Via Science Fair comes the news that the LHC will officially turn on and inject protons in the magnetic field on September 10.
Hurray!
And when the Earth is not destroyed, what will the goofball doomcriers do next? Probably move on to the 2012 nonsense.
And they’re not the only ones who are unhappy. Check out the activists who want to protest the cruel and inhumane treatment of hadrons. Your quarks will thank you.
Tip o’ the meson to Kevin Jung.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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August 7th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
And cue the crackpot theories …
“September 10th?! So the world will be destroyed by mini black holes on 9/11! This is proof! Of everything!”
August 7th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Oh, whew.. it’s not a serious article and the protestors are obviously doing this tounge-in-cheek… thank goodness.
CJSF
August 7th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
[IMG]http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2008/08/hadron-protest.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://www.firsttvdrama.com/enterprise/images/quark.jpg[/IMG]
August 7th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Cow farts will doom us all!!!!!!
August 7th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
And, just in case there are certain unforeseen consequences…
http://www.destructoid.com/reddit-sends-crowbar-to-scientists-to-protect-against-headcrabs-98281.phtml
August 7th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Oops… I misread your caption, in “Hadrons” I put the “R” in front of the “D”…
Which leads to another problem…
August 7th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
On September 10th I would assume that they are just going to accelerate the particles and see what kind of beam degradation they get. I don’t think they are going to be actually performing any experiments at that time. So the doomsday criers are a little early.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
September 10th? But that’s not even in 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 7th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
SWEET! Physics is awesome! I’m getting a hadron just thinking about it.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Maybe it’s just me, but until I’m strongly inclined to take this as satire. Note the similarity of the acronym of the group to PETA. And if memory serves, their slogans/mottoes sound suspiciously similar to PETA’s.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I PETH is hiring people to break into the labs to liberate hadrons from their horrible treament at CERN.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
This made me laugh! Just think about it: A proton getting sick due to the speed and the fast move in a circle…. what will it throw up? Well, let’s think about it. Maybe little Quarks – or, if it’s really bad, some big quarks, like a bottom-quark.
Maybe this is the way to override confinement?
August 7th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
It is most certainly satire, and good satire at that. The founder just insulted every wackjob on the planet all at the same time, it’s beautiful when you think about it.
August 7th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Wow, that satire is good. I laughed out loud with that one.
For a moment, though, I felt my stomach make a backflip before my mind quickly detected it as a satire.
August 7th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
As much as the particle physicist in me enjoyed this article (Subatomic pain is still pain!), I think I laughed more at the one about the Zork movie. In fact, I’m still laughing.
August 7th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I felt my stomach make a backflip before my mind quickly detected it as a satire.
Come on, the girl holding the sign was total cute geek girl.
August 7th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
“Don’t FARK with the quark”
Well, at least they used the right term
PETH – nicely done satire (expecially after there were some articles about PETA at Fark.com).
August 7th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
[...] Fonte: Will no one think of the hadrons? [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Speaking of PETA … have you heard about what they have been up to in Canada?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080806.wpetaad0806/BNStory/National/home
August 7th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Oh, please, tell me it’s satire.
PLEASE tell me it’s satire.
PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE tell me it’s satire?
< click... >
Whew.
August 7th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Fear not, minions! The LHC is merely a plot from the cephalopods of the world. When those apes are out of the way, we shall rule the earth!
August 7th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Whoa! That was very, very, very FUNNY! That is a satire, no? I don’t believe that could be true…
I like very much your blog, is one of the best about astronomy. Generally I don’t comment (this is my first), but always read it on my RSS.
Sorry for my english, in any case.
Continue with the good job!
August 7th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I know PZ had something to do with the end of the world.
August 7th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Yes, Phil I diffently heard what they did here.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
That has to be a joke, right? They are a parody protest group, right? Please tell me I’m right, because the alternative is to profoundly stupid to contemplate!
August 7th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Oh thank goodness, it is a parody…
Faith in humanity partially restored!
August 7th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Did anyone else glance at “hadrons” and see “hardons” because it’s so much more common to see that phrase?
WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE HARDONS??
August 7th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Mental midgets are always trying to hold back the impending DOOM. It was nuclear fallout, DDT, Alar on apples, nuclear power, acid rain, Global Cooling, ozone holes, Y2k, Anthropogenic Global Warming, CO2, yada yada yada.
The only thing these thing have in common is they are all P-H-O-N-Y scams.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
For those of you who may not be sure if this is true or not (which I hope is 0% of the readership here), please scroll down to the bottom of the page and read the line that says:
Copyright 1999-2008 by BBspot LLC
BBspot is a tech satire news and geek humor source, and meant to be funny.
If you are easily offended, gullible, or don’t have a sense of humor, we suggest you go elsewhere. Those without the geek gene activated should also avoid this site.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
@Phil who posted about PETA, not only is PETA using the death but Westboro church is going to be at the funeral.
http://www.winnipegsun.com/News/Winnipeg/2008/08/07/6371591-sun.html
August 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
So, wasn’t it supposed to be turned on and do the initial testings like 2 hours ago or something?
