The Soapboxx
Thursday, November 23, 2006
We Can't Stop Man's Onward March, But One Day It's Bound To Go Horribly Wrong
In November 2007, the Hadron Collider, located in an enormous cave 100 metres below the ground near the French-Swiss border, and the largest and most powerful particle accelerator ever built, will be switched on.
And at that moment, literally anything could happen.
Should we be worried? Perhaps. A particle accelerator is a man-made device that uses electric fields to propel electrically-charged particles to high speeds, and then contains them with the use of really powerful magnets. It comes in two basic forms - linear and circular - and the Hadron Collider is, as I understand it, the former. Think Ghostbusters, think Egon Spengler, and think proton packs, and you'll be somewhat in the right area. Just much, much bigger.
The Hadron Collider is - get this - 27 kilometers in circumference, looks frighteningly like the stardrive in Event Horizon, and can charge up to seven Tera-electron Volts. To give you some idea of exactly what that means, a Tera-electron Volt, or TEV as we scientists like to refer to it, is a lot of light bulbs. If you're reading this in the UK, tera means one billion. In the US, it's one trillion, which is even more impressive. I have no idea what it is on the French-Swiss border, but it's safe to say it's shorthand for 'bloody massive'. And then you multiply the whole lot by seven. Which gives you a total that I'm pretty sure rivals even Coronation Street's kettle peak.
The whole thing has been developed by CERN, which is the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Located just outside Geneva, CERN is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, and is also acknowledged as the birthplace of the World Wide Web. It has twenty member states, which includes the UK and practically all of Europe, and has some 3000 full-time employees, as well as utilising the services of 6,500 scientists and engineers around the world. The project costs about £5bn, which includes an annual retainer of £78m from Blighty (the second biggest investor behind the Germans), and requires the computing power of roughly 30,000 PCs to operate. It's all incredibly James Bond, and I bet even now some wannabe super-villain is figuring out a way to use the entire thing for his own evil ends.
But maybe he won't have to. You see, the problem with the Hadron Collider is nobody really knows what will happen when they switch it on. It might do nothing. Or, it might, as they hope, do something else. Something much bigger.
When the Collider is active, it will fire protons in opposite directions around the 27 kilometer ring at 11,000 times per second - a velocity approaching the speed of light - which will repeatedly collide with each other (hence the name.) This will create an energy field that will rival that of the moments after The Big Bang. Yes, The Big Bang. In theory, this has the power to create black holes. Lots of tiny ones, in fact, that will probably blink in and out of existence.
But what the Euro-boffins are really after is definitive proof of the existence of the 'God particle', which also has the slightly-less sensationalist name of Higgs Boson. First theorised in 1964 at Edinburgh University by British physicist Peter Higgs, the Higgs Boson is a generally-accepted but as of yet unobserved hypothesis that seeks to explain how particles acquire their mass. If found to exist, it will validate the 'Standard Model of Physics', which is a very big deal, as absolute knowledge of this will give us insight into how everything is made. It will allow us to shape and redefine matter.
The scientists are so sure that the Hadron Collider will work that if it fails to observe the Higgs Boson at work, then clearly it does not exist. So, either way, we're going to come away with some useful knowledge.
But it's the X-factor that bothers me.
A fear of the unknown is total duality. While it can be extremely counter-productive in human relations and matters of social function, it's bloody useful when it comes to exploration. On August 2, 1492, when Christopher Columbus departed from Parlos in search of the New World, you can be sure he was bricking himself. They still believed in sea-monsters back then, and God knows he probably half-suspected that the world actually was flat, and that he might sail off the end.
Sir Francis Drake probably felt likewise when he decided to have a go at circumnavigating the globe, but his efforts led to the establishment of Drake's Passage, a now much-used body of water found between the southern tip of South America and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. Drake actually ended up dying of dysentery, which is one of those examples where irony really makes the world seem a better place.
