I Just Checked! We're Still here!

This all started with the "Why are American's so afraid of Science" post. Not 24 hours later, some dimwit in my local paper starts talking about the end of the world. Needless to say I got hot under the collar. I decided to correct this retard, but just to raise the irony, I was going to do it AFTER the LHC had spun up. Anyway, here is my reply to that fucktard.

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Even that website says we're all still here! Hmm, it's on the internets, so it must be true, right? Okay, here is my attempted layman's explanation for why we are still here, and why we will continue to be here, no matter what they do at LHC.

FIRST OF ALL, no particles collided in this test. All the protons that were injected into the LHC were all going the same way. This is just a test. Had it been the end of the world, the above website would have let you know.

Now, assuming that particles are smashed together, which will happen in the future, I bet the above website will continue to display "Nope" for a long time coming. Why? Well, there are three (well really two, but snoopygirl mentioned one that was just too hilarious to ignore) primary concerns, and I hope to address them.

Black Holes: Black holes are naturally formed by gargantuan stellar masses collapsing in on themselves and overcoming all nuclear forces through gravity. In the case of the LHC, there is math that gives the possibility of subatomic particles colliding with enough ENERGY to create subatomic particle sized black holes. HOWEVER, given the amount of mass involved, these black holes would be so small that Hawking Radiation would cause them to nearly instantaneously evaporate. The neat trick here is that the math that predicts the possibility of their appearance, is the same math that assures their evaporation. Kinda neat that! Furthermore, these black holes are sooooo small, that they have only an infinitesimal chance to even react with anything! As I once said, an atom is 99.999999999999999% empty space. So even IF said black hole encountered a particle, gobbled it up, and somehow grew, it would still be so small that Hawking Radiation would have it evaporate nearly instantaneously anyway. (But wait, it just gained mass and is near an atom! It's going to get more particles! Actually no, the resulting surrounding charge would drive the black hole away from the source of said matter, driving it towards another area of the atom, thus giving it time to evaporate.)

Strangelets: Okay, these are a bit more tricky. There are theories on the fringe of particle physics that thinks that if enough "strange" quarks are bound together, it creates a state of matter that is highly energetic and unstable. Now, the problem here is that anything with a strange quark decays rather quickly (in particle physics scales) via weak interaction. In order for them to be stable, some rather fantastic events need to occur. Delving into the math of all this, the energies from the LHC AND Cosmic rays are relatively equal. So, if the LHC is about to create strangelets, then cosmic rays can also create strangelets. Well, since the planet has been around for billions of years, the safe bet is to say that these energy levels have no chance to produce strangelets, and we'll continue to be around. Just to be sure, check the website!

I do find it funny that you'll accept a strangelet, which has no empirical evidence, but evolution, with mountains of evidence is continually denied... Just a curiosity!

Other Dimensions: Okay, this one cracked me up. What particle physicists are talking about here are higher order dimensions. Not alternate planes of existence. According to theory (which we're trying to empirically test), these dimensions are small. So frightfully small that they are unobservable without the LHC. If anything were "living" in those dimensions, they would most likely be killed by the nearest passing electron (comedy if you can get it). Since these dimensions are already here (according to theory) all around us, seeing evidence of them should have no effect what so ever on them after we know they are there as opposed to before when we didn't know they were there.

If you are actually interested in REAL science, I am always available to talk about it. If you want to read up more about things, I suggest the Bad Astronomy blog. Dr Phil Plait is a funny and engaging writer.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/