August 7th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
[...] Fonte BBspot (Via Bad Astronomy) [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I thought this was… well, funny isn’t quite the word, but:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM
August 7th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Now -THAT- is funny!
I really did
Rich
August 7th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
This reminds me of a group I started back in college, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Hypotheical Animals, protesting the needless suffering of Hypothetical Animals in “so-called ‘Thought Experiments’.” For the flyers I used an illustration of Schodinger’s Cat “in a curious superposition of states, partly alive and partly dead” from Douglas Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Reminds me of PETS – People for the Ethical Treatment of Software, who decried the wanton destruction of computer bugs.
August 7th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
@ JohnnyQ:
Especially when accelerated to 99.9999999% c. Seriously, they’re bad enough at normal velocities.
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
@ Michael L: Is the world ready for quantum pr0n?
@ Alex: You and Michael L are both freekin’ SICK!!1111111!!!!!!!!!!! (Um, BTW, what are you guys doing Saturday night?)
August 7th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
/facepalm
Lol, just lol, poor hadrons.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
So… the World’s gonna end on my birthday. Wonderful.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I am so glad I read Watchmen a few weeks ago. I totally wouldn’t have gotten the Dr. Manhattan reference.
August 7th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
LMAO!( love the idea of hadrons getting travel sick as they zoom around at a gnats whisker below the speed of light.) I have a huge poster of The Atlas detector sitting over my piano! It is totally HOT (except it’s actually REALLY cool) Anyway GO LHC!
August 7th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
@ Doug Little
(Taken from a BBC News report)
On 9 August, protons will be piped through LHC magnets for the first time.
For the two-day “synchronisation test”, engineers will thread a low intensity beam through the injection system and one of the LHC’s eight sectors.
Over August, scientists will continue electrical testing of the LHC hardware prior to circulating beams in early September.
This phase will continue into September to ensure that the entire machine is capable of accelerating and colliding beams at an energy of five teraelectronvolts (TeV).
It will attempt to circulate two proton beams all the way around the ring on 10 September. This is considered the official “switch-on”.
This full beam injection will take place at an energy of about 450 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). Over subsequent weeks, engineers will gradually boost the energy and fine tune the machine.
August 8th, 2008 at 12:05 am
The LHC won’t cause the end of the world, or of the Hadrons. What will cause the end of the world is that someone will get this Ethical treatment of subatomic particles idea and actually think it’s something that really, honestly does need to be protested about.
The entire universe, unable to contain the prodigious quantities of Stupid created, will then promptly dissolve.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:04 am
The problem here is that some people really think that particle only exist in Particle Physics Laboratories, that genes only exist in Genetical Engineering Departments or that galaxies only exist in Astronomical Observatories. So, they fear Astronomical Observatories from extragalactic invasions, Genetical Engineering Departments from genomic collapses and Particle Physics Laboratories from proton evaporation. Or they fear that Meteorological Station can elicit storms. It’s some kind of cause-effect reversion thinking.
BTW, it is humorous that some commenters take seriously PETH. It isn’t obvious that PETH is a parody of PETA?
August 8th, 2008 at 1:20 am
@alex, well, if you have dyslexia like me and want to think about my hadron… maybe we can arrange something…
August 8th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Oh, sorry, it was madlolscientist I meant to target…. along with Madge and my dippy toast! LOL
August 8th, 2008 at 1:25 am
@Madge, I used to have a poster of Farrah Fawcett in the “70’s or ’80’s,… And all it takes in some physics thingy for you????
OK that’s enough! You nasty people! This is a family blog! Phil will be away next week so we can be hooligans then!
August 8th, 2008 at 1:36 am
I always thought PETA stood for People for Eating Tasty Animals … now I don’t like them anymore.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:48 am
Oh… I’m off to bed thinking of the hadrons, but I needed a little blue pill… Does that mean anything……. woah! Ok, hadrons! woohooo, Bye people! I have other things to occupy my mind with.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Ya know, Phil can’t blame us. He asked for it….
August 8th, 2008 at 2:42 am
For some odd reason, on reading this news I was reminded of this smash hit
August 8th, 2008 at 2:45 am
Speed sickness in Hadrons is a VERY serious issue, and I am glad somebody finally raised it and brought it to light!
Seriously, I laughed so hard I almost choked at that one. Utterly brilliant satire for the geeks and nerds that we are
Keep up the good work, Phil!
August 8th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Every time I hear about these LHC/end of the world cranks, I think of Roger Ramjet’s arch-enemies, the evil Solenoid Robots and their creators, “a cabal of mad scientists bent on destroying the world for their own gain.”
August 8th, 2008 at 4:57 am
This blog now seems to be wanting posts to be moderatd? >:)
August 8th, 2008 at 6:21 am
So are “large hardon” jokes going to be the new Uranus jokes? I’m not in 5th grade anymore, so I’m not up to date these days.
August 8th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Why don’t people do more reading? The LHC isn’t going to destroy the world, Jesus is! Sheesh!
