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In just under a month the LHC will have its first injection beam sent into the collider and sometime in October the beams will be sent running into each other in opposite directions so as to introduce a higher relative velocity (rather than a single moving beam hitting a stationary one). The goal of this multi-billion dollar, international collaboration is multifold, the most popular of which is finding the Higgs boson, the theorized elementary particle that gives mass to all the others. So the LHC will fire streams of protons into each other and their resulting collission will split them into their constituent particles. Special relativity says that the faster something moves the more mass it acquires, and also that mass and energy are related; a more quickly moving beam of hadrons (particles made of quarks like protons, for instance) would then have more energy than a slower moving one. We are now dealing with a machine capable of producing the highest output energies made by man which may result in some rather interesting results unseen since, as the popular media likes to spout, "since just a few instants after the Big Bang". So then there's this big fear circling the experiments like micro black holes being created and engulfing the Earth or strangelet creation which, when they come in to contact with other matter, turn everything into more strangelets.
First, micro black holes should evaporate according to something called Hawking radiation (named after the famous British android), that is, over a finite amount of time, in this case incredibly small, the micro black hole would cease to exist and pose us no problems. Then the popular question seems to be, "well what if Hawking radiation is wrong and the black hole just keeps sucking things in?" Well, then we would have a problem, no? This would be true, of course, if it were not for the fact that the creation of micro black holes and the theory of Hawking radiation are interrelated altogether; that is, if micro black holes are even possible to create in the LHC then Hawking radiation must be true and must follow, if Hawking radiation is not true then black holes are no possible at the LHC.
Strangelets (particles of nearly equal numbers of u-, d-, and s-type quarks) are actively being searched in the US at the RHIC and have been since 2000 but none have ever been found. The LHC will use hadrons as heavy as those at the RHIC at times and, due to the higher energy of the LHC, strangelets would be more difficult to produce as strange matter is more difficult to create in higher energies (the popular analogy is strangelet creation in high energies being akin to creating ice in high-temperature water).
So micro black holes are irrelevent and strangelet production is barely an issue. Stop worrying. Science is fun.
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| | Posted 7/8/2008 7:11 AM - 49 views - 4 comments
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Well, not really... Your absolutely right in all of your assertions and I absolutely love hearing an educated person talk about physics.
I was discussing Einstein's theory of general relativity with my mom's new boyfriend, and he actually said "All the theory of relativity says is that when you're traveling at the speed of light, everything else will seem slower..." I wanted to smack him because everyone believed it, and I just didn't feel like arguing with a fool.
I wonder if one day we'll ever be able to apply any of this knowledge.