LHC to go online tomorrow.

The Large Hadron Collider is scheduled to go online tomorrow morning. Probably the most ambitious, expensive, and dangerous physics experiment of all time. The collider will speed protons to 99.9999991% the speed of light through a 27km tunnel under Switzerland and France before colliding them in the ATLAS detector at CERN in hopes of detecting theorized particles like the Higgs boson. A particle that is theorized to be everywhere but so small in its effect that it has yet to be detected. The accelerator is theorized to enhance its effect by up to 4 times to a level where it can be detected, if it exists at all. Stephen Hawking has bet that not only will the researchers at CERN not detect the particle but instead it will clear the slate on everything science has previosly believed about quantum physics. SInce modern quantum theory hinges on the existience of undetected phantom particles like the Higgs boson, strangelets, and all sorts of other crazy tiny things to try to make their theories hold up.

Large Hadrn Collider @ CERN

As always with any ridiculously extravagant and expensive scientific endeavor the question of practical application always comes up and as always when the geeks should defer to the PR people instead they open up and let us all know just how crazy and out of touch they actually are. So what is the big idea, practical application of something like the LHC? We’ll have a better understanding of gravity manipulation and pave the way for Star Trek style tractor beams. Gee, can’t count how many times I needed one of those.

Lastly, there seems to be a growing concern that the whole experiment might accidentally swallow up the planet by creating micro sized black holes. Rest easy, the researchers have said,

“It most certainly is “capable” of producing mini black holes. But we aren’t talking about anything even visible. These would be microns across, and the Hawking radiation output would indeed cause them to evaporate long before they could absorb anything. But, at that size, they wouldn’t absorb anything anyways. Their event horizon is just too small. This won’t be creating a tear in our space-time, or some massive black hole that will swallow us. It will simply smash apart protons into their baser particles and hopefully expose a glimpse into why matter has mass.”

So they are certain that even though its highly likely to generate black holes, they won’t be large enough to grow, but they have absolutely no idea what types of particles it will create. I guess its easy for them to say that because if they are wrong no one will ever know. Well, if they are wrong, it figures that the French were behind the most useless, extravagant, expensive , and Boring way bring about the end of the world.