I just fucking wrote for 30 mins and mozilla crashed....WTF! Ok to starting over.... I guess i don't know what my position really is on Atheism.... I see it as way to think out of the box and most of what you say i agree with but i still have belief in a higher power because humans are flawed by our own selfishness....what i was getting at with the one celled micro-organism was not it's reproduction nor it's conscience; but how does it have life? Why are they using the CERN to find the God particle? The only way to give a fair rebuttal would be for me to write a collegiate style research paper on atheism and that is not going to happen anytime soon....Humans maybe the dominant force on this planet but the whole universe?

>> ^direpickle:
>> ^zomgunicorns:
so apart from answering some physics questions (according to the Wiki entry on the LHC), is there some end reason why they are doing this? Is there something they can use from the results to benefit mankind or are they just hoping to blow up the universe?

There is unlikely to be any direct benefit to mankind from the LHC aside from increasing our knowledge of the fundamental laws of the universe. I did see an interview with one guy from CERN claiming it could help us develop teleportation-type technology, but I think he was just trying to get the interviewer to care.
High-energy physics does tend to push the technology envelope, though, which often forces advancements that are useful in other industries. The world wide web was born at CERN.


Goddamn realists. What do any of the ventures of mankind do to further our goals and what are our goals? To entertain and to be entertained. If I want to live longer I will eat an apple and go to the doctor regularly; if I want to continue my species, I will become well adjusted, find a mate and make babies; if I want to go to Heaven, I will pick up the Bible and trust Jesus Christ as my lord and savior; if I want to be a good citizen, I will sing the pledge of allegiance and -- Naw, I'm just kidding, I have nothing.

>> ^zomgunicorns:
so apart from answering some physics questions (according to the Wiki entry on the LHC), is there some end reason why they are doing this? Is there something they can use from the results to benefit mankind or are they just hoping to blow up the universe?


There is unlikely to be any direct benefit to mankind from the LHC aside from increasing our knowledge of the fundamental laws of the universe. I did see an interview with one guy from CERN claiming it could help us develop teleportation-type technology, but I think he was just trying to get the interviewer to care.

High-energy physics does tend to push the technology envelope, though, which often forces advancements that are useful in other industries. The world wide web was born at CERN.

The book (and now movie) Angels & Demons is built around the premise that someone (CERN and a random particle accelerator) managed to:

A. Create enough anti-matter to make a visible amount, or, a big blob of anti-matter. Kinda hard when collisions produce single atoms. Especially if you know what Avogadro's Number means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro's_number

B. Separate that anti-matter from the rest of the atomic mess that would result from the actual generation of the anti-matter.

C. Contain that anti-matter without allowing it to touch any other matter, including pesky matter such as air, tables, containers of any kind, etc. In the book they solve this by creating magical vacuum containers with perfect magnetic fields that suspend the anti-matter in the exact center without allowing it to move in any direction. Since anti-protons would be negatively charged, I suppose that's a technical problem, not a theoretical one.

Anyway, I think Billy has his work cut out for him.

Yeah, the Cern gnome was awesome! Took it much better than the swedish politiican in the TDS socialism expose.

As for the highschool teacher, those guys are in DEMAND over in the U.S of A. The ability to accept such terrible logic is necessary in order to be able to say creationism, I mean I.D. can hold a candle to the body of evidence supporting our current understanding of life and the universe. Fortunately, such people are not in short supply.

Indeed, LHC in da place to be:)

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
I think this video would fit nicely into your LHC playlist.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Big-Bang-Machine-LHC-CERN

I think this video would fit nicely into your LHC playlist.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Big-Bang-Machine-LHC-CERN

>> ^joedirt:
>> ^StukaFox:
Also, Americans, World War 2 was over 60 years ago. The Moon landing was almost 40 years ago. What the hell have you done in the near half-century since then to justify your unbridled and grating arrogance?

How about the internet and modern computing you ungrateful twat (and UAVs and cluster bombs and MOAB and GPS)


The internet eh? O Rly?

From Wikipedia:

'Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA (born 8 June 1955) is an English computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web. On 25 December 1990 he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN. He was ranked Joint First alongside Albert Hofmann in The Telegraph's list of 100 greatest living geniuses. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web's continued development, the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation and he is a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).'

Sure, the concept of packet switching was first documented in New York, and I'm not about to claim the internet for Britain. But that does mean you can't claim the entierty for the US either. The long and the short of it is that it's a joint effort. No one nation can claim the internet. Which is kinda cool, as it emphasises the point of the thing.

On other matters, such as comedy, there's no point in arguing it seeing as its a matter of personal preference, its like arguing what is the best colour or the best number, fucking pointless. I might think that Michael Mcintyre is one of the most promising comedians I've seen in a long time, alot of other people will find him annoying, personal preference is what makes things interesting, arguing your point on it however is like being one of those dipshit hecklers in the crowd. Sit down, shut your mouth and wait for the next act.

Yes, Sir, this was the... Wurst. EPIC FAIL. Of getting my 3 minutes and 17 seconds back. EVAR!

CERN called, they want their Interwebs back.

