LHC Live Webcast

Apparently there will be a live webcast from CERN on 10 Sep 2008. There is no indication of the time but 3am EDT is the time for the start of the special event.

Wed 10 Sep 2008: End of the World or Not? - continued

The American Institute of Physics today published a News Update stating that the creation of a micro black hole that would swallow up the Earth won't happen. They cite an argument which claims that if micro black holes were created one would not find the number of old stars that do exist because they too would fall victim to the micro black holes. They say that any micro black hole that was created would have such a brief existence that it could not absorb any more matter.

The LHC was designed to search for new particles and verify the Standard Model of elementary particles and with luck find some supersymmetric particles predicted by String Theory. The object is to collide protons producing a mini big bang consisting of a quark soup from which new particles might emerge. The likelihood of these events happening is rather low so it will take several months before any meaningful result can be determined.

Wed 10 Sep 2008: End of the World or Not?

Will the world end on Wed 10 Sep 2008 when the first beam of the Large Hadron Collider is activated at CERN this week as some YouTube users and others have indicated? Theorists have speculated about the possibility of the creation of a black hole that would subsequently swallow the entire Earth. Although there are concerns about safety, the first tests of the beam are likely to be only engineering tests (the first to reach the target area) and it is doubtful that these tests will produce a micro black hole.



There is a LHC 1st beam special event scheduled from 09:00 to 18:00 CEST (03:00 to 12:00 ET in the US). Anyone for an End-of-the-World party?