The project cost 8 billion dollars and is operated by the International Physics Laboratory called CERN. The accelerator will be smashing subatomic particles together, creating energy that happened seconds after the Big Bang.
So why might the world come to an end? Well, this is what worries people about the machine and this is also why people are talking so much about this project. If the particles are being smashed together at such fast and powerful rates (very close to the speed of light) this possibly could create micro-black holes. If this is true it could 'in theory' destroy mankind and the Earth itself. The physicist and astronomers who are looking at possible micro-black holes developing are relying on Hawkings Radiation. Hawkings Radiation theory says that when 2 virtual particles appear they cancel each other out. However, if two virtual particles appear and one falls into the black hole there is one left over that can't be canceled out, therefore taking energy/mass away from the black hole. Keep in mind this is all 'in theory'.Because there is some possibility of a black hole being created there have been many lawsuits trying to shutdown the particle accelerator. Although there is a very, very small chance a black hole will be created online blogs and discussion boards have been raving about this subject alone. However a CERN spokesman made a good point; "Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn't been destroyed yet"
The LHC project was not intended to prove that black holes can be developed by scientists or to see if the earth can in fact be destroyed. This IS an advancement in the Science community, to strengthen our knowledge on how the Universe was created and how it developed.
This is all pretty interesting. Here are some informational websites:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgLdIly2Xtw
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgLdIly2Xtw
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/Research/Accelerator-en.html
http://www.livescience.com/environment/060919_black_holes.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/science/21cernw.html
2 comments:
If the world ends, im gonna be super pissed.
haha, yeah that is the idea though. I swear when I first learned about this 6 months ago, I was freaking out. But after reading everything, I am pretty confident that nothing with happen. But you never know.
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