Sir Henry Morton Stanley, when he set off to find David Livingstone in Zanzibar in 1869, required the services of no less than 200 porters and thousands and thousands of pounds. Two years later, he greeted his discovery with a tongue-in-cheek "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", as the two of them were clearly the only white chaps for hundreds of miles. Then the fear got to him, and rallying behind the observation that "the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision", he callously beat and slaughtered scores of them. Which clearly was the right thing to do at the time, as nobody seems to remember that at all.
I suspect that Sir Edmond Hilary did kind of give some thought to the fact that he had a pretty reasonable chance of dying when he ascended Mount Everest in 1953. Likewise, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 21, 1969, you can bet anything you like that he looked both ways for aliens before he even got off of the ladder.
It makes sense to be slightly apprehensive when entering absolutely brand new territory, because that caution, that fear, keeps you alive. Which is why I'm slightly concerned that everyone involved with the Hadron Collider, and that includes the media reportage surrounding it, are quite so blasé about the consequences. Yes, we might discover great new things, and we might finally observe the Higgs Boson at work, and this knowledge might let us go on to work all kinds of wonders, including the slowing of climate change, anti-gravity propulsion engines, tractor beams and a self-cooling can of Coke. All of these would be great, and I welcome them.
But what if they've got it all wrong? Or rather, what if they've got the physics right, but the outcome wrong? While there's half a chance that nothing happens at all, what if instead of lots of tiny, winking black holes, we get one big, sod-off monster one, that simply refuses to go away? Surely a 27 kilometer Collider can produce a 1km black hole, and if that happens, Switzerland is toast. Which might not be so bad in a social sense, but then the United Nations would get involved and American would invade North Korea. And Germany would probably have a third and final go, too, just to save face.
What if they've got it really wrong, and the entire thing implodes on itself, reversing the conditions that caused The Big Bang and actually undoing the universe? How ironic would that be? I'm no expert, but I've given this five minutes thought and I'm pretty sure it could happen. You better start stockpiling tins of beans to be safe. And buy a decent coat; space is cold.
If you watch Lost, you'll remember the incident at the end of the second season when a few of the islanders struggled with the purpose of the hatch and ended up a making a decision that almost wiped everyone from existence. And if TV has taught us anything, it's to always go with your gut. So, if you're out in the garden in November next year, and you see a big purple flash that fills the sky, you can be pretty sure that the chaps at CERN got it all horribly wrong.
And at that moment, literally anything could happen.
Should we be worried? Perhaps. A particle accelerator is a man-made device that uses electric fields to propel electrically-charged particles to high speeds, and then contains them with the use of really powerful magnets. It comes in two basic forms - linear and circular - and the Hadron Collider is, as I understand it, the former. Think Ghostbusters, think Egon Spengler, and think proton packs, and you'll be somewhat in the right area. Just much, much bigger.
The Hadron Collider is - get this - 27 kilometers in circumference, looks frighteningly like the stardrive in Event Horizon, and can charge up to seven Tera-electron Volts. To give you some idea of exactly what that means, a Tera-electron Volt, or TEV as we scientists like to refer to it, is a lot of light bulbs. If you're reading this in the UK, tera means one billion. In the US, it's one trillion, which is even more impressive. I have no idea what it is on the French-Swiss border, but it's safe to say it's shorthand for 'bloody massive'. And then you multiply the whole lot by seven. Which gives you a total that I'm pretty sure rivals even Coronation Street's kettle peak.
The whole thing has been developed by CERN, which is the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Located just outside Geneva, CERN is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, and is also acknowledged as the birthplace of the World Wide Web. It has twenty member states, which includes the UK and practically all of Europe, and has some 3000 full-time employees, as well as utilising the services of 6,500 scientists and engineers around the world. The project costs about £5bn, which includes an annual retainer of £78m from Blighty (the second biggest investor behind the Germans), and requires the computing power of roughly 30,000 PCs to operate. It's all incredibly James Bond, and I bet even now some wannabe super-villain is figuring out a way to use the entire thing for his own evil ends.
But maybe he won't have to. You see, the problem with the Hadron Collider is nobody really knows what will happen when they switch it on. It might do nothing. Or, it might, as they hope, do something else. Something much bigger.
