Someone emailed this to me earlier. It brought a tear to my eye..

(Make sure you have your sound on.)

And i thought that this post was going to be about the start up of the Large Hadron Collider, my kids all came home from school talking about how its going to be the end of the world yadda yadda, black holes big bang, yadda yadda. It was fun to give them the facts to go back to their teachers (primary school) with. Being a science student i take great interest in such undertakings even if i think physics theorists are wack jobs from another realm.

O NOES, da large-hadron-collider will KILL US!!!!!11!one11!

Physics theorists are wack jobs from another realm. I'm all for it if they can figure out warp drive though ;)

well as far as thats concerned while i dont have any great fear of it i still think its eh hieght of arrogance for them to assume they know ANYTHING about what black holes (micro or otherwise) would do if created by it

Err, isn't it pretty obvious what a black hole would do?

Well, No, we don't know for certain what black hols actually do. We only have scientific speculation as to what they do.

They're masses in space that have such strong gravitational pull that even light doesn't escape. We have observed something out there that has this effect. So, err, put something with so much gravity near us and yeah, I think that "Bad Things" are almost certain to happen. Even if we are not 100% certain about this, calling it the "height of arrogance" seems a bit much.

Black holes are extremely powerful gravity wells which we're assuming is caused by an enormous amount of mass which has collapsed in on itself so that all the gravity forces are focused in a single point. That boils down to the idea that matter is composed of over 99% empty space, because the majority of that space lies between the opposing charged fields of the nucleus and the electron shells. Strip off the electrons (or otherwise remove the space), and you pack a LOT more mass into the same physical space.

There could be other reasons for their enormous gravity footprint. I'm not a physics geek, so all my guesses are pure science fiction. :)

I think most of the fear comes from the assumption that if we somehow create a micro black hole, it will act just like the full size ones and begin to absorb everything around it until nothing is left within range. That might be true, but it may not grow (so the range might be a few millimeters), or it might be unstable and disappear, or the aliens on the other side might get annoyed and close it.

Oh, and I second the vote to sacrifice a few cities and km2 of land mass if it gets us warp drive. :)

That's sort of the crux of the argument, they are smashing protons together with have a mass of 1.67262158 x 10-27 kilograms, if current theory is correct and black holes are created by a huge mass collapsing on itself, then these protons are missing an awful lot of the mass needed and probably a great deal of the energy required to create black holes.

It'll be interesting to see what sort of discoveries are made, and just how much of "current theory" is either confirmed or disproved as a result of it. :smile:

Yeah i can't wait to see some of the initial analysis when they start to really smash things together. I read a number of science magazines and enjoy when they have some theoretical physics articles even tho i think that most of the theorists and their theories are totally whack. Sort of makes me wonder how many of these guys will be out of jobs if any real discovery or advancement is made towards a united theory and in a few years from now we might just know.

The question was not whether or not it was possible to create one – the question was, assuming it magically sprung into existence, what effects would ensue…

Also I think you're being a little unfair to the physicists especially when theoretical physics is not your area of expertise, but, well, that's just me. After all, let's not forget that Copernicus and Galileo were considered "totally whack", too… :thinking:

Having been only 12 or so when 9/11 happened, I essentially "grew up" during the height of what I will, for now, call Neoconservative PatrioHype. It is really sad, because I now realize that I cannot see someone wanting to display patriotism without assuming there is a subtext, a hidden agenda, or some kind of argument that will imply I am a bad American for my political stance.

I have no idea as to the context of the video. I have no idea who created it. I have no idea why. But because of the events which unfolded during what were critical years of my life, I have become very skeptical to the very idea of patriotism. Sad? Yes. I just don't know what is sadder, the tactic which caused it, or the fact that it worked.

Now, I know, I'm totally going off topic (oh, wait, no, that's just everyone else), but it interests me greatly. Does patriotism mean supporting the Iraq war? Does it mean liking country songs? Does it mean putting American flags on your truck as it speeds down the highway burning five miles per gallon of gas (mostly from countries who support and fund terror). Does it mean "staying the course"? Does it mean supporting our "commander in chief"? Or does it just mean a willingness to do whatever is best for both your country and the people who inhabit it?

I used to think the latter. But who knows? The message sent by certain members of the political scene for the last five years was that Patriotism was something very different, and to be honest, the thing they tried to turn patriotism into was something that was very bad and so, judging patriotism by its new standard, myself and many I know, began to dislike it. Not in the conscious hating of America or anything, but in the "I get a bad feeling in my stomache when I see a flag sticker on someone's truck because it usually means they support everything I despise in humanity."

I would say I "support our troops", but what does that mean? I don't want out troops to die. I don't want them to be harmed. I want the best for them, but at the same time I don't necessarily support what they are doing…does that mean I don't "support our troops"? I really don't know anymore.

