A scientific experiment may destroy the earth later this year

[Mattberkshire]

....but it probably won't.

This is a very interesting article about unlocking the secrets of the universe by smashing protons into each other at near light speed. Cool!

Journey to the centre of the earth - Telegraph

 

[craig007]

The LHR (Large Hardron Collider) is one of the biggest toys yet. It will accellerate protons to 99.9999991% of the speed of light. You can't accelerate anything to speeds greater than or equal to the speed of light, but this is darn close. I'm excited and sad about this thing starting up. I'm excited because I can't wait to see the discoveries that will come out of this. I'm sad because now Europe will have the best stuff so all the top scientist from all over the world will be hanging out in over there (instead of hanging out at Fermi lab in Illinois.

Don't worry about world destruction. Cosmic rays from space (which are really protons) are already striking the upper atmosphere of earth with millions of times the energy that the LHR will generate....

 

[nimzotech]

If for any reason the world is destroyed, there is a chance that the same world will survive in another dimension.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcsWJ8NywSk"]YouTube - Theory "M" - Parallel Universe Theory[/ame]

 

[Raid The Revenge]

I've seen that device before. It spans between France and Switzerland underground. After watching how they put it together, I doubt it will even work.

 

[HavBlue]

The LHR (Large Hardron Collider) You can't accelerate anything to speeds greater than or equal to the speed of light

Careful here..... This needs to be qualified.

Sure you can, just stand up in a clear space and spin around. It's not too difficult to turn at one revolution in 2 seconds. Suppose the moon is on the horizon. How fast is it spinning round your head in those 2 seconds? It's about 385,000 km away so the answer is 1.21 million km/s, which is more than four times the velocity of light!

Going faster than the velocity of light can be tricky. One way to do this is to slow light down through a medium like water or glass. It is therefore possible for particles to travel at a velocity greater than that of light in that refractive environment. When we discuss going faster than the speed of light we are really talking about exceeding the velocity of light or (C) in a vacuum.

Theoretical physics as we presently understand it seems to leave the door open to the possibility that "faster than light" as represented by science fiction writers would "almost" certainly be impossible. So, for physicists the interesting question is, Why is it impossible and what can we learn from it?

 

[Nelly]

Careful here..... This needs to be qualified.

Sure you can, just stand up in a clear space and spin around. It's not too difficult to turn at one revolution in 2 seconds. Suppose the moon is on the horizon. How fast is it spinning round your head in those 2 seconds? It's about 385,000 km away so the answer is 1.21 million km/s, which is more than four times the velocity of light!

Going faster than the velocity of light can be tricky. One way to do this is to slow light down through a medium like water or glass. It is therefore possible for particles to travel at a velocity greater than that of light in that refractive environment. When we discuss going faster than the speed of light we are really talking about exceeding the velocity of light or (C) in a vacuum.

Theoretical physics as we presently understand it seems to leave the door open to the possibility that "faster than light" as represented by science fiction writers would "almost" certainly be impossible. So, for physicists the interesting question is, Why is it impossible and what can we learn from it?

That is very nicely written, even I understood the concepts.

 

[reiobard]

very cool experiment, i wonder what they will learn if it works, and who foots the $8 billion bill if it dosen't

 

[HavBlue]

very cool experiment, i wonder what they will learn if it works, and who foots the $8 billion bill if it dosen't

Hmmmm, an 8 billion dollar toy that don't work? I think I'll stick with motorcycles even if they don't travel at light speed....

 

[craig007]

OK, OK, I should have been more precise with my words. You are right...I should have said you can't accelerate anything to speeds faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. It is common to have particles in water going faster than the speed of light in water. When this happens you get a flash of light called Cherenkov radiation (the light analogy to a sonic boom when something in air travels faster than the speed of sound in air).

The LHC will work eventually. When you spend that much money on a toy, you keep spending on it until it works.

If all else fails, they can remove all of the equipment from the tunnel, pave the inside floor and walls and you would have a great inclosed motorcycle race track. I'd bet at 150 mph you could ride around the loop on the outer wall!

 

[HavBlue]

OK, OK, I should have been more precise with my words. You are right...I should have said you can't accelerate anything to speeds faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. It is common to have particles in water going faster than the speed of light in water. When this happens you get a flash of light called Cherenkov radiation (the light analogy to a sonic boom when something in air travels faster than the speed of sound in air).

The LHC will work eventually. When you spend that much money on a toy, you keep spending on it until it works.

If all else fails, they can remove all of the equipment from the tunnel, pave the inside floor and walls and you would have a great inclosed motorcycle race track. I'd bet at 150 mph you could ride around the loop on the outer wall!

The biggest hurdle in traveling faster than the velocity of light (C) in a vacuum is mass. The faster the object travels the greater the power required to go faster yet. Einstein never said you couldn't go faster than C in any of his work. It was Henri Poincare who later said "Perhaps we must construct a new mechanics, in which the speed of light would become an impassable limit." One day I think we will travel many times the known speed of light but not on a linear scale. Rather, this will come to pass on a future understanding of folded space. The speed of light is not constant and it varies with things like gravity, refractive environments and so on. At present, we do understand that faster than light speed can be accomplished through communication. An example of this would be the perfect rigid body. If you had a poll that was totally rigid and did not waver when struck, it would communicate the fact you picked it up and hit the ground with it from one end to the other in a time frame greater tham C. Now try finding that rigid object. My point is simply that out understanding of quantum physics is limited to the past 100 years and 100 years from now that same understanding while basically the same could have had numerous adjustments as is the case with any scientific theory.

