What will be the result of the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider?

And we all should have one of these superconducting key rings:
http://mediaarchive.cern.ch/MediaArchive/Photo/Public/2008/0803006/0803006_01/0803006_01-A4-at-144-dpi.jpg

Nice! ...I want one ;)

"Unexpected consequences result in the end of life"

does that mean all life? might be hard to collect in that case.

yes, ironman288, all life*. and yes, ironman288, that could get difficult.

* all life on earth or all life at all everywhere even http://www.hubdub.com/e/Market/m5358/

If all life is wiped out and you have at least a moment to ponder your demise, you will at least know the final Hubdub settlement would have been in your favor.

LOL, you guys are hilarious, I especially liked the two, JUST Geneva destroyed and JUST Switzerland destroyed, LOL :-D

when they turn this really big toy on it will create a black hole that inverts the earth into the forth dimension. in this dimension lucidstate will be the president of the united states and meanderingsearcher becomes a concretethought

I've always wondered what it would be like to fall into a black hole. I imagine it would be excruciatingly painful as the tidal stresses tore apart your body ... like being drawn-and-quartered on steroids. Not that I want it to happen or anything, lots of things are _way_ better to speculate about than to experience, I'm just an SF fan who's wondered about this particular demise.

kruijs, are you trying to give the BBC preference between these two, overlapping, options:
1) "No Damage" (or similar) explicitly reported
2) Results reported without referring to damage

I could definitely see some media sources reporting option 1 and others option 2. If the BBC holds trump it's probably okay, although I suppose different articles on bbc.co.uk could report it differently as well.

lets try to settle it with the first report published to avoid that, ok?

"Unexpected consequences result in the end of life" Presuambly, this is to say "impending end to all life on earth"? Could be a bit ambigous, with options 3, 4, 5. Although if you win this bet, then what are you doing checking Hubdub afterwards?

Heh... This is a great market, yes it might be ambiguous to settle as "unexpected consequences result in the end of life," but who said all hubdubers are lifeforms....?

Regards,

Ryan
Hubdub Category Editor

I've added the video from the stop the LHC campaign. Not sure if I fully agree with the campaign but the video is cool.

"The outlook is sunny for CERN now that all the sectors are cold. The mood is growing feverish in anticipation of the LHC start-up!"
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/article?issue=32/2008&name=CERNBulletin&category=News%20Articles&number=1&ln=en

LHC Cooldown Status
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/

... Temperatures between 1.7 and 1.9 K, wow, ...

Incredible

CERN to start up super-accelerator on September 10

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gBOsea79dkKBPYuLx_bERD8XsLmQ

Will Switzerland survive?

The real purpose of LHC is its a plot by the French, German, and other European nations tax authorities to destroy Switzerland as a tax haven.... lol

RESULT: The governments involved will wish they'd spent their billions on another TGV line instead.

hehe - kruijs has just asked me to embed another video, it's the LHC rap - very funny!

Fantastic Photos of the Collider
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/the_large_hadron_collider.html

I will be sorry to see this market settle - either way, simply for the comic relief that news stories have provided.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml
Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, adding: "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

Thanks for the Links Chatarra.
You're right, this has been fun to follow.

Yes - fabulous links Chatarra, thanks for that.

Hopefully the switch-on of the LHC will yield a whole bunch of new questions :-)

Scientists receive death threats over 'end-of-world' experiment

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/09/08/scicern108.xml

Is anyone else out there?

Google's home page is honoring the Large Hadron Collider
This image will probably not be showing for long - (seen 9-10-08)
http://www.google.com/

haha - that's cute. And of course, if google gets sucked into a black hole, we're all following!

The good news - the LHC has been switched on and the world seems to be more or less intact. However, this question asks: What will happen when the "first beams are injected" AND the "first collisions" are triggered.

