September 11, 2008...6:31 am

It’s the morning and we’re all still here

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Even Winston Peters, according to the wireless.

The test-firing of particles round the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva worked to perfection.

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19 Comments

  • AzzQim
    September 11, 2008 at 7:48 am

    We’ll they just took the protons for a spin, no collisions yet, but be sure to get your black hole next month :)

  • Wellygirl
    September 11, 2008 at 9:24 am

    well of course we are.

    I don’t quite understand how anyone could think every single particle physicist in the world has a death wish. Or why they would all want to spend billions of dollars on an experiment they’d never get to see the result of.

    I think maybe someone started it as a joke, to see how many people would actually get upset? So far I’ve seen lots of people talking (good) but no one really worrying (also good). But maybe that’s a Kiwi thing, and somewhere people are actually worried?

  • poneke
    September 11, 2008 at 9:31 am

    I never doubted it for a moment.

    However some people did, in many countries around the world. Two of them even took court action in an attempt to stop it being turned on (they failed, fortunately).

  • Serum
    September 11, 2008 at 9:53 am

    “The test-firing of particles round the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva worked to perfection.” – True if one ignores the minor tweaks that are now necessary to this large and complex scientific assembly after these initial runs and alluded today on RNZ’s Morning Report.

    When the real action starts with particle collusion the now derided black hole manifestation concept swallowing up all in sundry will pale into insignificance. Rather, against the background of wormholes forming in the space-time fabric, time traveling turning worm refugees from the near future will pop into our present warm existence glad to escape from a world not only environmentally cold but of cold and miserable environmental totalitarianism devoid of any freedom.

  • artandmylife
    September 11, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Another great cartoon on it today – able to be viewed here http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/2008/09/see-you-in-future.html

    I understand that actual collisons FULL power are some time away.

  • lyndon
    September 11, 2008 at 10:42 am

    I actually feel misled about the nature of the firing-up there was. Judging by that RNZ interview they didn’t, as it were, cross the streams.

  • poneke
    September 11, 2008 at 11:59 am

    Well, yes. This was the well-announced plan.

    The first collisions will be in about 30 days.

  • lyndon
    September 11, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    … by the news reports, you understand. I was rather left with the impression something interesting was going to happen.

  • jaymam
    September 11, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    Google has given up suggesting how to spell Hadron correctly, maybe after the New York Times spelled it as Hardon:

    http://i38.tinypic.com/21jqe69.jpg

  • poneke
    September 11, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    This is what happens when newspapers reduce their editorial staff. In fact, proof readers were the very first to go, years and years ago now.

    In that vein, my all-time favourite was a headline in the Chicago Sun-Times in February 2004 which read:

    Rosie weds longtime girlfriend, slams Bush

    Google it if you don’t believe me.

    It must have been deliberate, unless the headline writer was completely naive.

  • georgedarroch
    September 11, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Has the LHC destroyed the earth?

    Hat-tip Idiot-Savant

    I also very much like the xkcd take on this (warning, terrible physics in-joke contained).

  • Gareth
    September 12, 2008 at 12:07 am

    I’ll see your xkcd, and raise you:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFPLgGWMndc

    (And I’m amazed P hasn’t given the Large Hadron Rap its own post. Damn catchy.

  • elfinugget
    September 12, 2008 at 1:04 am

    I don’t recall the author… but I read a sci-fi book somewhere that posited that a very very teeeeeeny tiny black hole was created in a large hadron collider, and it got sucked directly into the center of the earth due to Earth’s gravitational pull… It ate the earth from the inside out in six years, and it took that long for scientists to realize what happened. (During the experiment they thought the particle-sized black hole simply winked out of existence.)

    So… it’s not necessarily an immediate thing!

    Sorry to say, the court order came from the US. Sorry. Someday I’ll become an expat in… I dunno… AUS or something. :D

    –Elfi

  • Heraclides
    September 12, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    It’s the morning and we’re all still here

    This girl isn’t: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4690263a12.html

  • John Marshall
    September 12, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    a very very teeeeeeny tiny black hole

    Earth, David Brin. (And quite possibly any number of other science fiction novels as well.)

    One of the heroes of Brin’s is Maori, and some of it is set in Auckland. I read it while living in California, and the reminders of home (or, at least, of another city from back home) were wonderful.

    I attempted to re-read it while living back here in Wellington, and didn’t make it past page 20 because the NZ references were now unreadable. But YMMV…

  • barvasfiend
    September 12, 2008 at 6:54 pm

    I thought the whole thing was filmed in Fisher and Paykel after everyone had gone home.

    Seriously, whoever thought up the paranoid idea that we were all going to be instantly transformed into a huge human spritzer was genius! It’s about the only way to get buy-in to a science story these days. I did my level best to spread as much panic, and as irresponsibly as possible, before the event.

  • chuck
    September 12, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    Ha! We all just think we’re still here.

  • Falafulu Fisi
    September 14, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    Physicist & String theorist (also a popular radio host), Prof. Michio Kaku has an interview on youtube regarding the LHC.

    Michio Kaku: Mini Black Holes and the Large Hadron Collider

    He made a good comment about the misconception of micro-black holes if they’re created in the LHC.


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