Quote:

---

Konnrade said:
an "OMG!" particle? Physicists' sense of humor isn't as dry as I had thought.

---

Quote:

---

Diploid said:
They get a free walk to first base.

---

That would be fucking amazing - get struck by a subatomic particle.

I'd have to have that happen sometime, while really stoned... Is there any way that I can hire a scientist to use one of these pitching machines to strike me in the forehead with one?

Quote:

---

what would happen if one of those "hit" a human?

---

Quote:

---

The Oh-My-God particle (a play on the nickname "God particle" for the Higgs boson) is the nickname given to a particle observed on the evening of October 15, 1991, over Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, estimated to have an energy of approximately 3 × 1020 electronvolts, equivalent to about 50 joules—in other words, it was a subatomic particle with macroscopic kinetic energy equal to that of a baseball (140 g) which is moving at about 27 m/s (60 mph). These very high energy cosmic rays are however very rare and most cosmic rays possess an energy between 107 eV and 1010 eV.

It was most likely a proton travelling with velocity almost equal to the speed of light (if it was a proton, its speed would have been approximately (1 - (5 × 10-24)) c; after traveling one year the particle would be only 46 nanometres behind a photon that left at the same time[1]) and its observation was a shock to astrophysicists.

---

Quote:

---

The Oh My God Particle hit the Earth at an estimated 3x10^20 eV.

---

That might be true, but we do not know what exactly it was. OMG may be something that is completely alien to current theories, and its energylevel (well over nine thousaaaand) certainly is most unusual, a trillion times more than regular cosmic rays. If something is completely and utterly different from something else, that may be a clue its unrelated, if it flies a trillion times faster than a bee it might not be a bee, or even an insect

So.. speculation. We do not even know whether whatever OMG is, is something that would form a black hole in the way the Hadron Collider might. So OMG's are theorized to lead to similar results, but we do not know.

Quote:

---

Black holes are the simplest, most elegant explanation for the things observed in the cosmos. Hollow spheres and other complicated explanations, while possible, seem unlikely. See Occam's Razor.

---

Quote:

---

And how otherwise are we to understand?

---

Should we create something which might make the world come to an end, to find answers demanded by sciences that in some cases are younger than some of the people that walk the earth today?

We are not going to stick a tube up a bloated cow, we're actually going to make whatever the hell black holes are.

Who is the big name in black holes? Stephen Hawking. Well, a large portion of the scientists in his field thinks he's got it all wrong. That's not reassuring considering its his radiation that's supposed to prevent the likely black holes from swallowing the world whole.

Because that's what will happen then: If black holes form, and they happen to be stable (unlike what space seems to hurl at us) then they will escape the Hadron Collider, sink to the center of the earth and from there devour the entire planet, with not a damn thing we can do about it.

Perhaps some of the Gamma Ray Bursts we're receiving from outer space are alien worlds blown up by curious scientists

Quote:

---

Wiccan_Seeker said:
Perhaps some of the Gamma Ray Bursts we're receiving from outer space are alien worlds blown up by curious scientists

---

Quote:

---

All that was said when we were first figuring out how to split the atom. Nothing carries zero risk

---

Quote:

---

Although you discount the OMG evidence, I don't. If we've detected a dozen of these in the last decade or so using relatively tiny detectors, they are not rare. They are harmlessly bombarding the much larger Earth, moon, other planets, and even assorted random atoms in space constantly.

---

No no you're not reading me right. I'm not discounting the OMG, but I am questioning its identity. They assume (remember assume? ) it is a proton, but we didn't actually pick a proton off the floor. So all we really got is the observation that a shitload of energy regularly comes flying our way in a tiny package.

But picture this: it has a TRILLION times more energy/velocity than what we consider to be cosmic rays. That is one phuck of a discrepancy. If a bee landed onto a daisy with a trillion times more velocity than it usually does, the whole meadow would explode with the force of a Daisycutter bomb. So I'm asking the perhaps radical question: was that a bee to begin with? The forces involved in no way even remotely resemble those of a bee. It is ten orders of magnitude greater.