So, we will have to wait a little longer for high energy collisions to occur before we settle this question

The question seemed to first ask whether when the machine was turned on there would be reported damage. Now it seems we will have to wait until high energy collisions occur. I would think that in this time, someone will report "no damage" or words to that effect. So, I am reversing my position. The deciding matter is unclear to me. Nevertheless, I am quite sure that the collisions themselves will not do damage. Nor is it likely that turning the machine on will do damage, since they will already have tested the giant magnets involved, etc.... I think it likely that somewhere along the line someone will say "no damage."

The damage may be undetected for years or from the new timeline in our universe. We should ask the mighty Gazoo.

after, actually turning on the machine (but without making these collisions), and _we_ are still here, maybe we have already destroyed some parallel universe(s).

This seems absurdly dumb.

who holds the crystal ball? or open sesame

anyone know metaphysics?? maybe the cat in the box is finally dead :-(

LOL @tisha

Girl kills herself over big bang fears:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/girl-kills-herself-over-big-bang-fears/2008/09/12/1220857778976.html

Oh geez, Tisha.
How sad that is.

In related news:
Hadron Collider halted for months
Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.
A Cern spokesman said damage to the £3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7626944.stm

I believe that this qustion should have ended when they did the test run.

I believe this question will settle when an attempt at 'particle collision' occurs.

Quote from question background:
"The question is: What will happen when the "first beams are injected" AND the "first collisions" are triggered (regardless the suspend date of the question). "

@pulloverthatasstofat
Are you kidding me? Your saying that this seems absurdly dumb? Have you even looked at your name?
@all
"Small accident" damage to LHG and/or people" I think i may have just settled this. I tripped and scraped my ankle when i heard about this. There. Damage to "people"

MSNBC says there was damage

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26802846/

There is damage. It won't be working by the time the question expires. Small damage FTW

Sweet its still open! i can make a ton now!

This question will settle when an attempt to collide particles is made. The suspend date was based on an estimate of when it will happen. The suspend date will be postponed to allow for wagering to continue until an attempt to collide particles is made.

Ah.

IE:
- What will happen when the "first beams are injected" -
- AND the "first collisions" are triggered.
- Regardless the suspend date.

Anybody unsure of how to interpret this question should refer to comment 47.
It is quoted directly from the background of the question.

Heres 1000 articles that say it ended in damage and need of repair.
http://news.google.com/news?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=lHC&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1248093659&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=4&ct=more-results&cd=1

@thepeoplegeekllc

This question will not settle until an article is produced indicating that at least an attempt to collide particles has occurred.

It either is broken and they will keep putting back together until it work or it BLOWS us a to little tiny particles. For gods Sake it was put together by people who live in countries where they come to work at 10am on bycycles with 2 bottles of wine. Name one good thing mechanically that the french have done well in, except for those little torches they use to make Creme Brulee. The LeCar? If you live close to this thing you must run

Yes it ended damaged.

But the damage was not result of the experiments. And the results of the experiments are topic of this question - not just the machine turned on. (OK, the title indicates it does, but it was never meant so: Please read question background)

The current headlines exactly indicate what is intended by this question: "Large Hadron Collider won't end world for months" (http://www.itexaminer.com/large-hadron-collider-wont-end-world-for-months.aspx) "Quest for 'Big Bang' delayed by fault in Hadron Collider" (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/quest-for-big-bang-delayed-by-fault-in-hadron-collider-936314.html)

"Large Hadron Collider won't end world for months"
Nice to know we all have a few more months to live...

I see so the suspend date is postponed until they get the theoretical device to work without any kind of failure or damage. What if the machine continues to not work as it seems to have some damage every time it is switched on? That has been the history of the big circle so far.

This question will not settle until an article is produced indicating that at least an attempt to collide particles has occurred.

It's odd that you have all of the treaties like START and all the non-proliferation treaties and whatnot yet on the other hand there is government funding for a project which may create black holes that wipe out all of humanity. Sounds about right.

8 Large Hadron Collider Videos
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/top-5-large-had.html

So why is it still suspended? Oh yeah, cause it had and accident when they switched it on. Now it is broken. Duh!

@ thepeoplegeekllc

Can you provide an article indicating that they have tried to collide particles yet. The fact is they have only shot particles in one direction thus far.

