This is your place in the universe

That thing is funky Andy. I liked this part:

"If all goes right, matter will be transformed by the violent collisions into wads of energy, which will in turn condense back into various intriguing types of particles, some of them never seen before."

Yeah, that or kill everything on Earth.... well, at least France

Yeah, win-win situation. Either they make a whole bunch of super-discoveries, or they destroy France. 5 billion dollars well spent.

I could totaly go 5 billion right now.

You could change the title of this sub-forum to: "I've seen shit that'll turn you white!"


So this blew my mind:

"Children begin to learn words before their first birthday, and by their second they hoover them up at a rate of one every two hours. By the time they enter school children command 13,000 words, and then the pace picks up, because new words rain down on them from both speech and print. A typical high-school graduate knows about 60,000 words; a literate adult, perhaps twice that number."

Now things start getting crazy up in here.

"People recognize words swiftly. The meaning of a spoken word is accessed by a listener's brain in about a fifth of a second, before the speaker has finished pronouncing it. The meaning of a printed word is registered even more quickly, in about an eighth of a second. People produce words almost as rapidly: It takes the brain about a quarter of a second to find a word to name an object, and about another quarter of a second to program the mouth and tongue to pronounce it."

S. Pinker, Words and Rules, 1999

He starts the chapter that these previous extracts were taken from with the following, appropriate sentence:

"Language comes so naturally to us that it is easy to forget what a strange and miraculous gift it is."

Andy, have ye heard? There is court action taking place to stop them turning that Doomsday device on. Incase it... you know... it turns out to be a Doomsday device.

What? Really? I had heard that some scientists had been speculating that the worst case scenario could be that they create microscopic black-holes that could, in theory, destroy a lot of shit e.g. the earth, or possibly universe. But that was pretty unlikely. Is that what they are talking about? Can you send me a link or something?

Read it in the Herald (or whatever Newcastle paper thing we had at work).
It was hidden amongst the 'world' section.

I think the guys trying to stop it are from Hawaii.

Happy searching.

The article also mentioned that the USA had planned on building one 54km long but it was canned by Congress after the hole was dug and $2 billion thrown into it.

Ah, found it. Thanks, Trev. Yeah it looks like some bunch of clowns filed a suit that would mean that the CERN team would have to wait several more months (~4 I think) before they could start the thing running. Though it's possible that the suit will just get thrown out.

(Here's one of the sites if you wanted to peruse it. The best part to look at is just the 3 'doomsday' possibilities.)

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx

There was another site discussing it; the best parts were some of the comments:

Hawking Radiation
by thesilverfox06 (999188) on Thursday March 27, @06:45PM (#22887512)
So what if it creates microscopic black holes? They'd dissipate in a fraction of a second.

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Re:Hawking Radiation
by pcgabe (712924) on Thursday March 27, @07:36PM (#22888102) Homepage
to: s_hawking@cam.ac.uk
re: MBHs
status: urgent

MBHs not dissipating as anticipated. Please advise.


They forgot one...
by supabeast! (84658) on Thursday March 27, @06:46PM (#22887530)
What happens if an escaping convict accidentally wanders into the collider, gains super powers, and tries to take over the world?

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Re:They forgot one...
by IthnkImParanoid (410494) on Thursday March 27, @06:59PM (#22887666)
Obviously one of the scientists will have wandered into the collider as well. Although his or her superpowers will not be as powerful/deadly/cool as the convict's, their determination, faith in humankind, and good heart will allow them to narrowly win in the end, no matter how badly the odds look to be stacked against them.

They will still have a hard time getting laid, though.


Re:WTF?
by Spacepup (695354) on Thursday March 27, @06:47PM (#22887538) Homepage
I guess it's just the kid in me, but now I want it turned on even more just to see what will really happen.

Maybe they should schedual the first start for one of the predicted end dates ala the Mayans and Egyptans. The Hadron collider builders should also play "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by REM the day it starts.

You know if they did schedule it for one of those Mayan end-of-the-world days and something went wrong then people'd be all "This is what they were predicting anyway! You thought you were kidding but you played into the hands of fate!"

Wankers.