GUYS … guys … guys. I’ve been meaning to say something about the LHC (that’s Large Hadron Collider) because I don’t make it known very often, but I’m a huge nerd for science and this thing fascinates the hell out of me. Even the so-called controversy about it - that it’ll cause the collapse the Earth - is interesting to note, because it drives home how ambitious the experiment is.
The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator, and it’s been built to help scientists ascertain whether or not the current model for particle physics is correct, or how correct it is, or - who knows! This machine, when it’s activated, will help answer a lot of questions that are at the core of theoretical physics. It’s super exciting.
So anyway, I stumbled across this link this morning, and it starts out pretty terrible, but once the girl starts rapping you begin to realize that they RAPPED OUT AN EXPLANATION OF HOW THE LHC WORKS. That’s awesome. The fact that she can keep speaking so fast with complicated vocabulary is pretty cool. Also, she’s obviously an employee at the LHC Commenter SteveH points out that she’s actually a grad student who got access to the facility - you can read about it here - so don’t try to break in there and make one yourself.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I say NAH to the LHC answering all of particle physics questions, or destroying the world. It will maybe give a little understanding, but will leave more questions for the egg heads to ponder. That or the mountain range over it might blow up on the slightest odds.
The ‘controversy’ is entirely media manufactured. Only crackpots are saying that the LHC will destroy the world. And these same crackpots were saying the same things right before the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) came online. But we seemed to have survived.
i think the controversy was created after talks of creating a black hole had come up. not sure if those contacts and information gathered were valid, but that’s easy enough to blow it out of proportion.
i saw a documentary on the LHC a few weeks, maybe a month, ago on it’s construction and why. it was all pretty interesting, but the thing that stood out to me is that much of the theories that come from these experiments can’t properly be proven with these tests. it seemed more like speculation than anything else.
Is there a Higgs Boson?
And, yes, the controversy is the same 1 in some large number probability of creating something that destroys the world. They predicted the same kinds of things before every major physics experiment in the past century. Some physicists gave a 1 in 10,000 chance of the first atomic bomb igniting the entire atmosphere when detonated and killing everyone in a global firestorm.
I for one am seriously excited about the LHC - I saw the construction a few years back, so I’m really excited to see it all actually come together.
Plus that rap was awesome- takes me back towards the days of Conjunction Junction, and I’m Just a Bill
So no black hole will open up and swallow the entire planet?
This is going to put a dent in my plans to party like it’s 1999 (even though I did party like that back in 1999).
We can still pretend to party like it’s the end of the universe, but we just act all surprised when we all don’t suddenly die (- or in the case of 1999, have toasters explode, airplanes drop out of the sky and traffic lights inexplicably turn off). And that rap was freaking awesome.
That was surprisingly well done and she’s actually got a decent voice for it, plus is was actually kind of funny. Definitely looking forward to seeing what discoveries the LHC brings to light. Proof of dark matter would be absolutely awesome!
According to current theory, no black hole will swallow the planet unless it’s bigger than 3000 km in diameter; any smaller than that and it’ll collapse on itself so fast it can’t do any measurable damage. Now, if the entire planet was compressed to a black hole it’d have a diameter of maybe 1 centimeter. How small any black holes generated by one itty bitty particle accelerator would be, we can only imagine.
There’s really no risk of it making any sort of cosmic event. The rumors of such are based on a monumental overestimation of our ability to affect the environment. We just don’t operate anywhere near that scale.
I just like pointing that out.
I don’t know where you got that first piece of information. A black hole 3000 km in size would contain the mass of 500 suns and live effectively forever (it’s lifetime is calculated as about 10^66 times the current age of the universe). The energy of a typical LHC collision, however, corresponds to a mass much, much smaller than 1 kilogram. Any black hole created would be many orders of magnitude smaller than the width of an atomic nucleus, and would evaporate almost instantaneously. That’s the main reason we don’t fear the creation of black holes at the LHC.
Oh my god. I was certain this was a prank and we were about to be Rick Roll’d or something. It’s…it’s an actual rap song written about, about physics.
My brain is trying to crawl out of my ear.
Hahaha, it’s great. XD
Actually, she doesn’t work at the LHC. She’s a grad student/writer here in the US, but received special permission to do the video at the LHC though.
Here’s an article about it: LHC article with some more details about it.
Thanks for the heads up! I corrected the post and gave you credit. :)
She says: ‘”Rap and physics are culturally miles apart,” McAlpine, a science writer at CERN, wrote to the Lansing State Journal in an e-mail last week, “and I find it amusing to try and throw them together.”‘
Cultural anti-matter with YouTube as the Collider.
But is there, at the heart of the LHC, a really hot cup of tea?
I’m hesitant about anyone who messes with particle physics that say “nothing could possibly go wrong”. that’s called foreshadowing.
Well, it could go wrong. The thing could break and it’d be really expensive to fix.
Well, looks like the end of the world is only 1 month and 2 days away! (yea you ain’t gonna die wednesday, it takes a month approx to aim the beams correctly.)
CERN has done this several times before on smaller scales and older LHC’s, but there was never and issues (with the exception of a large earthquake from what I recall was the collision date and time. prolly unrelated)
Well, look at it this way, if this works out we may some day be dimension hopping, which I personally wouldn’t mind, but if I ever come across a dimension with cat girls I’m gone and there ain’t no getting me back.
Wrong use of dimension. They mean dimension as in, the fourth dimension being time, the fifth dimension being whatever. Not dimension as in alternate reality.
Nirdy Chix are Hot!
Sorry had to be said.
Here is a link from a group apposed to the LHC. I was listening to an interview with Dr. Wagner on Coast to Coast AM this evening. It’ll be an interesting experiment either way.
http://www.lhcdefense.org/
I realize I forgot to paste the link…..I’ll go back to feeling totally stupid now =)
Freaking awesome! Much better than Soulja Boy.
AHHHHH NOOOO! WE WILL ALL DIE! THE GODS HAVE FORSAKEN US TO THE BLACK HOLE!
Or something to the effect.
OMG! They activated the LHC and now I’m stuck traveling back through time to who knows when! I seem to have stopped momentarily at this point. Maybe I can warn you all to tell them not to press the….OH NO!!! HERE I GO AGAIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnn……..
Would anyone really care after the event if it did destroy the world?
Better question is… would anyone notice?