The end of the world...IS TOMORROW?!

According to a newspaper in the town i live in, there were reports of 14-year olds coming to their school crying about the world going under.

Some panic from the “old” schoolstudents, right, or do they know about this?

were you among them? ;p anyhow, tell your colleagues they needn’t worry: they can keep track of doomsday online (rss feed available), and should there be any reason for them to freak out and go live life like there was no tomorrow, they’ll be told in advance. :slight_smile:

I doubt that. The rate would be constantly accelerating, I’d imagine once it gets some ground it’d get going very fast. It’s a black hole after all.

Four to seven minutes has got to be too much.

alright, first off: i was joking. no really, half my posts in this topic aren’t serious, mainly because i myself can’t take doomsday seriously — i’m not saying i don’t believe in doomsday, i just can’t take it seriously.

that being said, and now in all seriousness, you might be right: four to seven minutes can be too much. they can also be way too little: a black hole can take years to consume a planet the size of Earth. here’s a quick explanation of what a black hole is: it’s a point (as in “a zero-size body”) called singularity with a preposterous quantity mass. if you were to do it old school and calculate its density as mass over volume, you’d find out its mass is infinite, which under old school gravitation laws would mean singularities are quickly swallowing the universe.

lucky for us that theory has been proved wrong already. what happens with singularities is, their mass will create a (really strong) gravitational force. things will be attracted to the singularity. and there’s some point, which varies greatly depending on the mass of the singularity, at which there’s no return. there’s this distance from singularities which we call “event horizons”, explaining exactly what they mean is quite dull, but it works for now to ask you to think that whatever gets closer to the singularity than that distance has no coming back.

that weird system made of a bodiless point, the singularity, and its influence zone within the event horizon, is what we call a black hole. right. so what is the size of a baby black hole? honestly, i’ve no freaking idea. but here’s an interesting figure: the minimum mass for a primordial black hole (i.e. one originated at the Big Bang) seems to be 1 000 000 000 000 kg (= 2 200 000 000 000 pounds). it would take 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years for one such baby black hole to swalow the whole Earth. (which i suspect is longer than the Earth will live, anyway, and at any rate long enough for you not to care).

for more information: great article on Universe Today, and then some more. :wink:

That’s interesting. It makes it impossible to imagine what exactly it would look like (not literally) should a black hole form that has the power to consume the planet.

Surely the mass has to come from somewhere, leading me to believe that the concept of this destroying earth is preposterous.

But of course, if it does happen, and it’s a quick consumption, I would assume that although we may not die right away, consciousness would be gone in a matter of seconds due to forces acting on the body.

Why even concern :confused: this hole is nothing to be afraid of. Were not going under and thats it :razz:

Agreed.

If it does create a black hole, the black hole will be extremely weak, and would last only an extremely small period of time.
And besides, the Earth is still here right now.

True, the only fear of earths destruction is because of incompetent (sorry) people who dont realise that the holes are too weak. I was worried too, til my SC told me its nothing dangerous.
And thats it :razz:

I have little to contribute but this:

I love this forum! Sanity + actual logic? I haven’t posted here in a while, but I’ve been online enough to see the chaos the Internet is in over this important experiment. I’ve taken enough physics in my short education to know the LHC is being blown way out of proportion in terms of its danger, and its potential to change our understanding of particle physics is being horrendously downplayed.

“Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.” ~Arnold Edinborough

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

I dont really understand this fully, but aparently this expirament might prove how the universe was created. There are therorys saying it may create small black holes that would threaten our planet, or open up a doorway to another dimension.

There is already a topic about this, it’s in the lounge. It’s called “the end of the world is tomorow”.

There are theories that it could create small black holes, yes. The portal to another dimension stuff is pure nonsense. For one, the fourth dimension is generally considered time, and any dimensions beyond that probably don’t exist. a Dimension isn’t actually a physical place, just the way we look at things. For example, the first dimension is width, second height, third depth, so traveling through additional dimensions would simply add more perspectives, such as time.

As for the black hole thing, even if that were to happen, they would be far too small to have even the slightest impact. Everyone simply instantly distrusts new technology. The atom bomb was the end of the world, then television caused cancer, then microwaves caused cancer, then cell phones emitted microwaves. Nothing will ever come of it, people will freak out for a bit and move on, like Y2K, 2012, and every other event ever.

Stricken is right. And, even if it was made, it, by the same science that made it, would die. Hawking’s theory, the one that gave him fame, was that black holes DIE. One so small would die instantly.

Oh, here’s some webcam of the LHC. I love how many people are around it, working so constantly. If you don’t see any, odds are there will be in a few moments.

cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

From the way I understand it, the LHC was built to collide protons in order to test the Standard Model ( the basic model for particle physics). The experiment (theoretically) is expected to produce a particle known as the Higgs Boson which is the only particle not yet observed. The discovery of this particle would help explain various issues with mass and explain how other elementary particles acquire mass.

According to the Wikipedia article there was equipment failure and, as such, the collider won’t be operational again until Spring 2009.

People think they are so smart, its so sad

Something like that…they had a malfunction, and as such the initial startup of the machine was delayed, and it will not run at full capacity until spring 2009.

As for what the LHC was built for, in addition to the above, I believe it is supposed to simulate the collision of particles during the Big Bang, showing us how stars and planets and all other astral bodies are initially formed. It’s quite a huge prospect for discovery of new things.

There is way too much argueing over this. Scientists have gotten death threats and some girl killed herself because of it. This is something to be greatful for, to be in the midst of a scientific revolution. Who cares if we die because it will be all of us! It wont make a difference. I personally dont beleive they would waste billions of dollars on something that they are that skeptical about. It will reveal very mysterious things, it just needs a little time.

It will probably do two things if all goes smoothly.

  1. We will see the Higgs Boson which will add evidence to our current standard model of particle physics.
  2. We won’t find it at which point scientists will probably decided that either the collider wasn’t big enough/ this wasn’t the right way to approach the problem OR it will be decided that the standard model isn’t good and revision or a new model will need to be made.