Un-F*CKING-believable
Offline http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx
I am so infuriated right now that typing is painful.
I have waited as patiently as possible for the last pieces of the detectors to be positioned. The people on this project have taken 15+ years out of their lives to devote to this endeavor. The math, hypotheses, applications, and dreams of an entire international organization have been tirelessly focused upon THIS YEAR.
I took a deep breath when the low-energy run was cancelled due to faulty magnets produced WHERE? Here in the US.
I counted to 10 when Fermilab had its funding cut by GW after a promise earlier in his presidency NOT to do so..
This crosses the motherfucking line.
Anyone that even lends one ounce of credence to the 'misgivings' concerning the LHC project has no fucking clue as to what is meant by the metaphorical terminologies used by the scientists to initially pique the interest of the public.
The people gripped by fear from their own ignorant imaginations have willfully exercised the greatest flaw in human nature... allowing themselves to become victims of a sci-phobia cult.
The first fucking preacher to use this in a sermon as a sign of the 'end times' anywhere near me is going to get slapped.
I've really had it.
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What metaphorical terminologies?
wo wo wo.... wait a second...
*ok every one, time to get out your tinfoil hats!*
Now, im no proffessor of US law, but wouldnt a law-suit + safety inquirey into the very device itself, make everything a matter of public record?... meaning some dipshit could just go ahead and build a mini version of the thing based upon all the reviews and schematics that would HAVE to be provided durring such a case?
and here i thought the world would end when a university student discovered cold fusion >.>
What Would Kharn Do?
Is one of us experiencing time dilation, Cpt?
Duh!
'god particle'
'string' theory
'big bang machine'
The terms given by scientists charged with communicating discoveries, hypotheses, and theories.
Really? You needed that explained?
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Oh I see.
I don't see the fear that produces the suit. While true that the LHC might produce black holes, they will evaporate instantly. Mono poles also decay.
I want this thing turned on as much as you do.
Very Concerned posted:
"This is Completely Stupid of them to do this , No one has ever done this b4 so how could they say things wont go bad , Someone stop these People from doing this , What does it prove and how will it help our day to day living by testing this , Please God someone stop these people. "
... Anyone seen the movie Contact? You think there are some religious nuts out there right now reading this while strapping explosives to their chest?
Really though, I read about this before I was old enough to drive and was really excited for it. I can't imagine the rage that people may be feeling who have been following this closely since the plans were released.
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News like this, and increased participation in the “debates” about evolution, have definitely spurred a form of elitism in me, although not unwarranted. The notion of a “court of public opinion” is meaningless. Science is not a process of democracy. It is a process of idea-based meritocracy. That is to say, ideas are judged on basis of their merits. This means that the people who work in this idea-based meritocracy are usually there because of their merits in this respective field. This is concomitant with this concept I have propagated about “understanding”. “Understanding” is a continuously graded variable. It would be impressive if a 5 year old understood special and general relativity to mean “time is relative to the frame of reference of the observer, and is part of a 4D space-time manifold which curves due to the influence of matter, causing gravity”. It would be very unimpressive is what I wrote above was the extent of understanding of a physics professor. If understanding is a continuously graded variable, then the maximal level of understanding is that which is required to critique the concept. Think about this and it becomes obvious. If I wish to critique Relativistic Kinematics, I must not only be fully familiar with the equations, concepts and laws, but also with arguments against them that require an equally large amount of technical expertise. Returning to this, to make an informed judgement on the safety of the LHC requires a large store of understanding of physics.
Returning to the point that science is not a democracy, I am not suggesting you need to have a degree to have an opinion. I am suggesting you need to be informed to have an opinion. Most people are not informed, and the maximal level of being informed is required to critique these concepts. Anyone who has seen the statistics for the percentage of Americans who cannot tell the surveyors that it takes the Earth 365 days to rotate around the sun should know how ridiculous the notion of a “public court of opinion for science” is. If these people do not know how many days it takes for the Earth to rotate around the sun, who can seriously expect them to make judgements about the safety of micro-black holes? Returning to my previous point, in order to make an informed critique of the safety of the LHC would require sufficient knowledge of theoretical and particle physics.
