Comments | neilr: "Large Hadron Collider? What's that?" "Glad you asked..."

neilr

"Large Hadron Collider? What's that?" "Glad you asked..."

Aug 17, 2008 20:05

With an apparently un-credited intro by MC Hawking (Edit: Though we can't, of course, be certain it's actually MC Hawking..):
musical introduction to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (set to go live on Sept 10, but with tests starting before then)!

Edit, 2008-08-17, 10:45pm PDTFrom the Science-can-be-pretty department (a VERY large page--give it ( Read more... )

large hadron collider, lhc, mchawking, science, music

Comments 1

Response to anonymous posting neilr August 20 2008, 00:57:16 UTC

An anonymous poster submitted a link to some articles concerned that the HLC will destroy the Earth. (My settings are to "screen" anonymous posts, which is why their message is not visible.) Unfortunately the way the post was written makes it difficult for me to tell what are the poster's own words, and what are quoted from the articles.

If I recall correctly, there have been a handful of lawsuits on the safety of the collider, and every time a committee has looked at the issue and decided it was not a significant concern. (In fact, a study was released in July 2008 that reviews an earlier study from 2003. The summary (which I must admit is all I've had a chance to read so far) begins as follows (emphasis mine):

The safety of collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was studied in 2003 by the LHC Safety Study Group, who concluded that they presented no danger. Here we review their 2003 analysis in light of additional experimental results and theoretical understanding, which enable us to confirm, update and extend the ( ... )