Such things should be banned....creating a mini big bang? but not know what's going to happen?.....

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...1-ArticlePage2

By Jeremy Lovell


NORWICH (Reuters) - Deep underground on the Franco-Swiss border someone will throw a switch next year to start one of the most ambitious experiments in history, probing the secrets of the universe and possibly finding new dimensions.


The Large Hadron Collider -- a 27-kilometer long circular particle accelerator -- at the CERN experimental facility near Geneva will smash protons into each other at unimaginable speeds trying to replicate in miniature the events of the Big Bang.


"These beams will have the kinetic energy of an aircraft carrier slammed into the size of a zero on a 20 pence piece," Brian Cox of Manchester University told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.



"We are going to make mini Big Bangs. There has never been such a jump in particle physics. It will go into an area that we don't really understand," he added.


The fundamental goal of the massive machine is to answer the basic but crucial question of how matter was created at the birth of the universe.
"We don't know what 95 percent of the universe is made of -- which is a bit embarrassing for a subject that claims to be fundamental," Cox said. "There is Dark Matter. It is all over the place but we have no idea what it is."
DARK ENERGY


"There is also something called Dark Energy, and that is an even bigger question. It makes up about 70 percent of the energy in the universe but again we have absolutely no idea what it is.

"It is an incredibly exciting machine. It will be turned on next year and run for at least a decade and probably 20 years and the first results -- if the machine behaves itself -- should start coming out within a year," he added.


If the theories are correct, the machine will create tiny Black Holes that evaporate and possibly even find particles that offer evidence that the three dimensions known to mankind are just a fraction of those that actually exist.
"That would be an even bigger headline than the Black Holes. It could be that there is a whole new universe a millimeter away from our heads but at right-angles to the three dimensions that are here," Cox said.


"That would be a real paradigm shift -- our relegation to a little sheet in a multi-dimensional universe. That kind of thing is really profound and will capture the imagination that perhaps the origin of mass won't, although it should.



"For the first time in many decades we have built a machine that exceeds our powers of prediction. New processes are bound to be discovered," he added. "We are truly journeying into unknown territory."


Cox dismissed worries that by adventuring into the unknown and creating tiny Black Holes, the machine could even threaten to destroy the planet.
"The probability is at the level of 10 to the minus 40," he said.

Why do I get the feeling that one day, humans are all going to blow ourselves to hell and beyond, just by sheer stupidity or accident?

Because it happens?

This is the reason why the most intelligent people on the planet should be imprisoned and forced to figure out more benign questions, like how is Paris Hilton popular, what is the significance in the human pinky toe, and how can we really tell if it's not butter?

But seriously, this sounds like one of those "Let's see what this will do because we can do it" type of situations, I've been in those situations tons of times, and let me tell you, more often then not, the "seeing what this will do" part involved huge explosions.

Yep it's human nature to be curious, even morbidly curious. Somethings that you are curious about you may never tell anyone that your curious about it in fear of looking like some sort of monster or sicko. In essence though this curiousity is the down fall of man...curiousity killed the cat....I think that quote is a bit off, shouldn't it be "Curiousity Blew Up the Human" lol.

I know when I've personally asked the questions into the unknown it's always invaulved injury to myself or a friend lol. Such questions as "What if I did this" or "What would happen when you put this with that" is how the show jackass was made. For the most part the answer to your feeling Adri is yes....we will become extinct not because of global warming, not b/c of war, not because of a bomb...but just because we ask to many F**King questions that don't really need answers cause for the most part everyone has thier own theory as to what the right answer is to a question.

For example, people ask "Why does bread always fall butter side down"

Some would answer it is because the butter side weighs more cause the buttered side to fall downward cause of gravitational pull. I! however believe that it's just cause dustmites like butter and they use thier advanced technologies to flip the bread around b4 it hits the floor...YES I SAID DUSTMITE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES...what we can make blackholes but Dustmites can't have advance tech? sure whatever! lol

I say let the smart ones do whatever they want, its when dumber people like us get involved that it gets used to evil things.

If something goes wrong here in this thing, you wanna bet 10 bucks its the janitors fault for tripping over a wire

Nah, I have to disagree there. I have known people who were sooooo smart, it totally took any common sense right out of them. Almost like their brain was so full of smart-type things that they didn't have room for stuff like you shouldn't go off and leave the iron sitting on your shirt for an hour.

And yeah... I've done the "what happens if I try THIS" thing before myself. That usually ended up with something painful. It's when people try to imitate god-like powers that I start getting nervous.

Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.