Reality gets a stay of execution?

[xaq_the_aereon]

For those of you who feared that the Earth was going to implode on itself from events resulting from the experiments taking place at the Large Hadron Collider...relax, you got a few more days.

Apparently, a transformer in the unit blew out this morning, causing the temperature within the device to rise from 2 degrees Kelvin to 4.5 degrees Kelvin, so they're taking some time to swap the part out and try again.


Personally, I think the most the LHC is gonna do is, at worst, implode on itself and take out no more than a few hundred square feet, or explode with the force of a miniature nuke. What I expect most to happen, though, is for the whole device to get up to speed, go through all its experiments without a hitch, and teach us absolutely nothing.

At which point I'm going to laugh my ass off at the wasted efforts.


EDIT:
Oh goodie. MORE problems.

Comments

[anher.livejournal.com]

It will still teach us something, even if it fails. Maybe not what they're planning but still something.

[virginia-fell.livejournal.com]

anher has the right of it.

[archmage-brian.livejournal.com]

Um, they already turned it on. And the collisions that they're trying to study happen all the time in our atmosphere. They just want them to happen where they can watch.

The chance of the collider destroying itself, much less the world, is infinitely small. If the physicists who built it thought that it was even remotely possible that it might simply blow up, why would they spend so much money on it?

[archmage-brian.livejournal.com]

...or want to be there when it was on?

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Curiosity and human stupidity are, in my opinion, two of the most powerful forces in the universe. Some people will go to any risks for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like that.

And yeah, I knew they already turned it on...this happened a few hours later.

[archmage-brian.livejournal.com]

I still find your predictions incredibly amusing in their profound ignorance: Either the scientists will blow us up, or the scientists will spend lots of money for no reason.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Won't surprise me any if I'm wrong. I'm just expecting all the hype, fear, and anticipation behind all this to come crashing together into a gargantuan anticlimax.

[arturus-magi.livejournal.com]

2 degrees Kelvin to 4.5 degrees Kelvin

There's no such thing as a degree kelvin. The term degree only applies to indirect measurements, like Celsius or Fahrenheit. It's simply two kelvins. (Also, lowercase except when using the phrase "Kelvin scale") http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin


As for the actual content, the LHC probably won't reveal anything new. At least not until after it's scheduled upgrade in 2010. What we'll see for the next year or so is corroboration of existing experiments.