I used to think that way. Right till I got my first job working in a research lab... Sorry Cog, but when I hear NASA discussing the surface of Mars as being a good place to solve all our energy problems from, this experiment - thrilling as it is - does remind me of the dangers of putting a toddler next to a live electrical socket. But nothing much is going to happen today, I'll tell you that much. All they're doing is starting the thing up, and that's safe enough. However powerful a motor car is, it's only a danger to the public when it's put in gear and driven down the road. Pessimism? Can't help it. I was born that way. It comes from having parents who worked in the British postal service.
Actually, I take it all back. Hearing the BBC spokesperson's update, circa 10 am, gave me hope for all mankind (or at least, hope for all those incredibly intelligent alien races out there who haven't had the misfortune to encounter us, yet) I'm afraid most of this is done from memory, but last 11 words are definitely as broadcast: "Well, we're just getting the latest report from the biggest physics experiment in the world. The Hadron Collider has been 30 years in the making, at a cost of 5 billion pounds, but at last I can tell you that it, er ... works." A quote that's right up there with, 'They think it's all over' and, 'Hurricane? What hurricane?' Fabulous!
Ahhh and the first step to traveling to other dimensions. Though they shouldn't have said "It works." The correct termonolgy is "It's alive, it's alive AH HAHAHAHA!"
Yes, but I'm not talking about reaching the speed of light. I'm talking about a collision that would metaphoricaly be at the speed of light, or even more. Whether or not an object can reach the speed of light, it doesn't change the fact that two objects that are traveling half the speed of light will add up evenly to the speed of light. To say anything else wouldn't make any sense.
It may not make intuitive sense, but it's nevertheless true. High velocity physics behaves in a way that is outside our normal experience. You'll just have to accept it unless you're willing to study up on all the observations and verified mathematical models that have led up to it. The accelerator was indeed fired up for the first time last night (reckoned from USA time), and so far we are still here. Of course, it was only a first firing, and any stable microsingularity would still take time to grow, but I am convinced that the theories of Hawking and others have been adequately verified as sound, so I won't waste time worrying about it. Even if the physics of microsingularities is different enough to allow them to be stable, for it to grow to where it could swallow non-submicroscopic matter would require it to grow into the size range that is well cocvered by Hawking's theories, and it would disssipate. But since Hawkings theories utilize known quantum physics phenomena, I also have every faith that even in the strange size range where quantum physical laws dominate, the Hawking Effect will hold sway. Although the popular media has said that the accelerator is attempting to reproduce the conditions of the Big Bang, it's more accurate to say they are attempting to observe the conditions microseconds or nanoseconds afterward. There literally is a universe of difference in that distinction! The Big Bang itself was a singularity event which cannot exist within the Universe. The Universe only existed after the event. jazz_sue: I too worked in a research lab, mumble years ago. I was an electrochemical researcher involved in developing lithium batteries, among other things. I've seen some really dumb stunts from PhD. chemists, but although I don't have faith in all scientists, I do have faith in the science itself.
As I understand it, the actual experiment doesn't start until 21st October. This was just making sure it works.
LOL. Nice picture. I'd also like to point out that the world still seems to be here. Here I was thinking I'd have the day off due to planetary collapse.
They dont actually do the experiment for another month or more, today was just them switching it on after it was finally fully assembled. So people can bask in their knowledge that the world is going to end for a few more weeks before it doesnt
It'll be a massive black hole that will grow and grow until it swallows the earth by 2012 XD. It all makes sense now...
Hmmmm. I should enter into a bunch of lucrative contracts with people who think the world will end and they won't have to deliver. I'll clean up!
How come everyone assumes you can't pass the speed of light? They also said that about sound if you all remember and looky who can break the speed of sound. You people are to trusting of idiotic scientists that assume they know more than they actually do. All they can do is make edjucated guesses at what we can and can't do and what this or that will do until they actually do it. I have done some research on this speed of light thing and from what I've read it sounds like a bunch of bologna. If you get in space with no friction, start accelorating at whatever rate and continue to accelorate, you will pass the speed of light, that is what I bileve.
It was funny to hear a guy celebrate that the world hadn't ended at the bus stop today. Aah, how paranoid us 21st century people are getting, we've got a few more years yet.