@all
and this will be against my prediction the answer is obviously in the question
Small accident" damage to LHG and/or people and that is what happened

If you don't understand this question....Don't wager on it.

thanks mort i do no the question more than appentley you. i had already wager on it how do you think i got here through a email as you had .but here is your answer thanking from there news link.dont take me for a fool,

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR09.08E.html /

thanks mort i do no the question more than appentley you. i had already wager on it how do you think i got here through a email as you had .but here is your answer thanking from there news link.dont take me for a fool,

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR09.08E.html /

oops typo ha ha taken

Your article starts out "During commissioning (without beam)...."

Commisioning means: Performing the necessary adjustments, tests and inspection to ensure plant is in full working order to specified requirements before the plant is used.

The question as Krujis asked it is: What will happen when the beams are injected and particle collision is triggered.

The article you yourself provide indicates that these things have not happened yet.

The recent damage means that they will not happen until the repairs are made.

The outcome of this question can only be determined after beams are injected AND particle collision is triggered. Any damage sustained is irrelevant other than the fact it will delay beams being injected and particle collision being triggered which consequently will delay settlement.

@ Curios: This is not something I am making up. This is what the question asks. If you read the previous 20 to 25 comments you will see that I have already explained this to someone else who didn't understand the background information.

Do Not think that the damage sustained in the article you mention (http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR09.08E.html /) will determine the out come of: "Small accident" damage to LHG and/or people" because the question does not ask what will happen during commissioning.

If the question was referring to events during the commissioning then this question would have already settled.

@Mort and all you Mort have cut the article and not the whole don't fool me please the article related to Sept the 19th oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practise to deceive
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/News.htmm

Incident in LHC sector 34
Geneva, 20 September 2008. During commissioning (without beam) of the final LHC sector (sector 34) at high current for operation at 5 TeV, an incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 September resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel. Preliminary investigations indicate that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure. CERN ’s strict safety regulations ensured that at no time was there any risk to people.

A full investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time for LHC operation. For the same fault, not uncommon in a normally conducting machine, the repair time would be a matter of days.

Further details will be made available as soon as they are known.

I do not appreciate your accusation of my intention to deceive. I am trying to help you but am now entirely finished with it.

Don't try to use your arguments if you lose your H$ because it has been clearly explained to you.

disclosure: I have 500 on "No Damage" (or similar) explicitly reported

LHC meltdown before first collision
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080922/full/455436a.html?s=news_rss

You probably want to extent the suspend date:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7632408.stm

Note - suspend date has been moved out to Spring 2009

Can you supply an article saying none of those particles collided with each other?

@thepeoplegeekllc
Please not comment 70 and the headline of the article mentioned in it.

sorry; *note

Forget black holes, could the LHC trigger a “Bose supernova”?
http://arxivblog.com/?p=645

@thepeoplegeekllc and anyone else who thinks this question ought to be settled:

please, please read the background of the question carefully. you even might consider reading linked articles to really understand what these citations refer to ("first beams are injected", "first collisions"). you will recognize that the question just doesn't settle yet. the question will not change just because you repeat your questions. doing so, only shows that you did not fully read (or understood) the question background.

@anyone else: DFTT

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10oct_lhc.htm?list16311 "The Day the World Didn't End" NASA article- good on facts.

Thats nasa for you.

I wonder what ever happened to the 'large hadron collider'...?

Right now i believe they are gathering information from the collision. Going over videos, taking samples from various parts of the large hadron collider.

Ah good good, in terms of what we have to panic about next, i find the LHC much more interesting than the global credit crisis...

I think it sounds much more interesting than it is. In truth, its just a expensive, glorified test experiement to appease some scientists. I mean under the best conditions we still get nothing out of it. We just get to see a new type of atom and add a few elements that we cant use to the periodic table.

Heh yes but according to the NY Times

"The random nature of quantum physics means that there is always a minuscule, but nonzero, chance of anything occurring, including that the new collider could spit out man-eating dragons."