 

[grommit]

Next you will be saying that gravitons appear "briefly" in our dimension of space-time do their thing and pop off again.


Of course we have CERN to thank for the WWW.

 

[JohnTex]

Hmmmm, an 8 billion dollar toy that don't work? I think I'll stick with motorcycles even if they don't travel at light speed....

Wait a minute! I thought you guys said the (faster) red FZ6's would hit the speed of light?!

 

[craig007]

The biggest hurdle in traveling faster than the velocity of light (C) in a vacuum is mass. The faster the object travels the greater the power required to go faster yet. Einstein never said you couldn't go faster than C in any of his work.

Hmm. m' = m/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where m is the rest mass and m' is the inertial mass (ie the mass of m in motion), v is the velocity and c is the velocity of light in a vacuum. The energy that it takes to accelerate something is a function of m'. So as v approaches c, the denominator approaches 0 so m' approaches infinity. So it would take infinite energy to accelerate something with mass, to or beyond the speed of light. Now if it was a massless something....

An example of this would be the perfect rigid body. If you had a poll that was totally rigid and did not waver when struck, it would communicate the fact you picked it up and hit the ground with it from one end to the other in a time frame greater tham C.

But there is no such thing as a perfect rigid body (I think it would have to be almost really really long too)

At present, we do understand that faster than light speed can be accomplished through communication.

I have read several books and articles about experiments studing quantum entangled photons (once you know the state of one, you instantly know the state of the other). Some of these experiments appear to communicate faster than the speed of light. Sadly, I don't quite understand it.

If you can fold space (ie a wormhole) you can travel a distance faster than light (if light took the unfolded path). But that's just a shortcut, not really going faster than the speed of light.

You are right that we may learn something that will modify the current unversal speed limit. Extra dimensions may help.... But I'm not holding my breath. I am still waiting for a breakthrough that will make quantum physics understandable (it's intersting but still over my head!)

 

[nimzotech]

Next you will be saying that gravitons appear "briefly" in our dimension of space-time do their thing and pop off again.


Of course we have CERN to thank for the WWW.

This reminds me of a Bill Gates quote from 1981:
"640K ought to be enough for anybody..."

 

[HavBlue]

Hmm. m' = m/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) where m is the rest mass and m' is the inertial mass (ie the mass of m in motion), v is the velocity and c is the velocity of light in a vacuum. The energy that it takes to accelerate something is a function of m'. So as v approaches c, the denominator approaches 0 so m' approaches infinity. So it would take infinite energy to accelerate something with mass, to or beyond the speed of light. Now if it was a massless something....



But there is no such thing as a perfect rigid body (I think it would have to be almost really really long too)



I have read several books and articles about experiments studing quantum entangled photons (once you know the state of one, you instantly know the state of the other). Some of these experiments appear to communicate faster than the speed of light. Sadly, I don't quite understand it.

If you can fold space (ie a wormhole) you can travel a distance faster than light (if light took the unfolded path). But that's just a shortcut, not really going faster than the speed of light.

You are right that we may learn something that will modify the current unversal speed limit. Extra dimensions may help.... But I'm not holding my breath. I am still waiting for a breakthrough that will make quantum physics understandable (it's intersting but still over my head!)

There are two types of gravity, (A) and (B). We currently understand that gravity bends and distorts space/time and light by virtue of the fact we can see stars we know should be blocked by our sun. In a very simple experiment we can take two atomic clocks set at identical time and leave one at sea level while the other is at extreme altitude. When we bring the two clocks back together and compare them the two clocks now show different times because gravity has caused one to operate differently than the other hence the time distortion caused by gravity which weakens the farther it gets from the source. So, just as the gravitational field around great mass like that of a planet, star or super massive black hole can distort space and time, any gravitational field, whether naturally occurring or generated, distorts space and time in a similar manner. The larger the field you generate the greater the distortion capabilities. This is not a shortcut.

 

[grommit]

This reminds me of a Bill Gates quote from 1981:
"640K ought to be enough for anybody..."

I am shocked you think so. :justkidding:

My ZX81 had 1k of RAM.

10 for n=1 to 99999999999
20 print n;
30 next n

This is of course at the quantum level of computing.

 

[Nelly]

This reminds me of a Bill Gates quote from 1981:
"640K ought to be enough for anybody..."

LMAO thank you thank you, thats the only bit of this thread I understood.

 

[craig007]

We currently understand that gravity bends and distorts space/time

I'm aware of this, but I was talking about the well documented evidence presented in leading scientific works such as Star Trek, Star Trek Voyeger, Star Gate SG1, Star Gate Atlantas, Contact etc. They go through worm holes all the time and are thus able to travel many light years in a matter of seconds.

 

[nimzotech]

Hey there young Jedi, you are beginning to mix fact with fiction ;-p

 

[craig007]

you mean the science fiction is fiction?? Maybe so, but worm holes do not violate current understanding of physics. For example, page 2 of this article in Scientific American talks about how a wormhole could be created:


How to Build a Time Machine: Scientific American

Several physists have written books about this stuff... Anyway, as HavBlue correctly implied, there is a lot of stuff out there that we just don't understand....yet. That's why I find the LHC so exciting. From it, we will not only get new answers, we will also get a lot of new and interesting questions!