August 8th, 2008 at 6:39 am
I finally figured it out. The LHC is actually the product of a global cabal orchestrated by Stephen Baxter’s Photino Birds, since they’ll be the only ones capable of surviving in strangelet universe after they’re all done.
Quite what inducements they’ve offered all those thousands of misguided scientists worldwide remain to be seen; possibly some sort of Baxter-esque “afterlife” in a non-strangelet bubble orbiting the wreckage of Saturn, if my memory of Timelike Infinity serves me well.
Wake up people! It’s the Photino Birds!
(P.S. I always wanted to write a reply to a post where I could work in the words “photino” and “bird”.)
August 8th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Aiii! Baxter is in on it too!! It’s deeper than we ever imagined!!! I think my exclamation points are following a Fibbonacci Series!!!!!
August 8th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Oh my. I’ve just noticed … L ist the 12th letter in the alphabet, H the 8th and c the 3rd. 12+8+3 = 23. Oh my god, we are so doomed.
*takes a deep breath* DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!
Can we start that thing already?
August 8th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Thanx, Madge.
Looks like they are going to take it slowly.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Of course they are, Doug. All the better to savor the inevitable destruction and finish their escape portals. Mwahaha!
August 8th, 2008 at 8:35 am
Notice the actual link URL says “hardrons”…
August 8th, 2008 at 8:45 am
*grumbles*
[Of course I meant "Titan", not "Timelike Infinity"...]
I just take some little measure of comfort all the evil Photino-bird-influenced scientists might miscalculate and their escape portals open into another false-vacuum universe that’s already transitioning to an anti-deSitter state. Hmph! That’d show ‘em!
August 8th, 2008 at 11:26 am
September 10th, eh? Sounds like a pretty awesome birthday present for me! If the world ends at least I’ll live to see 29.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:42 am
MattGS:
No, no, no!
You don’t add them, you string them together to get “1283″, which is just 49 short of twice “666″. (”49″ being the square of 7, the number of days in the week.)
Coincidence? I think not!
August 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
So why would we want to protect our hadrons?
They are a constant companion on our trips, greeting us on our mornings, often gone after some cuddling with the mistress, but soon enough they return to have some more fun together. Take care of your hadrons, but remember to exercise them vigorously and you will have the enjoyment of their company for many years to come. Your hadr … h-a-d-r- … oh.
In related news, Cold Dark Matter form subhalos, lumps and streams in the galactic halo in simulations, even out to our neighborhood.
Maybe hadrons aren’t the greatest thing in the universe after all, but instead we get to play with their cold overlords.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
And let us not forget that LHC could also stand for “Likely Hell Creator”, meaning that those photino-scientist-evil-type-people are going to open an “Event Horizon” stlye Portal to Hell!!! Muahahahahaaaa!!!
August 8th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Will, O you had to ask… Unfortunately this is a family blog… But it involves hadrons and the twin moons of Uranus.
Seriously, “Can I see the Twin Moons of Uranus” is my all time favorite joke from Elementary School!
August 8th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
[...] Don’t I must admit, I was tickled by this story. I stumbled across it after reading Phil Plait’s remarks about the painful undercurrent of doomsday theories that seem to be increasing in volume as the LHC [...]
August 8th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I don’t think they plan to run the LHC up to full power until 2010, so the nuts will have to wait. Till then it will run at energies already achieved in other colliders.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
They are so nice to do this on my 39th birthday!
August 9th, 2008 at 1:47 am
Now, just a minute. What about this line from Tia Aumiller?
“…”There’s a limited supply of hadrons in the universe. Do we just want to go around destroying them?”…”
This next half in jest, half seriously: does she have a point? Is there a natural resupply of destroyed hadrons, known in physics? I Googled “hadron” and read some. These things read as basic to particle physics.
Are hadrons in danger of extinction, from all our experimenting with them?
This last in total jest: A Large Hadron Collider! How big are these large hadrons? Why caz’t we use
mediumsmall hadrons? What if a large hadron gets away?Cheers,
Don
August 9th, 2008 at 4:14 am
I was thinking of on the day, calling up a radio station and requesting a dedication to CERN of REM’s hit, “Its the end of the world as we know it”
August 9th, 2008 at 8:12 am
@Don Snow: No, the hadrons break up into smaller particles. Hadrons are composed of quarks, so if the quarks aren’t destroyed, they’ll just form new, lighter hadrons. If the quarks are destroyed, that’s no big deal, either, because the energy doesn’t disappear, and we can pop new quarks out of other reactions.
August 9th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
To mark the event BBC Radio 4 will be broadcasting a special radio epsiode of Torchwood set at the LHC. I believe no hadrons were harmed in making the programme.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Put me in LHC
Let’s test superstring theory
Oh yoi yoi yoi accelerate the protons
Stir it twice and then just add me
-Gogol Bordello Supertheory of Supereverything
August 9th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Previous song lyrics slightly modified (replaced SSC with LHC) for better context
August 10th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Don Snow, on the contrary: the collisions will typically produce more hadrons than went in.
August 10th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
[...] Fonte BBspot (Via Bad Astronomy) [...]
August 10th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
[...] en: Bad Astronomy. Notcia original (en inglés): [...]