When the Collider is active, it will fire protons in opposite directions around the 27 kilometer ring at 11,000 times per second - a velocity approaching the speed of light - which will repeatedly collide with each other (hence the name.) This will create an energy field that will rival that of the moments after The Big Bang. Yes, The Big Bang. In theory, this has the power to create black holes. Lots of tiny ones, in fact, that will probably blink in and out of existence.
But what the Euro-boffins are really after is definitive proof of the existence of the 'God particle', which also has the slightly-less sensationalist name of Higgs Boson. First theorised in 1964 at Edinburgh University by British physicist Peter Higgs, the Higgs Boson is a generally-accepted but as of yet unobserved hypothesis that seeks to explain how particles acquire their mass. If found to exist, it will validate the 'Standard Model of Physics', which is a very big deal, as absolute knowledge of this will give us insight into how everything is made. It will allow us to shape and redefine matter.
The scientists are so sure that the Hadron Collider will work that if it fails to observe the Higgs Boson at work, then clearly it does not exist. So, either way, we're going to come away with some useful knowledge.
But it's the X-factor that bothers me.
A fear of the unknown is total duality. While it can be extremely counter-productive in human relations and matters of social function, it's bloody useful when it comes to exploration. On August 2, 1492, when Christopher Columbus departed from Parlos in search of the New World, you can be sure he was bricking himself. They still believed in sea-monsters back then, and God knows he probably half-suspected that the world actually was flat, and that he might sail off the end.
Sir Francis Drake probably felt likewise when he decided to have a go at circumnavigating the globe, but his efforts led to the establishment of Drake's Passage, a now much-used body of water found between the southern tip of South America and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. Drake actually ended up dying of dysentery, which is one of those examples where irony really makes the world seem a better place.
Sir Henry Morton Stanley, when he set off to find David Livingstone in Zanzibar in 1869, required the services of no less than 200 porters and thousands and thousands of pounds. Two years later, he greeted his discovery with a tongue-in-cheek "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", as the two of them were clearly the only white chaps for hundreds of miles. Then the fear got to him, and rallying behind the observation that "the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision", he callously beat and slaughtered scores of them. Which clearly was the right thing to do at the time, as nobody seems to remember that at all.
I suspect that Sir Edmond Hilary did kind of give some thought to the fact that he had a pretty reasonable chance of dying when he ascended Mount Everest in 1953. Likewise, when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 21, 1969, you can bet anything you like that he looked both ways for aliens before he even got off of the ladder.
It makes sense to be slightly apprehensive when entering absolutely brand new territory, because that caution, that fear, keeps you alive. Which is why I'm slightly concerned that everyone involved with the Hadron Collider, and that includes the media reportage surrounding it, are quite so blasé about the consequences. Yes, we might discover great new things, and we might finally observe the Higgs Boson at work, and this knowledge might let us go on to work all kinds of wonders, including the slowing of climate change, anti-gravity propulsion engines, tractor beams and a self-cooling can of Coke. All of these would be great, and I welcome them.
But what if they've got it all wrong? Or rather, what if they've got the physics right, but the outcome wrong? While there's half a chance that nothing happens at all, what if instead of lots of tiny, winking black holes, we get one big, sod-off monster one, that simply refuses to go away? Surely a 27 kilometer Collider can produce a 1km black hole, and if that happens, Switzerland is toast. Which might not be so bad in a social sense, but then the United Nations would get involved and American would invade North Korea. And Germany would probably have a third and final go, too, just to save face.
What if they've got it really wrong, and the entire thing implodes on itself, reversing the conditions that caused The Big Bang and actually undoing the universe? How ironic would that be? I'm no expert, but I've given this five minutes thought and I'm pretty sure it could happen. You better start stockpiling tins of beans to be safe. And buy a decent coat; space is cold.
If you watch Lost, you'll remember the incident at the end of the second season when a few of the islanders struggled with the purpose of the hatch and ended up a making a decision that almost wiped everyone from existence. And if TV has taught us anything, it's to always go with your gut. So, if you're out in the garden in November next year, and you see a big purple flash that fills the sky, you can be pretty sure that the chaps at CERN got it all horribly wrong.
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