Thats what I was hoping for...if there's a small non-zero chance of an infinite number of possibilities surely something interesting will pop out once they finally get it working

Its worked. They have already done the colliding and now they are just observing. After they observe they have to figure out what all the stuff they observed means. After that they have to figure out what the stuff they have figured out that it means means. And after that they have to decide what do to with it all.

So far it has proven that dragonfng is willing to make claims of collisions which are absolutely incorrect.

Really? I didnt hear they had achieved a collision yet, i thought they'd just fired em one way then the other, then it broke down. I must not be paying attention...ah well i guess we dont get our dragons then

Tis true - no high energy collisions were fired before the LHC broke.

Right now they're heating up their big broken machine, so people can go and find out exactly what went wrong. It's not due to be restarted again until next spring.

I remeber reading several articles about it and they said it had run. Show me a link that proves me wrong.

... starting to be running in circles again ...
dragon, please read the comments above.
the machine has been turned on - you are right - but that alone does not suffice not settle this question.

Dont worry, think you misunderstood, we arent talking about settling the question, he asked what they were doing now, and i said they were compiling the stuff from the lab, and then they said it hasnt been turned on and i said it had and you confirmed what i said just now.

Ah - curses not til middle of next year. The fact that they can't get their machine to work in the first place does make me wonder whether they've thought through that whole "black hole" thing properly....

Yeah the whole thing sounds like a horrible idea to me.

As long as they keep it on there side of the planet im fine with the whole ordeal.

This question seems to have suffered a lot of "question lawyering". The original question was pretty clearly intended to refer to damage DUE to the collision of particles (Geneva destroyed, Switzerland destroyed, end of life), but some here appear to have "lawyered it down" to include pretty much any damage occuring during first collisions, no matter what cause.

To avoid a repeat of that, I'd suggest we do some clarification before first collisions occur:

- What "respectble news sources", besides bbc.co.uk, will be accepted? How about the CERN web site "News" page - http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/News.htm ?
- How long do we wait, if we have to distinguish between "No Damage (or similar) explicitly reported" and "Results reported without referring to damage"? [I'd say two weeks from the moment of first collisions, so newspaper weekend Science Section and weekly news magazine articles have a chance to get published.]
- What will count as "(or similar)"? "The LHC performed flawlessly"? "Collisions happen, Earth still here"?

Finally - why is "Results reported without referring to damage" still at 49%? Either there'll be some damage - which will certainly be reported - or there won't be - in which case some reporter will almost certainly contrast that with the damage in July. So what are half the people here expecting to happen, such that "without referring to damage" has such a large chance of success? Must be something I'm missing, so someone will likely be objecting to how this gets settled, if no damage occurs.

“There are some who think that the new particle accelerator built outside of Geneva in Switzerland might create tiny black holes -- which could grow big enough to suck up the Earth. Balderdash, say physicists.” - Der Spiegel 8/06/2008
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,570487,00.html

“A large black hole appeared in the main intersection of one of Queensland's major regional cities today.” - Australian Associated Press 3/25/2009
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25240245-29277,00.html

OMG, there is another large black hole - in our federal budget. . .

The Laws of Nature restrict the number of possibilities to the number of events reality is capable of maintaining.

Accourding to who? No one knows for sure. What you are saying is based off a guess. That guess was made looking at all the knowledge we know about the universe. That knowledge is .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of all there is to know about the universe

42

42.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

tomrcraver, that blasphemous

even google knows: http://www.google.ch/search?q=answer+to+life%2C+the+universe+and+everything

Ah, but the universe design was flawed, resulting in a rounding error in the result in the 79th decimal place.

Geneva, 19 June 2009. At the 151st session of the CERN1 Council today, CERN Director General Rolf Heuer confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) remains on schedule for a restart this autumn, albeit about 2-3 weeks later than originally foreseen.

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR09.09E.html.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/science/space/04collide.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

"The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections."

"Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies."

Can you say "ZZZAAAAAPPPP!!!" ?

How about "thweerrppplop"?

Do the people that bet on the "Unexpected consequences result in the end of life" option expect to make a profit?