Decisions about science are made about people who know absolutely nothing regarding what they are talking about. A logical corollary to Arthur Clarke’s third law is that the fame of a scientist and his discovery is inversely proportional to how much people actually understand it. The famous trio here is Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Everyone has an opinion on these three men. Almost none of these people has read anything by them. Carl Sagan’s words have come back to haunt us: “We live in an age dominated by science and technology where almost nobody understands science and technology”. I would very much like there to be a forum of public opinion on serious scientific matters, but this would require an extremely scientifically literate populace. The court case here is primarily to alleviate public fears. How many of these people actually understand what precisely they are supposed to be fearful of? With the current levels of scientific literacy, there does not deserve to be a forum of public opinion on the matter. Again, to stress, I am not suggesting that people without degrees should be barred from having a say on scientific matters. That is ludicrous. I am suggesting that people should be informed before they have strong judgements on matters. If a 5 year old understood the mathematics behind Schwarzschild radius derivation and could hence present an informed critique of the danger of generating micro-black holes, then he should be listened to. But we won’t find many of those. This is concomitant with a point I brought up before. IN genuine academic controversy, the principle and most important goal of academics within an academic debate is to disseminate and convince informed opinion, which involves arguments which in turn presume a large amount of knowledge on part of their interlocutors. One thing, for example that makes creationism very suspicious, and what distinguishes it from a genuine academic controversy is they have virtually no interest in convincing the academic community in biology and other associated fields. The vast majority of creationist literature and resources are poured into convincing the public, which of course is easy since no-one understands the science and they have pre-existing religious convictions. In serious controversies, this pattern is always in reverse. A similar problem occurs here with the LHC safety. Why a public lawsuit? Why not simply approach the CERN-Fermilab committees by publishing research on the matter? The only reason something like this would occur is if one party had no interest in the aforementioned idea-based meritocracy on which progressive epistemology depends, but rather was only concerned about bamboozling or inducing fear in those who are uninformed. This is a well known principle: The Dunning-Kruger effect.
So, what’s the call from my fellow members? Am I being reasonable or an elitist dick?
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Reasonable.
Reasonable and reasonably elite
You are being reasonable DG, but you live in the land where it is practically unconstitutional to suggest that someone should be ignored simply because he is an ignorant jackass. The cult of stupidity in the US is actually reaching dangerous proportions. That is why Canadians will soon rule you all, for your own benefit.
I'm with you Darth. If this lawsuit delay the start of the LHC by so much as a day, I may go "Scanners."
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
I'm not American. I too am Canadian. I do not live in the United States although I very much like their tertiary academic institutions, which I just returned from. I live in Hong Kong. However, this reminds me of something I saw from John Cleese:
Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A.
A Message from John Cleese (British comedian)
17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Bah, this is the same level of Bad Science and progress denial as the "debate" on evolution, moon-hoax believers, and the anti-vax loons. Switch the bugger on as soon as its ready to go!
If it creates a world ending black hole, I really doubt we'll have time to notice how much it sucks that we destroyed the world. Consequently, I really doubt the Universe will much notice our absence either.
The Regular Expressions of Humanistic Jones: Where one software Engineer will show the world that God is nothing more than an undefined pointer.
No. No fucking way.
Let's just hope the lawsuit gets thrown out for being fucking ridiculous. In fact, I'd like to see a big red stamp that says "FUCKING RIDICULOUS" put on their application to file suit.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
BASTARDS!
With you there Josh, Haven't we already waited long enough? Moreover, the BUILDING has been done! People have worked their guts out for this, People who know and understand and have evaluated the risk! A few nuts run off at the mouth about things that they aren't even familiar with and THEY can file for injuction NOW AT THE LAST FzUCKIN MINUTE!
*****<insert loud excessive string of expletive> ********
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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What's funny about this is that all I could muster was "Oh, come ON" before I got all sad about it. That's just so sad. Then back to anger. Then denial ...