>> ^charliem:
= CERN invented the internet, they invented MRI, they invented the concentrated x-ray for blasting cancer sites, they invented super conductors, as Brian mentioned, they've also come up with a new method of cooling, they've even invented and built a brand new parallel internet with massive capacity and the ability to have distributed processing / applications running over it (google "The GRID - CERN"), they invented the integrated circuit, the transistor (and as a result, PLENTY of other complex digital structures)...


CERN:

1)invented the internet. False, invented at MIT. Though it is true, Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

2) they invented MRI. False, it was invented at Stony Brook.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging

3) they invented the concentrated x-ray for blasting cancer sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfrey_Hounsfield

4) they invented super conductors. False, discovered by Onnes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heike_Kamerlingh_Onnes

I don't have the time to debunk all of this. Most it is wrong, half truths, or misguided.
Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN is where you can see there accomplishments.

The line for scientific research should never be drawn, not ever.
Look what happened in the arab world when the ruling class at the time around 500 AD decided that questioning the unknown is encroaching on gods doorstep, essentially drawing a line in the sand and saying "no more research, what you don't know now, you never will, cause it doesn't suit our needs".

How many nobel laureates are from the mid-east ?

1...and he shares it with a british fellow.

Seriously, there should never be any kind of discussion where drawing a line in the sand is ever a consideration for research, ever.

CERN invented the internet, they invented MRI, they invented the concentrated x-ray for blasting cancer sites, they invented super conductors, as Brian mentioned, they've also come up with a new method of cooling, they've even invented and built a brand new parallel internet with massive capacity and the ability to have distributed processing / applications running over it (google "The GRID - CERN"), they invented the integrated circuit, the transistor (and as a result, PLENTY of other complex digital structures)...

ALL of those technologies came as a result of EXPLORATION DRIVEN SCIENCE, where noone doing the research at the time had any kind of insight as to what might come of it.

You cant simply sit there and claim that exploration driven science should be stopped because it costs too much, AND you cant foresee its benefits, that's just a failing on your imagination, not on the scientific process.

As much as I admire the older chap for his position within the british academia, it is people with attitudes like him that enable the idiots of this world to hang shit on people with a passion for understanding how it all works.

Once you start saying "maybe thats a bit too far", you open the door for a lot more, just look at what Bush has done to the credibility of scientific reporting by essentially removing the ability for the scientists to report their findings without running it through the "washington filter" first....a disaster.

Man's technology has exceeded his grasp. - 'The World is not Enough'
Zealous Nobel Prize hungry Physicists are racing each other and stopping at nothing to try to find the supposed 'Higgs Boson'(aka God) Particle, among others, and are risking nothing less than the annihilation of the Earth and all Life in endless experiments hoping to prove a theory when urgent tangible problems face the planet. The European Organization for Nuclear Research(CERN) new Large Hadron Collider(LHC) is the world's most powerful atom smasher that will soon be firing subatomic particles at each other at nearly the speed of light to create Miniature Big Bangs producing Micro Black Holes, Strangelets and other potentially cataclysmic phenomena.
Particle physicists have run out of ideas and are at a dead end forcing them to take reckless chances with more and more powerful and costly machines to create new and never-seen-before, unstable and unknown matter while Astrophysicists, on the other hand, are advancing science and knowledge on a daily basis making new discoveries in these same areas by observing the universe, not experimenting with it and with your life.
The LHC is a dangerous gamble as CERN physicist Alvaro De Rújula in the BBC LHC documentary, 'The Six Billion Dollar Experiment', incredibly admits quote, "Will we find the Higgs particle at the LHC? That, of course, is the question. And the answer is, science is what we do when we don't know what we're doing." And CERN spokesmodel Brian Cox follows with this stunning quote, "the LHC is certainly, by far, the biggest jump into the unknown."
The CERN-LHC website Mainpage itself states: "There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions,..." Again, this is because they truly don't know what's going to happen. They are experimenting with forces they don't understand to obtain results they can't comprehend. If you think like most people do that 'They must know what they're doing' you could not be more wrong. Some people think similarly about medical Dr.s but consider this by way of comparison and example from JAMA: "A recent Institute of Medicine report quoted rates estimating that medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people a year in US hospitals." The second part of the CERN quote reads "...but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator,..." A molecularly changed or Black Hole consumed Lifeless World? The end of the quote reads "...as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe." These experiments to date have so far produced infinitely more questions than answers but there isn't a particle physicist alive who wouldn't gladly trade his life to glimpse the "God particle", and sacrifice the rest of us with him. Reason and common sense will tell you that the risks far outweigh any potential(as CERN physicists themselves say) benefits.
This quote from National Geographic exactly sums this "science" up: "That's the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out."
Find out more about that "stuff" below;
http://www.SaneScience.org/
http://www.LHCFacts.org
http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/anon1.htm
http://www.lhcdefense.org/
http://www.lhcconcerns.com
Popular Mechanics - "World's Biggest Science Project Aims to Unlock 'God Particle'" - http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/extreme_machines/4216588.html"

Fixed if your interested in seeing it.

In reply to this comment by swampgirl:
this ones in a black hole *dead

sorry, *dupe
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Large-Hardon-Rap-Music-Video-from-CERN
*discard

>> ^MarineGunrock:
Dupe
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Large-Hardon-Rap-Music-Video-from-
CERN

word! *discard