualification" ( yep , that uneducated!) and "Sense of Humour"

[fo3nix]

Heh. By "uneducated," I wasn't meaning you or anyone else on this site.

I was meaning the journalists who write about these things and purposely talk about these kind of topics instead of the real science, just to sell more copies of their newspaper.