puddingcat: (Rocket Science)
puddingcat ([personal profile] puddingcat) wrote2008-09-10 10:03 am
Entry tags:

Must Control Fist of Death.

I 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 :)

[identity profile] pmoodie.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:37 am (UTC)(link)
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.

Or they may have read the whole thing but failed to understand it.

I can forgive people having a hard time understanding this stuff, I have a hard time understanding a lot of it myself. But at least I try.

And I'm in awe of the people who do understand all this stuff and who are advancing our knowledge of the fundamentals of existence. Without these people, we'd all be crouching in caves picking insects off each other. Maybe some people would prefer that, but I'm too attached to my LCD TV and my Blu-Ray player to scoff at the benefits of particle physics.

Yay for the scientists. The world needs more of them and less "flat earth" idiots.

[identity profile] puddingcat.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:48 am (UTC)(link)
There's an enormous difference between not understanding the physics (goodness knows, I only scratched the surface 13 years ago, and I've forgotten most of it now) and not understanding "No collisions will take place until October".

[identity profile] pmoodie.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:50 am (UTC)(link)
Yes, it's depressing and infuriating how willfully ignorant people can be.

[identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:00 am (UTC)(link)
Exactly. Even then, nothing will happen that's visible to the naked eye.

I claim very little understanding of the matter but as you say, these people know what they're doing and I have faith in them. If something does go wrong, nothing bad will happen, with the possible exception of billions of pounds worth of equipment being broken.

It's a bit like the first train when people believed that going over 15? (can't remember the exact figure) mph would make people explode.

Have you seen today's xkcd?

[identity profile] claire-wain.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:44 am (UTC)(link)
I particularly like Brian's last paragraph. :)

I have No Understanding of Physics whatsoever, but I watched Brian Cox on telly for more than an hour the other night, because he was so incredibly enthusiastic.

[identity profile] puddingcat.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:49 am (UTC)(link)
He's awesome :) Even without his wonderful hair (it used to be Proper Rock God Long)!

I had to wonder, following his "twat" comment - did Asda refuse to stock that edition of the Telegraph in case children were exposed to the article?

[identity profile] claire-wain.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:52 am (UTC)(link)
He's very cute! Is it wrong that I accidentally Learned About Science because I couldn't stop listening to his lovely voice? ;)

I was slightly startled to read that - perhaps the paper version was edited?

[identity profile] devalmont.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:47 am (UTC)(link)
Well said you. Today is the start of a very exciting couple of years for those of us who have watched about twenty go by with no real developments.

[identity profile] puddingcat.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:50 am (UTC)(link)
No real developments? The energies physicists have been able to apply have increased by an order of magnitude every ten years or so! There have been oodles of developments!

[identity profile] devalmont.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 09:58 am (UTC)(link)
There has been a lot of work done but has the standard model been revised in any concrete way since the late seventies? There are hundreds of new theories since the SM was proposed, and they're all developments in that they've taken a lot of work and are almost certainly true, but they all seem to rely on the previous theory being true. If the SM is wrong then a lot from the last thirty years has been conjecture, but you are very right about the technology, it shouldn't take another thirty to get back on track, I'd hope!

[identity profile] feanelwa.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:45 am (UTC)(link)
How many developments are there per oodle?

[identity profile] puddingcat.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:47 am (UTC)(link)
It's a Googlol (typo preserved for entertainment) in base 8 ;)

[identity profile] feanelwa.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:58 am (UTC)(link)
That's a lot of developments. Everybody around here is too tired to do even one oodle.

[identity profile] miss-s-b.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:07 am (UTC)(link)
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.

Yes, this.

[identity profile] ginasketch.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:26 am (UTC)(link)
Even more depressing is when other scientists do it, even if it's not their field (i.e. Otto is a biochemist).

[identity profile] ias.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 02:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Absolutely. The general public tend to think that Science is one big thing and as far as many are concerned people like Otto know because they are Scientists, therefore they give equal weight (or more because we all love the underdog) to his crackpot theories as to the CERN H&S report, for example.

[identity profile] neilhist.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:23 am (UTC)(link)
I hadn't taken much of an interested in this until it appeared in the press (small chance of the world ending) in recent days, and people making the halo joke.

I read around a little, and thought, wow - this is really interesting. Love the Faraday - electricity analogy.

[identity profile] feanelwa.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:46 am (UTC)(link)
The toast at the Royal Society annual dinner used to be "To the electron - may it never be of use to anybody".

[identity profile] guenhwyvarsmind.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 10:39 am (UTC)(link)
At least we can get some amusement from people taking the piss out of the doomsayers. :p

http://www.maxim.com/8FictionalDoomsdayDevicesMoreDangerousThantheLargeHadronCollider/Maxim-Stuff/blogs/599/22954.aspx

(I think it's awesome.)

[identity profile] becky-spence.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 11:15 am (UTC)(link)
I was most baffled by the papers, since I'd been operating (thanks to the piles of hysteria) under the assumption they actually were colliding stuff today.

Either way, physics - far over my head. I leave it to the experts :)

[identity profile] feanelwa.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 11:47 am (UTC)(link)
Isn't it great? I got up this morning, turned the radio on and was really enthused about colliding some leptons of my own instead of being angry at the rude Radio 4 men. Then I remembered that everything's still broken...but still, physics is civilising influence on radio presenters, clearly.

This is sort of like when you go to the theatre and see people moving stuff around behind the scenes and think, I wish I could be involved in something big and awesome like that. Except I CAN! If they need, er, slightly tangential physics on different particles going much slower.
ext_52603: (Alternate History)

[identity profile] msp-hacker.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 11:52 am (UTC)(link)
I just had to assure someone that "No, we're not all going to die."

Admittedly, I just like saying there's a possibility that the entire planet would be eaten up by a black whole. It's too much like bad scifi that I can help myself.
ext_4030: Branch of holly with its binomial name, Ilex aquifolium (food : pineapple)

[identity profile] strangefrontier.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 01:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Hell yes! And re: "What's the point", detector development for the LHC is already being applied to medical research and there's further potential for better medical imaging. One of the chaps I knew at Glasgow worked with the particle physics group and some bio folks, adapting radiation detector tech for use in implants to give sight to blind people. How cool is that?!

[identity profile] cabd.livejournal.com 2008-09-10 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Community That Shall Not Be Named?

[identity profile] dragonmamma.livejournal.com 2008-09-22 03:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Coming to all this a bit late (I have been away again!) we're obvioouisly all now living in a parrallel universe having been absorbed by a black hole or.....absolutely nothing BAD happened at all (unless of course the Credit Crunch is a result of sending millions of electrons etc too fast round a rather long circular track). Seriously tho I am delighted by all the science news. I never studied any of the sciences beyond making phosporous whizz round on the surface of water, but being a literary and language person I am thrilled that real life has impacted on fiction - and become available knowledge for us all even if we dont understand it. I first came across the LHC in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons and have been fascinated by the concept ever since. No I dont understand it all, but what does that matter? I went to a very interesting lecture about it just before 10th Sept and have been trying to follow the happenings ever since. When was the last time something truly scientific captured the imagination of the world? Hooray for the scientists - may their experiments be successful and may they result in many useful things in the future.