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Do you mean you wanted me to type the expletives? To be honest I didn't have anything specific in mind, just random name screaming.
But here's a story for you, a friend of mine has an 18 year old son who read about the doomsday bull on the internet and he started telling my 11 year old son about it. Later as I was walking my son to go swimming he started to tell me that there was a machine which would cause a sci-fi catastrophe. Actually we were discussing a story plot that he was thinking up and wanted to tell me and he got to the point where he said 'like that big machine, Mum, that can make everything go into a black hole" I said, "you mean the LHC? Who told you that?" - I've been pissed at these mongrels ever since that day for getting to my boy with their bullshit.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
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From what I understand, Hawking radiation, the effect that would cause the evaporation, hasn't been empirically shown to exist yet.
"What right have you to condemn a murderer if you assume him necessary to "God's plan"? What logic can command the return of stolen property, or the branding of a thief, if the Almighty decreed it?"
-- The Economic Tendency of Freethought
The LHC can only create black holes if there are enough large spatial dimensions, for clarity three is too few, colliding protons at LHC energies won't create the kind of conditions needed in these circumstance. So if the LHC makes a black hole, it is proof of extra spatial dimensions - that is one of the main reasons for the attempt to create them with the LHC, possible detection of Hawking radiation is another, but no one is relying on hawking radiation to keep the little black holes in check, the extra dimensions are where a little black hole is likely to leak to as gravity (see graviton theory). Just to be 100% clear, it is really really likely, pretty much assured, that if we are in a real physical circumstance that would confer any danger to us from creating little black holes, the LHC couldn't create them it is just not powerful enough.
Theist badge qualifier : Gnostic/Philosophical Panentheist
www.mathematicianspictures.com
Caution Eloise, they may scrape all your flesh off with shells and burn the library of science, as they did in Alexandria ....
"Un-F*CKING-believable"
L O L , wish you'd be granted your new RRS badge .... but we do need "theists" to feel welcome here, so an extra thanks .... to you, a very "Special Theist" .....
Wish I could explore your Australia ....
Atheism Books.
You seriously need to write a book of pick-up lines
I hear "For Dummies" is publishing ^_^
What Would Kharn Do?
What's next!?
The scrubbing of the GLAST launch scheduled for May 16!?
ps - elitism is good.
If this doesn't get laughed out of court, the people behind the LHC should counter sue religion for opening the way for demons, satyres, vampires etc to coming to this planet. The claim that religion is doing this has just as much credibility as the religious fundies claims about the LHC.
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
Censored and blacked out for internet access in ANZ!
AU: http://nocleanfeed.com/ | NZ: http://nzblackout.org/
Those who know of me, know that I am not above a good ad hom on occasion.
While this seems irrelevant, it is funny.
Mr. Wagner(I will not call him Dr.) has legal problems of his own to deal with at the same time as his decision to seek an injunction on the LHC.
Honolulu article
Where's the money, Walt?
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The CERN website offers basic 'fluff' pieces to introduce the project itself. Very little in the way of describing the various experiements can be found there.
Fermilab's main pages are the same.
They are designed to be general interest portals for public references. They, without apparent motive, seem to think that the public is more interested in their side ventures rather than their main goals and the steps made toward achieving them.
I feel like this is contributing to the public's ignorant fears. As we have seen in our dealings with people whose beliefs are inherently contradictory to facts, they either refuse to understand the easy description or they create an wholly obnoxious sci-fi version of what they hear.
A key to dissuading this type of 'doomsday machine' thinking might be to describe the pieces of the LHC as 'detectors' rather than 'experiments'. The LHC is the experiment in general whereas the various parts are labeled experminets while their general duty is to detect by mapping the trajectories of the particles after the collision. Thus 'detectors'.
The detectors themselves have their own home pages on the net which offer a tremendous amount of information (short of the exact maximum impacts detected within them). Some very cool images and video are included to illustrate their use to the public.
I am extremely saddened by the fact that very little in the way of 'digestable' information has been conveyed to the public by those whose very job titles contain phrases like 'chair for the public understanding of science'. There are certain moments when the detractors of science in general must be ignored in favor of informing the advocates of the scientific community in order to progress.
