Large Hadron Collider Start Up Expected September 08

According to LHCountdown.com, the Large Hadron Collider will go live in less than 38 days. In previous reports, it seemed that the end of June 08 had the machine (all 8 sectors) cold, and predictions indicated by mid July 08 that all experimental areas were to be closed. By the end of July 08; first beam injection. How does this help those of us itching to find out if a mini-black hole will be created? Well, keeping in mind a proton beam injection doesn’t mean proton beam collision; it urges us to set our watches to approximately the end of summer or the beginning of fall 08. Just in time for the 911 anniversary. Not a good time to open a black hole.

But as it has done several times so far, CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which operates the LHC), could change the schedule without notice. Regardless, once we get an absolute commitment, researchers will inject the 27-km ring with a pair of proton beams and rotate them in opposite directions. Two months later, they will nudge the beams closer for the purpose of smashing them into one another. Then, hopefully, we'll get our first glance at the long-awaited Higgs Bosun (The God Particle that purportedly bestows mass upon everything).

Among the other theories that could be proved (or disproved) when the LHC goes live is the ADD Model. Named after the three physicists who authored it, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos and Gia Dvali. ADD suggests there are seven other dimensions that exist but we don't see, giving us a grand total of 11 dimensions that may be larger than previously thought - specifically, as large as a millimeter.

But with all the techno-heavy conjecture that seems to be all the rage with the LHC, perhaps it’s time to explore what’s happening on the lighter side of LHC news. For one thing, researchers at CERN never really anticipated the ongoing geek backlash. People from all over the world have dragged CERN through the headlines with accusations of "instigating the end of the world." Everything from creating micro black holes that will eat the planet and kill us all, to quarks recombining to make "strangelets" that would transform the earth's matter into strange mucilaginous jelly. With all of this controversial attention, CERN became a pop culture phenomenon and the Collider itself; a reluctant celebrity.

As news of the LHC and what it could do spread, so did fears of highly probable end-of-the-world scenarios. Strangely enough, the more fears that were brought about, the more popular the Collider became. It gained fans and propelled LHC and CERN into the spotlight for millions of non-scientists. Suddenly the LHC was on everyone's lips at one point or another. Examples were everywhere including:

xkcd - an episode of the wildly popular webcomic by Randall Munroe had two hapless scientists activate the Large Hadron Collider only to find that it didn't work. They subsequently sit down and begin to shoot pigeons with protons.

Digg posts - Buried in the general sciences section of the popular, reader-driven news site lies some amusing musings about the Collider and its potentially planet-wrecking consequences.

Wraithsandworlds - The cult webseries by Darrin Wilson has the Large Hadron Collider at the heart of the story causing all kinds of havoc with earth and the afterlife.

Of course, we humans love to poke fun at anything we don't understand. And as the date of activation draws nearer, more examples of Collider Culture will likely follow. But while it is true the LHC could potentially create mini black holes, they are unlikely to even be noticed. Physicists at the LHC say that any black hole that could be created would only hang around for a split second then decay.

A recent, headline-grabbing Federal lawsuit filed by Luis Sancho and Walter Wagner out of Hawaii is credited by many to have thrust the LHC out of scientific circles and into the limelight. They filed against representatives at Fermilab in Illinois and Europe’s CERN laboratory and argued, among other fears, that millions of tiny black holes could be produced then coalesce into a compact gravitational monster that would draw in other matter, grow bigger and eventually eat the earth. So much for my weekend BBQ plans.

Fear not, however. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York, said recently that it's pure science fiction. "These black holes don't live very long," he said. "They have microscopic energy, and so they're harmless." Well, that ought to do it, thanks, Mich. Someone pass the Bullseye sauce please?

But, argue Sancho and Wagner, you can’t ignore the act of crashing protons together at high enough energies can create new combinations of quarks (the particles that protons are made of) and can potentially create a mean little beggar called a stable, negatively charged strangelet. That, in turn, could turn everything else into strangelets as well, the results of which no one knows.

All of this doomsaying is fuelled by the simple fact scientists can't really disprove any of it. It may happen, it may not. But let's look at the RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) which has been operational since 2000 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. The fears were almost identical but, as we all have noticed, we're still here.