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Must Control Fist of Death.
Sep. 10th, 2008 10:03 amI am so happy that the LHC has been turned on today. It's almost as exciting as seeing Iron Maiden (baby) live.
I am also so angry at 95% of the commenters on various BBC blogs, the Community That Shall Not Be Named, and in the tabloid press, who are showing a wilful refusal to read about what's happening.
I'll admit; I'm biased. I was at Uni with Brian Cox (he was equally awesome then, even when we did take the piss out of him for his days in Dare). I suppose having studied high energy particle physics could also be considered a bias.
Which brings me on to the rant.
The people doing this are experts in the field. They've studied the subject for years. There are disagreements over what exactly will happen, which is why the experiments are being done. They have completed enormously complicated risk assessments before even being allowed to start building the thing.
The energies involved are tiny. The only reason they're such a big deal is because the particles themselves are tiny.
The chance of creating black hols is vanishingly small. Force is inversely proportional to the square of distance - in other words, if you double the distance from a black hole, its force on you reduces to a quarter of what it was. These unlikely black holes are so very, very small that you'd need to be inside them already to have any chance of being sucked in - and that's assuming that Stephen Hawking was wrong.
I Hate Stephen Hawking. He's a poor writer and overweeningly big-headed. But he is a genius. His theories might still be just theories, but they support and form the basis of a hell of a lot of other physics (which, incidentally, is why they're theories and not hypotheses or Wild Ideas (qv intelligent design)).
Most infuriatingly of all, these people (and I use the term loosely) don't even appear to have read to the bottom of the articles about which they're frothing. Nothing is being collided yet. The protons are being sent around in one direction only, to test the LHC is working. It's like a velodrome - all the cyclists (protons) are going in the same direction. Any bumps will be minor.
And as for "What's the point"? Well, that's pretty much what Michael Faraday was asked when he demonstrated electricity for the first time. Experimental physics produces results that can be used by applied physicists to produce other results, which can be used by (for example) physical chemists to produce Yet More Results (and so on), which can be used to discover new sources of energy. Or new medical techniques. It might take 50 years to get that far, but the sooner we start, the sooner we'll get those results.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and to express it. I wish that some of the doom-bringers would stand back and contemplate the fact that they're calling Professors of Physics arrogant for doing their jobs, while being convinced that they know better with (in many cases) no scientific qualifications at all.
Go and read Brian's Q&A on the BBC here. He's just as irate as I am, by the sounds of things :)
I am also so angry at 95% of the commenters on various BBC blogs, the Community That Shall Not Be Named, and in the tabloid press, who are showing a wilful refusal to read about what's happening.
I'll admit; I'm biased. I was at Uni with Brian Cox (he was equally awesome then, even when we did take the piss out of him for his days in Dare). I suppose having studied high energy particle physics could also be considered a bias.
Which brings me on to the rant.
The people doing this are experts in the field. They've studied the subject for years. There are disagreements over what exactly will happen, which is why the experiments are being done. They have completed enormously complicated risk assessments before even being allowed to start building the thing.
The energies involved are tiny. The only reason they're such a big deal is because the particles themselves are tiny.
The chance of creating black hols is vanishingly small. Force is inversely proportional to the square of distance - in other words, if you double the distance from a black hole, its force on you reduces to a quarter of what it was. These unlikely black holes are so very, very small that you'd need to be inside them already to have any chance of being sucked in - and that's assuming that Stephen Hawking was wrong.
I Hate Stephen Hawking. He's a poor writer and overweeningly big-headed. But he is a genius. His theories might still be just theories, but they support and form the basis of a hell of a lot of other physics (which, incidentally, is why they're theories and not hypotheses or Wild Ideas (qv intelligent design)).
Most infuriatingly of all, these people (and I use the term loosely) don't even appear to have read to the bottom of the articles about which they're frothing. Nothing is being collided yet. The protons are being sent around in one direction only, to test the LHC is working. It's like a velodrome - all the cyclists (protons) are going in the same direction. Any bumps will be minor.
And as for "What's the point"? Well, that's pretty much what Michael Faraday was asked when he demonstrated electricity for the first time. Experimental physics produces results that can be used by applied physicists to produce other results, which can be used by (for example) physical chemists to produce Yet More Results (and so on), which can be used to discover new sources of energy. Or new medical techniques. It might take 50 years to get that far, but the sooner we start, the sooner we'll get those results.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and to express it. I wish that some of the doom-bringers would stand back and contemplate the fact that they're calling Professors of Physics arrogant for doing their jobs, while being convinced that they know better with (in many cases) no scientific qualifications at all.
Go and read Brian's Q&A on the BBC here. He's just as irate as I am, by the sounds of things :)
