It seems that even the hardest of experimental sciences, namely particle physics, is not exempt from a fair share of the attentions of doomsayers and death-mongers. According to some of them, the world’s biggest experiment to date will obliterate planet Earth and leave a black hole (and possibly a quasar) in its place. The experiment’s first prize is to detect the elusive Higgs Boson, failing which it will shed light on conditions a very small fraction of a second following the Big Bang.
The warning is underwritten by a small number of physicists many of whom didn’t pay sufficient attention during their QM and GR classes.
This Armageddon is supposed to befall humanity this Wednesday, so now’s a really good time to prepare one’s spaceship for immediate departure.
More woo words per second than any other conspiracy video I have ever seen. Get your bingo cards ready … double points for “cosmic rays”, “van allen belt”, “free masons”, “scripture”, “dimension”, “flying saucers”, “armageddon”, “stargate”, “antichrist” but only 1/10th of a point for “satan” because the word comes-up so often.
For a hundred bonus points, before you watch the video, fill in the blank in the following sentence and if you are correct you get the points.
As we all know, or we should all know, [b][i]blank[/i][/b] is back on [its] way. It's just around the corner.
PS: Join LHC@home to compute some of the 40 Terrabytes of data that will be generated every day from the experiments. The only way to handle that quantity of data would be to use the huge processing capability of distributed computing. Go to the BOINC Project website, download version 5.10.X, start it up, in the “Tools” menu, find “Attach to project” and in the list which appears find the LHC@home project. Very easy. BOINC will download work units when the computer is idle and process them before sending the results back and then downloading more.
Consider helping other scientific projects like Einstein@home (filtering recordings from radio telescopes around the world to find the feint heartbeats of pulsars), uFluids@home (fluid dynamics in micro gravity), Proteins@home (oops, project has closed), SETI@home (the original distributed computing project, the father of the BOINC project) and more. It has been a while since I used BOINC but for the LHC I’d love to contribute a little CPU time.
Yup, blank is almost here, can’t wait.
It’s hard to believe that people can publicly reveal just how stupid they are and be 100% serious about it… oh well, makes the rest of us laugh. It’s just too ridiculous to feel sorry for the guy.
Good idea! I used to do this way back with the SETI@home project, and now is a good time to start again. In case you are wondering why ArgumentumAdHominem recommends version 5.10.x, this from the LHC@Home site:
Alex has been doing some tweaking in the background this week so some issues have been resolved. We are looking into the others and fixing them as we find solutions. Also the SixTrack application and the newest version of the BOINC client (6.2.X) don't seem to like each other. The developers are looking into this problem and it will be fixed as soon as possible.
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Further to yesterday's news item, we are recommending that you download/use the 5.10.X version of the BOINC client for your opertaing system. We hope to have this sorted as soon as possible but with LHC turn on in 4 days everyone is busy preparing for that.
On Ubuntu Hardy, a simple 'sudo apt-get install boinc-manager boinc-client' will set you up.
PS. As I understand it, the BOINC project will not be computing data from the experiments, but simulates the movement of particles around the accelerator:
SixTrack
Most of the scientific computing challenges that the LHC experiments are facing will require access to huge amounts of storage - the LHC will produce 15 Petabytes (15 million Gigabytes) of data per year. These data requirements means that most analysis programmes cannot be run on individual PCs. This is why CERN is leading the development of Grid computing, which aims to link hundreds of major computing centres around the world.
However, there are exceptions where public computing makes sense for the LHC. CERN’s IT Department is interested in evaluating the sort of technology that is used by SETI@home for future use. A program called SixTrack, which simulates particles traveling around the LHC to study the stability of their orbits, can fit on a single PC and requires relatively little input or output.
Well, if you find some time, do let us know how things are on planet Nibiru
Once again, the crazies got word out and saved us from certain doom. Be sure to keep an eye out for any gateways to the other dimensions though. They can be sneaky sometimes… :
Unfortunately, our spaceship wouldn’t start so we had to stay at home. It turns out that the spaceship’s hyper harmonic symmetry wave collapsing quantum oscillator woo-woo drive got all gummed up on a fact. We’re still trying to bend the offending fact far enough so that at least it’ll stop interfering with the proper working of the drive unit.
Just been reading Phil Plait’s Blog - Bad Astronomy, and came across a link to this news story. This is a real worst case scenario of superstition and conspiracy theory in action! It is terrible and over something so silly!
That is sad >:(
I often wonder what these self appointed prophets of doom think they want to achieve. Well, hopefully the suicide of a young girl will make them think more carefully about the consequences of their actions.
That said. Like TV violence, you can’t put all the blame on them. You can only blame them for contributing to the overwhelming cloud of misinformation that is out there in the media. Which is why it is so important to promote critical thinking and for parents to teach their children properly how to discern right from wrong.
