LHC director: 'Out of this door might come something'

[barracuda]

We'd better make damn sure Al Qaeda don't get their hands on it.

I thought the whole damn project was run by Al Qaeda.

[MacCruiskeen]

We'd better make damn sure Al Qaeda don't get their hands on it.

I thought the whole damn project was run by Al Qaeda.

No, it's run by Old Europe. Which is more-or-less the same thing, admittedly.

The LHC is sited near Geneva. And why? As revenge for what Orson Welles said, in The Third Man:

In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

The Swiss, barracuda, are just about to whup your ass for that. (And their own, of course, but it's a price worth paying.) No more Heidi any more.

[MacCruiskeen]

Large Hardon Collider

NSFW.

[8bitagent]

as well as the theories swirling around Oppenheimer and Jack Parsons.

It reminds me of that too. If flying saucers came through a dimensional rift in 1947, what the heck is gonna come through this one? Satan herself?

I never got the theory that Oppenheimer/Parsons actions opened up a portal rift for UFOS. Any cursory examination of UFO phenomenon in America shows it had been happening in America long before that(including phantom airships) A famous alleged crash/flap happened in 1941, and then theres the infamous Battle of Los Angeles in 1942 where the army was firing at UFOs for two hours above LA

As for El Diablo...I believe such a construct was in America long before America had any technologies.

[8bitagent]

We'd better make damn sure Al Qaeda don't get their hands on it.

Too late for that:)


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... rcher.html

[JackRiddler]

Theoretical physics has a record for actually discovering stuff and enough of a lobby that the funding for this project is far from astonishing. CERN also has quite the reputation, considering the means by which we are holding this discussion.

Europe does fund pure research, and of course some corporate bureaucrats somewhere are thinking military or energy applications might come out of it. But they would not yet have a clue what, if anything. Seeing as no one does.

You can chalk me up to the naive patsies not feeling the required alarm but, as befits a nerd, mild anticipation about the LHC actually working. (If anything bothers me about the write-up, it's the perpetual breathless-blind acceptance of Big Bang cosmology.)

Also, after that article a couple of weeks ago about how two endoctorated jokesters said the Universe might be reaching back in time from the future to make the LHC malfunction and prevent discovery of the Higgs boson, which would piss It off, it's time to realize that, to paraphrase Mr. Art Linkletter, Quantum Theorists Say the Craziest Things. (It's how their n-dimensional Moebius baguette is spread with massive particles, although these go away if you look.) And as for "science journalists"... well they eat that stuff up and shit out 100 times the mass in bullshit, a real miracle.

Meanwhile, if you want an uncontrolled experiment to worry over, consider civilization's continuing consumption of the biosphere...

[MacCruiskeen]

Is the universe an old empty barn?

[lightningBugout]

I'm all for the possibility of some benign or illuminating extra-dimensional events but gotta add - populist anxieties about techno-science haven't really changed a whole lot since the 19th century.

[JackRiddler]

I'm all for the possibility of some benign or illuminating extra-dimensional events but gotta add - populist anxieties about techno-science haven't really changed a whole lot since the 19th century.

After the atom bomb, the electronic panopticon and the satellite-controlled drone missile, can you blame them?

[lightningBugout]

Not saying they're always unfounded. Merely that they have followed roughly the same form since electricity first went domestic. I think the Amish have a leg up on the rest of us. They're not so much anti-technology as they are pro consensus-building around the issue of whether or not to adopt any given technology based on how they imagine it might impact the community. I have a feeling putting "might swallow universe into black hole" in the "cons" column would probably outweigh "might obtain metaphysical certitude" in the "pros" column.

[barracuda]

Yeah, I guess you guys are right. I mean, who would get it in their head that a coherent beam of charged subatomic particles could be used for anything but pure research for the good of mankind?




I'm just kidding, really. I'm sure the guys at CERN have our best interests at heart.

[JackRiddler]

Yeah, I guess you guys are right. I mean, who would get it in their head that a coherent beam of charged subatomic particles could be used for anything but pure research for the good of mankind?

No one here is denying the potential for military applications, or that it's a likely motivator behind the funding.

I'm just kidding, really. I'm sure the guys at CERN have our best interests at heart.

I quite doubt that concept even enters into consideration. And yet, I'm sure the overwhelming reason for them to want to charge this sucker up is to settle some bets among theorists.

[Nordic]

I'm not gonna worry about this at all. On the off chance that something really bad does happen, we won't be around long enough to realize it.

I'm actually not worried about that, because of exactly what you say.

I'm worried about the "halfway" affects. If instead of completely obliterating everything, we are entered into a sort of hellish half-existence, or we get stuck in some kind of demonic porthole, or a place where we're in a millenium-long inexorable decline into hell.

Oh wait, we might already be in THAT one.

[82_28]

I'm worried about the "halfway" affects. If instead of completely obliterating everything, we are entered into a sort of hellish half-existence, or we get stuck in some kind of demonic porthole, or a place where we're in a millenium-long inexorable decline into hell.

Anybody ever play the Half-Life series? Worth playing, if not. . .

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0239023/plotsummary

[Canadian_watcher]

someone got stuck on the first entry of the thesaurus when looking up quirky words for techno geeks.
boffin, boffin, boffin.

meant to distract, likely. Which it did. I'm going to dream about that word.