It is true that I shouldn't feel this way about patriotism, but I'm not really sure I had a choice in the matter. Patriotism was redefined to something dark by a political powerhouse, and the choices were to support the dark concept, or be an "enemy" of patriotism. I have a feeling those times are over, but they are the times which shapes most of my teenage years, and I doubt I'll ever recover from the damage done to my sense of patriotism.

Patriotism is not unquestioning support of whoever happens to be in charge, nor is it painting your entire house, dog and cat in red, white and blue. Some people seem to think it is, and that anything else is unpatriotic. That is silly, if not kind of scary sometimes. I think that's more or less enough said on that.

Just do your own thing: love your/our country for what it stands for, not for what a certain group of people – whatever that group may be for you – has wanted for it.

JMS put it very well in an episode of Babylon 5 (which predicted an awful lot of where we are now, back in 1987).

The Nightwatch was shutting down a shop in the bazaar on charges of sedition because it sold figures that parodied the current president of Earth. Captain Sheridan put a stop to their actions citing that there is a difference between the Office of the President, and the man currently occupying that office.

A great deal of what has happened in the last 8 years has been the result of the actions of the people who comprise our current administration. You can dislike those actions, and even those people, without losing respect for the system they work within.

Being patriotic is about wanting what's best for your country and the people that comprise it. That isn't always what they want, nor it it always what those in charge want.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail like Brinson did, but I too suffer from something similar to Brinson. Mine was caused by being 16 when the towers were attacked, growing up during that period, and then joining the military because at the time, with all the hype, I thought it was the easiest way to support my country and still make a living.

I was wrong about it being the easiest way. I'm now 23, out of the military on a medical discharge, and if I'm not extremely careful in my day-to-day life, I could permanently disable myself by pushing myself to hard and causing further unrepairable damage to the musculoskeletal structure of my hip on the right side. And when I say unrepairable, I don't mean that I could get a hip replacement and be fine. There's nothing wrong with the bones. The problem is that there's damage to the muscles, tendons, and cartilage which you'll be hard pressed to find a doctor willing to work on because of the monumental chances of causing permanent damage, so I live with it.

Many might say I have a rather cynical view of the government because of how I ended up. And they'd be right. I don't think the government has been doing it's job. I feel sick to my stomach when I see "Neoconservative PatrioHype," and I bothers me to see that the government is unwilling to do the things it needs to do to fix the problems in this country. But I'm not going into that, because I don't want to.

For sure i am being unfair on them, but as someone who shares the popparian view on what constitutes science i do not see how many of these theories can be directly falsified and an unfalsifiable hypothesis is just not science. The LHC will test some of the competing theories, the Higgs Boson being one such prime example, but as for things like Super Symmetry, Parallel Universes, String Theory and a number of other theories, the best we can hope for is that they find the Higgs and they get consigned to the anneals of history.

The difference between Copernicus and Galileo and some of the radical physics theories is that the former we able to design experiments that could confirm or reject the hypothesis, where as the latter is about changing complex mathematical algorithms that really cannot be tested in anyway.

My degree majors are in Environmental and Geo science, so the physics i need to understand revolve mostly around earth systems and processes, but i have had some lectures on the topics above as well that left my head swimming. I find it interesting and fun, can't wait to see some initial data from the LHC, one can only hope that its somewhat conclusive. Wouldn't want to have to wait for the big brother of the LHC for an answer.

Since we're dropping names, his name is spelled Popper, not Poppar… :wink: As for string theory etc., how exactly did you establish that it is impossible to falsify them? We don't know how now, but that doesn't mean we never will. Besides, a lot of them are still at the idea stage and are not meant to be full, definitive and conclusive theories. Calling them whack just because they don't explain the universe is not terribly productive. That attitude would have us stop science as soon as we don't understand what's going on.

Anyhow, if you believe that there are complex mathematical algorithms, then falsification is "simply" finding that the universe does not follow those algorithms…

Back to the topic now: one thing that really gets to me me are people who are (nominally) pro-military and yet are content with the dire situation of many veterans. The "easy part" of supporting the troops is running around saying ra-ra-ra. But really supporting the troops means setting up structures to help them with whatever problems they have when they return home. The percentage of homeless people in San Francisco that are veterans is shockingly high – 30% or more as memory serves. The number of underfunded, understaffed and/or underequipped veterans' hospitals is shameful.

Patriotism is kind of similar: jumping up and down waving a flag or singing songs or what-have-you are nice and all but they're empty of content. The real patriot is the one who translates his/her sentiments into action, be it by taking voting seriously, denouncing something they feel to be wrong, working for change, etc. </soap box>

Brinson, thank you for a very touching post. My daughter's about your age.

Rather than my own views, I offer you this - the antidote for current events is history.

With that in mind, the name for what you fear is "McCarthyism". The U.S. has been there and done that, but the t-shirt was used as a bandage in Viet Nam.