The end of the world is nigh!

[kitesurfer]

http://www.voanews.com/english/Science/ ... -voa17.cfm

Well i'll be having an extra large donar kebab tuesday evening just to be on the safe side!

KS

[libby]

I remember reading about this YEARS ago...... scray scary stuff!

[PapaW]

I've been looking forward to what is the culmination of the CERN project and its going to open so many new scientific potabilities

The whole project is fascinating, Youtube "CERN" for some ace videos. (and the LHC rap :S

[Milo]

nothing will happen at worst it will blow up £5 billion what a waste of tax payers money.

[flyingvee]

About the same time as England v Croatia

[twerked]

yeah man, i've been reading about this for a bit now. it's kind of crazy. half of me wants some cataclysmic event to happen and a giant black hole to open up, the other half hopes we don't all die. either way, what good is slamming some atoms into each other? so we know how the big bang worked, la-dee-frickin'-da. couldn't that money have been spent finding alternative fuels, curing cancer, feeding hungry people, helping the poor?

[PapaW]

yeah man, i've been reading about this for a bit now. it's kind of crazy. half of me wants some cataclysmic event to happen and a giant black hole to open up, the other half hopes we don't all die. either way, what good is slamming some atoms into each other? so we know how the big bang worked, la-dee-frickin'-da. couldn't that money have been spent finding alternative fuels, curing cancer, feeding hungry people, helping the poor?

But this could lead to all that! Understanding what makes everything leads to harnising the incredible amounts of energy that surrounds us.


Solutions come from understanding.

[Big Man]

yeah man, i've been reading about this for a bit now. it's kind of crazy. half of me wants some cataclysmic event to happen and a giant black hole to open up, the other half hopes we don't all die. either way, what good is slamming some atoms into each other? so we know how the big bang worked, la-dee-frickin'-da. couldn't that money have been spent finding alternative fuels, curing cancer, feeding hungry people, helping the poor?

But this could lead to all that! Understanding what makes everything leads to harnising the incredible amounts of energy that surrounds us.


Solutions come from understanding.

Toby is bang on there. Science, in this case physics, isn't a big green monster out to kill us all, it's about working out how things work. The crumple zones in your car, that save your life come about because we understand how energy dissipates. Alternative fuels come from research. While I was in Louisiana recently we drove past a lot that's going to hold cars that burn hydrogen extracted from water for fuel. That's physics, and it came from research that some people might have thought "la-dee-frickin'-da."

It would be nice to feed all the hungry, help the poor, and cure cancer, but none of those things is going to happen without science.

[drowningbitbybit]

either way, what good is slamming some atoms into each other?

It's important to never ask a scientist, as the general public always knows better

[twerked]

Toby is bang on there. Science, in this case physics, isn't a big green monster out to kill us all, it's about working out how things work. The crumple zones in your car, that save your life come about because we understand how energy dissipates. Alternative fuels come from research. While I was in Louisiana recently we drove past a lot that's going to hold cars that burn hydrogen extracted from water for fuel. That's physics, and it came from research that some people might have thought "la-dee-frickin'-da."

It would be nice to feed all the hungry, help the poor, and cure cancer, but none of those things is going to happen without science.

the stuff you just listed is simple physics. like, things you and i experience every day. what happens when i fall off my board at heaving pipe? slammed into shallow reef and busted up. simple things that are fairly easy to measure. the alternative fuel thing is more chemistry, with dashes of physics thrown in, especially when it comes to hydrogen being made from water, the whole splitting of molecules and all that crap. (on that note, whoever figures out how to safely store hydrogen in fuel cells, for transport, and in storage, will be richer than the world). but what these scientists are working on, is very interesting i must say, but it is all theories that require way too much money, time, and resources to test and prove or disprove. i don't know, i still think it's stupid. mainly, i fail to see how understanding how the big bang managed to make all this stuff over a timeline of billions of years is going to help us within the next hundred or thousand. and yeah, it's simple to feed the hungry. buy some seeds, find some land, plant the seeds, and then harvest the food. or, take from the american surplus of nearly everything and send it to where it's needed. you don't need to know why there's dark matter supporting the entire structure of the universe to do that. or what happened to anti-matter. i'm not doubting science, i know science is important, it's an extremely interesting subject. i'm doubting quantum physicists who are meddling in things that are better left to just understand as, 'it happened, here we are, what can we do with what we got.' i think a lot of my bias towards this is my douchebag of an astronomy professor i had last semester. astronomy, after that class, made me think that it's all just a waste of time and a bunch of pretentious assholes who got made fun of in high school so they decided they'd look at the sky and make stuff up that really doesn't matter, but they make us all think it matters. this guy was apparently on the board who voted pluto out of the solar system. i think that's my big grudge

[RJD]

I think I saw Gordon Freeman on one of the pics...

[drowningbitbybit]

I bet you a million million million million pounds that the world doesn't end tomorrow...

[kitesurfer]

Still looking forward to my extra large doner kebab tonight!

KS

[libby]

Since when have you needed an excuse for a kebab big nose!

[Jimi]

yeah man, i've been reading about this for a bit now. it's kind of crazy. half of me wants some cataclysmic event to happen and a giant black hole to open up, the other half hopes we don't all die. either way, what good is slamming some atoms into each other? so we know how the big bang worked, la-dee-frickin'-da. couldn't that money have been spent finding alternative fuels, curing cancer, feeding hungry people, helping the poor?

To be honest... who cares about feeding people who are hungry? they should just get some food!

Seriously though, we have no idea what may come of this. Certainly, the world won't end, because (as Dr K Kruszelnicki said on the radio in Aus) the Earth is subjected to this very type of reaction every minute of every day in the upper atmosphere in the form of solar radiation. The Earth hasn't been destroyed yet.

As an example of random discoveries helping the masses...
Einstein spent a lot of time (and indirectly taxpayer money) developing and testing the theory of relativity. It is through the application of this theory that GPS is possible.

I'm sure Einstein didn't want to work on his theory in the hope that he could then use a GPS to find the nearest kebab shop!

[kitesurfer]

I'm sure Einstein didn't want to work on his theory in the hope that he could then use a GPS to find the nearest kebab shop!

I think you'll find he did!

KS

[Luke]

Until last year my brother was making magnets for that thing.

Apparently they're looking for something called the 'God Particle'...which could either solve the worlds energy needs at a stroke ..or could be a complete waste of time.

[kitesurfer]

Otherwise known as the higgs particle. KS

[flyingvee]

Read a Dan Brown novel

[RJD]

People were afraid setting of H bombs would set the atmosphere alight and destroy everything.

So who's scared of a tiny black hole eh.