Ladylara - no, "thweerrppplop" is the sound of a bio-nano experiment gone badly wrong - and those sounds are more generally categorized under the sound "gloop". High-energy physics experiments always make a "zappy" or "boomy" sound when they goes wrong - though admittedly, that is sometimes preceeded by a high-pitched "sccrreeeeeee" sound. Versus an AI experiment gone wrong, which has the sound of a million programmers cursing, then suddenly going silent.

What if the LHC just breaks? Again? Is that damage?

The question will be settled when the "first beams are injected" AND the "first collisions" are triggered.
If it just breaks again than, yes, it settles "Small accident" (as long it is reported, or there were still people to report).

Chucklesnort- we're omniscient onomatopeist geeks :)

Kruijs - you might want to tweak the settlement on this a bit. E.g. have it settle 1 week after first collisions - enough time for reporting - and any damage has to happen within a day of first collisions in order to count.

EVENTUALLY it WILL break down again, but I think the spirit of the question is that the damage be related to operations around the time of first collisions. E.g. minor damage might come during preparation for beam turn-on (but it's minor and they manage get first collisions anyhow), or damage might happen during shut-down (which I'd guess isn't like flipping off a light switch) and they'll have to fix it before resuming operations.

They're powering up the magnet! Say goodbye to loved ones you haven't seen in a while, just in case! Fermi paradox/species IQ test #2 coming on-line!

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/article?name=CERNBulletin&issue=39/2009&number=3&category=News%20Articles&ln=en

(The hydrogen bomb was species IQ test #1. I suppose there may have been others, but I'll leave finding them to those who love to prove others wrong...)

Or it may never start up because it keeps sabotaging itself from the future:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/10/is-a-time-travelling-higgs-sab.html

Bizzare hypothesis from two respected scientists (or at least formerly respected).

Chilling out... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8309875.stm

A particle God doesn’t want us to discover

Could the Large Hadron Collider be sabotaging itself from the future, as some physicists say

Explosions, scientists arrested for alleged terrorism, mysterious breakdowns — recently Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has begun to look like the world’s most ill-fated experiment.

Is it really nothing more than bad luck or is there something weirder at work? Such speculation generally belongs to the lunatic fringe, but serious scientists have begun to suggest that the frequency of Cern’s accidents and problems is far more than a coincidence.

The LHC, they suggest, may be sabotaging itself from the future — twisting time to generate a series of scientific setbacks that will prevent the machine fulfilling its destiny.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article6879293.ece

Kruijs - that's just strange! If the Higgs were going to have any reverse causation to avoid its creation, it seems like the universe would find it simpler to have the collisions that were going to generate it "just miss".

But maybe not... Maybe creating a Higgs particle collapses any universe in which it was successfully created all into the Big Bang. So only the tiny fraction in which for any reason it does not get created, continue to exist. So from our perspective (as the retroactive survivors), it looks completely like perfectly consistent bad luck of a totally random nature. Sort of a reverse-temporal anthropic principle on infinite steroids.

"Go ahead - try to create a Higgs. But you should ask yourself - do you feel lucky, Punk? Really, really, infinitely lucky?"
"What's wrong, Obi-Wan?" "A great disturbance in the Force. It was like six billion times almost 100% of infinity voices crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced."

I think it's more like that show "Seven Days". Except in this case they can probably go back a hundred or even a thousand years.

Particles are circulating...

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/10/28/particles-injected-into-large-hadron-collider/

According to a CERN press release, lead ions were placed in the clockwise beam pipe on Friday October 23, but did not travel along the whole circumference of the LHC. CERN officials still hope for a restart in 2009, with the first circulating beam likely to be injected in mid-November, and the first high energy collisions occurring around mid-December.

They reported all settings and parameters showed a perfect functioning of the machine. In the coming weeks, physicists hope to have the first circulating beam.

... no collisions yet ...


stay tuned !

"prepare for unforeseen consequences" :)

Love that bird! And another theory is from CNN London- Alika Shubert reporting that a scientist laughingly offers that perhaps the Big Bang machine is breaking itself from the future! Fun stuff.