Ten orders of magnitude. To put that into a perspective with numbers that actually check out: A kid's toy gun is loaded with toy caps that contain a couple of milligrams of explosive. The difference between the hardest "normal" cosmic ray and the OMG particle literally is so great that if the hardest cosmic ray is a toy cap, the OMG is an atomic bomb of Hiroshima size (1 miligram to 10 kiloton)

So I'm saying not OMG-particle but OMG-WTF. The enormous difference in magnitude makes it unlikely to be the same thing.

The theory behind OMG basically is: "shit son, we know nothing else that will pack that kind of punch, so we will go with that." well hello daddy science - you don't know the universe. You are going for the most likely option with what little knowledge you have, even if you have to stretch your theories to the very limit to get there. And lets face it: a PARTICLE thats only a few nanometers behind a photon after a one lightyear race is pretty fucking unlikely. That is ducktape car repair. It might get us to the garage or strand us within a mile.

Scientists would orally service a demon from Hell if it gave them a particle accellerator that could accellerate matter up to 10(20) electronvolts, but the Hadron collider will be in no way up to speed with that kind of velocity.

So under completely artificial conditions matter that might well be completely unlike the OMG will be accelerated to completely OMG-unlike speeds and there do stuff predicted by science to possibly give the most unpredictable results.

Perhaps the OMG phemomenon cannot produce black holes in the way the Hadron collider will. See all the ramblings above? Definitely a possibility no? They are saying it is safe because OMG doesnt destroy the earth but OMG is factually very dissimilar and may perhaps be something different entirely, something that simply does not produce black holes because the natural phenomenon is perhaps incapable of doing that.

So, short version: the information that comforts you may well be entirely incorrect.

Alfred Nobel developed nitroglycerin as we all know, but most people do not know the following: The most fundamental research into the safety of nitroglycerin he did not in his laboratory, but in a small rowing boat in the middle of a lake. Why? Because if his science was wrong, it would wipe out just him, and not the innocent people of the town.

This kind of Vision is fundamentally lacking in the Hadron people. Since "the innocent people of the town" are in fact the entirety of the Life of Earth of all time up to the last strand of DNA in the deep seas a billion years ago, the science boys should do the Nobel thing to do, and thats to get in the rowing boat and experiment out of harm's way, in space.

That means waiting 50 years more to get the data, but then again in 50 years scientists will look at our messing with the Hadron collider like we do at Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy trying to fix their car for a sunday spin. Let's not take any chances with the totality of the Life of Earth, not on the brink of us fulfilling our destiny and spreading Life among the stars.

It would be so sad if all that was left of earth was radio signals and the Voyager space probe, with its golden plates on board telling of those wonderful, magnificent creatures, the crown of 2 billion years of evolution, that once lived on a green-and-blue gem of a planet, but who turned it and the star that illuminated them into a hole in the sky

Quote:

---

In any case, at the end of the day, progress will not be stopped. You can fret about it or accept and embrace it. I'm up for the latter.

---

It is far more technologically and scientifically challenging to conduct these experiments in space. Much more would be learned and technologies acquired that would benefit the human race if we did it like that. And in the chance things do go very wrong science actually has a fighting chance, instead of having to give a press conference that says: "people, we'll do our scientific best to make all of you have the best time humanly possible but at 3:41 this afternoon we destroyed the world and on 12-21-2012 at 12:21 all that will be left of all of us is a dot of energy floating in the vacuum of space."


First contact may be the Klingons doing a flyby and dropping a nuke on the Hadron Collider because they don't fancy a black hole floating around in their back yard.

Quote:

---

We've never picked a proton off the floor or anywhere else either. They exist in theory only.

---

Quote:

---

So what? That's a million times more energy than the LHC can impart. If those OMG critters are harmless as they appear to be, then it's exceedingly likely (remember likely? ) that the comparatively puny energy from the LHC will also be harmless even if OMG isn't what we think it is. Nothing is without risk, but some risks are justified.

---

Quote:

---

Yep, a possibility. But a lot of people a lot smarter than you and me combined have looked at these issues and aren't worried.

---

Quote:

---

Diploid said:
And if not now, then when? The big questions the LHC may answer won't go just go away. Should we just stop advancing because it's risky? I don't think so.

---

Quote:

---

Konnrade said:
This thread has turned into a harcore nerd-off... and quite a good read, too.

---

Quote:

---

Diploid said:
and also IN SPACE

If we did that, it won't happen for centuries. We can barely set up a space station, let alone a 100 or so kilometer accelerator in space.

---