Appealing to the people has been the foray of those whose jobs depend upon keeping the 'mysteries' of the universe secret. It has long been time for a more proletarian stance with regard to the dissemination of information from the scientific community for the advocates thereof.
These advocates of the scientific community can range in 'station' from fry-cooks to strippers to Wall Street brokers and all people between. One need only look through the occupational fields of the people that post on this website to realize that they exist.
While I understand, nay even sympathize, with the intellectually elite, I must also infuse within their reasoning that when they take the time to explain the finer points of their respective fields to a 'lesser' then they have gained an advocate of their endeavors. Like so many instances, the direct effects of interaction with the ignorant cannot be seen nor heard by ourselves. We are left with the reassurance that it may well be passed on tenfold if we have presented both a compelling and understood foundation of the relevant materials involved.
Often, we must resort to metaphors such as 1 TeV equals a bat of an eyelash, or equivalent anthropomorphizations. These are necessary to pique the curiosity of individuals by way of memes. It is our charge as armchair physicists to correct the meme when we encounter it and to send it on its circuitous path through the untapped minds of the public. If we don't then it seems all but inevitable that we encounter more ignorance in progressive severity.
So while I sympathize with the attitudes of those scientists among the elite, I cannot excuse them. I cannot openly endorse their condescension even if it takes root within their psyches by virtue of their cynicism developed by too many past adverse interactions.
With that out of the way... here are three websites dedicated to the ALICE, CMS, and ATLAS detectors.
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/
http://cms.cern.ch/
http://atlasexperiment.org/
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Crazy some are, ..... I figure in order to start a "Black Hole", I will need an atom smasher the size of a small Galaxy .... just quessin'
..... 
..... 
((( Hey DOOMED SOUL... ahhhh, Australia and the "the down under", Eloise Rocks ...
Yeah thingy , I say sue the Pope now. Pat Condell posted a group of lawyers seeking support for this, in his Youtube page. Keep chipping away ..... So I say, like many others, the best "core" Jesus was a Buddhist !!!! Xains are nuts ..... Jesus no like their thinking ..... I need to push this better with some help. J was cool , religion sucks.
Atheism Books.
I'm SO FUCKING TIRED of people being scared of things they don't understand. I don't really understand what they are fully going to do there, and for anyone NOT there to say they fully understand it would most likely be a lie. But one thing I know is they wouldn't do it if they thought there was a decent chance of it killing everyone. Who knows, maybe they will discover that the big bang COULDN'T have happened, and some fucking GOD was the ONLY way it could have happened. I don't care if that happens, I just want to know what happens. Denying scientist the right to do research if pretty stupid. "Hello, today we are going to sue you for doing your job, and keep you from discovering something that might hurt our (creationist) cause. We ARE America, world police"
I hate this bullshit, I have been SOOOOO excited about this... umm... my whole life actually. I'm only 18 and I heard about this when I was like 8, I didn't understand it that much but I have been following it.
This is utter crap.
Is this any different then the church persecuting Gallalieo? Or any other scientist in history for that? After all, we are "one nation, under God..." sadly.
Stupid bitches.
We pop theist like Orville Redenbacher!
That's a shame, it sure would be nice to finally have some answers to the most biggest questions.
What's been said in a week:
The New York Times banner, "All the news that's fit to print." Yet one of their 'reporters' wrote this gem Saturday:
Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
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this is really a stupid thing to be scared of...what would history be like if we were "afraid" to test the atom bomb. if i remember correctly there was a dinner bet on whether or not the atmosphere would catch on fire and kill us all.
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." - Dr. Richard Dawkins
A miniature particle accelerator? Like in Ghostbusters? Hee hee hee, somehow I doubt it. They wouldn't get very far, since a "miniature" one is about 8 feet tall and isn't cheap. Also, the principles are already available to the average college Physics student. Not hard to engineer on your own. But honestly, it wouldn't do much except run up your power bills.