Sorry, Chad, but that is one way that you can never exceed the speed of light. That much of the theory is inescapable, based on the mathematical predictions of the theory that have been verified many different ways. No insult intended, but people believed the earth was flat, despite evidence to the contrary, because that too seemed to violate all they understood about the principles of nature. The fact that the speed of light remains a constant in every direction, no matter what speed the measuring apparatus moves at, was proven by the Michelsom Morely experiment in 1887. This lead to Lorentz and Fitzgerald to independently come up with a theory that lengths (distances) compress along the path of motion, a theory with a precise mathematical expression. Einstein took this theory, and further refined it, adding in the revolutionary concept that time itself depends upon the velocity you travel relative to an observer, resulting in the Special Theory of Relativity. Observations in the behavior of gravity showed that it does not propagate in the way light waves and other natureal forces do, which resulted in the General Theory of Relativity which includes the curvature of space around a mass as the basis of gravity. General Relativity correctly explained discrepancies in the orbital period of Mercury around the Sun, and has also led to other verified predictions that have been successfully measured. The variability of time has been directly measured as well in teh course of the US Space Program, with the aid of high precision timepieces. That prediction is inseparable from the prediction that no object with nonzero mass can be accelerated to or beyond the speed of light (and also that any massless particle MUST travel at the speed of light). If faster than light travel is possible at all, it must take place by some other means than brute force methods. You really have to research more deeply than you have. As for exceeding the speed of sound, that was always an engineering belief, never a scientific one. Scientists have known for centuries that light travels faster than sound, and even when the engineers were saying supersonic travel was impossible, it was known that certain objects like the tip of a whip could exceed the speed of sound. You really cannot compare the two.
Here is a link to a University of Oregon summary about Relativity and classic Newtonian physics. It has some good drawings that attempt to represent the issues. http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec20.html As far as the Google "accelerator", I love how the constantly change their "image". Have any of you tried their new browser? Regarding the future after the tiny black hole . . . I figure some fools will sell off their stocks before the event, thinking they can't take it with them so spend money now. This selling will cause a drop in stock prices. The next day, when nothing catastrophic happens, there will be frantic buying to recover their stock portfolios at the lower prices. I am buying lots of stock option "calls" at the lower prices. I'll make a small fortune if the general public panics. Now, how can I plant the seed with the media about the terrific "danger" of creating a black hole here on Earth????
"based on the mathematical predictions of the theory that have been verified many different ways." Exactly my point. Predictions, theory. Not proven. Not tested, only a fool belives in some theory just because some one says so. Like I said, during the creation of the faster than sound jets it was belived by about half the scientific comunity that it couldn't be done. Now the time thing I've seen proof for. They took two time peices, one stayed still the other was in a faster than sound jet, flown around the world and the two time peices read differnt times. So yes, the faster you move the slower the time, but name one experement that actually proves that you can't travel faster than light? I don't think there is one. They can prove that light remains at a constant speed, yes, they can prove bits and peices of the theory but that does not prove the intire theory. Untill they can show me some hard evidence on the subject i'm pulling the BS card. We broke the speed of sound which they said couldn't be done and we'll break the next big wall when we come to it.
You answered yourself, it would be too boring. Maybe it will be our downfall, maybe not. But how could we live just ignoring all aspects of existence? Besides, the same can be said about fiction. Why do people feel the need of spending money on the visual or text representation of something that will most likely never happen, never affect them in any other way than the passing mention of it and the rare change of mind because of something you saw/read? Theories do have evidence behind them, you're thinking of hypotheses. You can't go higher than a Scientific Theory.
Actually Chad, the various theories related to the speed of light and the effects related to it have been proved through numerous experiments. With regard to constant acceleration, as a physical object (spaceship for example) approaches the speed of light, the additional force applied to generate greater speed . . . that force actually doesn't achieve the desired result. Instead, the additional energy becomes additional observed mass of the object as viewed from the rest framework of reference. The object's speed would not pass beyond the speed of light. As far as exceeding the speed of light, I believe there will be future "science" that humans have not yet discovered, making travel to distant places possible, but it is not possible with current knowledge or technology.
You don't understand the scientific method. Theories are mathematical models, and the predictions are behaviors not yet observed that the theories give precice numerical predictions for. The previous theories also make predictions, such as your idea that two particles colliding at half the speed of light should have a collective collision at the speed of light. Measurements of the energy released by high speed particle collisions are consistent with the prediction based on Einstein's formulas, to the limits of measurement. They are not consistent with the Newtoniann model you are sticking with. The Newtonian model has been disproven in the velocity range you are dealing with. A theory can never be proven correct. All that a theory can say is that it will behave within limits of measurable accuracy under circumstances dor which accurate measurements exist. The behavior of high velocity massy particles has been measured from thousands of scenarios in the last century or so, and every one is consistent with Special and General Relativity. I hope you use your disbelief creatively to find a way around Relativity. But it is impossible to accelerate past the speed of light in the way you describe. I'm sorry, there is absolutely no wiggle room there, despite wishful thinking to the contrary. I once believed as you do. I studied the theories, and I understand enough of them to know why your idea is flawed, as is your analogy to the speed of sound. But if you rejsct that, I cannot force you to understand why. You'll have to take on the studies yourself, in depth. It's not something anyone will be able to pass along to you on a forum.
I didn't understand a word anyone said. Too much technical jargon. Can someone put it in lay man's terms for this stunted brain of mine?
