And scientists wonder why they are misunderstood

[Seth]

"For instance, we are eager to learn how the increase in energy will affect charmonium production, and to probe heavy flavour and jet quenching with higher statistics." Paolo Giubellino

Say what?

[JimC]

"For instance, we are eager to learn how the increase in energy will affect charmonium production, and to probe heavy flavour and jet quenching with higher statistics." Paolo Giubellino

Say what?

You've taken a quote out of context, but that is par for your course.

I suspect this is to do with CERN, and its future increase in the energy available to collide particles (either that, or high energy fusion research). Such collisions produce an array of other particles, analysis of which can tell us a lot about the nature of reality at the quantum level. Charmonium probably refers to a collection of charmed quarks. This would have been part of a discussion whose audience is supposed to understand the concepts and terminology...

May I suggest you first brush up on high school physics, and then do a college degree by correspondence?

[Seth]

"For instance, we are eager to learn how the increase in energy will affect charmonium production, and to probe heavy flavour and jet quenching with higher statistics." Paolo Giubellino

Say what?

You've taken a quote out of context, but that is par for your course.

Yes, of course I did so, precisely because it was amusing to do so.

I suspect this is to do with CERN, and its future increase in the energy available to collide particles (either that, or high energy fusion research). Such collisions produce an array of other particles, analysis of which can tell us a lot about the nature of reality at the quantum level. Charmonium probably refers to a collection of charmed quarks. This would have been part of a discussion whose audience is supposed to understand the concepts and terminology...

May I suggest you first brush up on high school physics, and then do a college degree by correspondence?

It was in a news article, not a scholarly paper. I really blame the author for citing such language in an article intended for a general audience.

Get a sense of humor why don't you?

By the way, CERN has smashed some atoms good and hard recently, doubling the previous power levels. Here's hoping they don't create a rogue quantum black hole that will sink to the center of the earth and eventually eat it completely.

Bye the other way, "charmonium" is a muon produced by the collision of a quark and an antiquark, so there.

[JimC]

Have you signed up for your degree course yet?

[Seth]

Have you signed up for your degree course yet?

Quarks aren't my thing, I'm more the philosophical type. I'll leave it up to the wonks at CERN to play with jet quenching their charmonium so they can probe it's flavor.

I do wonder about the quantum foam however, and all the dimensions that we can't detect and who, or what, might be inhabiting them.

[mistermack]

People bang on about creating black holes, but the danger is virtually nil.

If a black hole has the mass of a couple of neutrons, it's not going to suck anything into it any time soon.

The scary black holes are a teeny bit bigger.
You're not going to create a mass of five million solar masses just by banging a few particles together at Cern.

[Seth]

People bang on about creating black holes, but the danger is virtually nil.

If a black hole has the mass of a couple of neutrons, it's not going to suck anything into it any time soon.

And you want to hang the very future existence of earth on that unproven supposition?

The scary black holes are a teeny bit bigger.

Until you demonstrate how to control a black hole to keep it from eventually swallowing the earth, and I don't mean theoretically, I mean in actual practice, kindly build your atom-smashers somewhere far enough away from earth that if you fuck it up only you will get sucked into the event horizon.

[JimC]

People bang on about creating black holes, but the danger is virtually nil.

If a black hole has the mass of a couple of neutrons, it's not going to suck anything into it any time soon.

And you want to hang the very future existence of earth on that unproven supposition?

The scary black holes are a teeny bit bigger.

Until you demonstrate how to control a black hole to keep it from eventually swallowing the earth, and I don't mean theoretically, I mean in actual practice, kindly build your atom-smashers somewhere far enough away from earth that if you fuck it up only you will get sucked into the event horizon.

Yet another example of why you need that college physics course pronto...

Energy and mass can be converted into each other. In the remote possibility that a micro black hole were created during a collision at CERN, it would, as mm said, have a mass equivalent to a few nucleons. Its ability to suck in matter would be zero, and it would relatively soon vanish via Hawking radiation. This is not "unproven supposition", it is very straightforward undergraduate physics 101...

I wish you would stick to posting about things you know about, like rifle ballistics, driving and the history of the NRA...

[Jason]

I have course materials, 101 level stuff, I'd be happy to make copies and send you. They will change the way you see the world, you have my promise on that.

[Hermit]

... They will change the way you see the world, you have my promise on that.

[Jason]

Was directed at Seth, not Jim..

[Hermit]

Was directed at Seth, not Jim..

That's why I laughed. Seth is impervious to the influence of facts.

[Jason]

Was directed at Seth, not Jim..

That's why I laughed. Seth is impervious to the influence of facts.

It does take a lot to get through to him - he loves to deliberately misinterpret things in his current 'persona'..

[Seth]

People bang on about creating black holes, but the danger is virtually nil.

If a black hole has the mass of a couple of neutrons, it's not going to suck anything into it any time soon.

And you want to hang the very future existence of earth on that unproven supposition?

The scary black holes are a teeny bit bigger.

Until you demonstrate how to control a black hole to keep it from eventually swallowing the earth, and I don't mean theoretically, I mean in actual practice, kindly build your atom-smashers somewhere far enough away from earth that if you fuck it up only you will get sucked into the event horizon.

Yet another example of why you need that college physics course pronto...

Energy and mass can be converted into each other. In the remote possibility that a micro black hole were created during a collision at CERN, it would, as mm said, have a mass equivalent to a few nucleons. Its ability to suck in matter would be zero, and it would relatively soon vanish via Hawking radiation. This is not "unproven supposition", it is very straightforward undergraduate physics 101...

I wish you would stick to posting about things you know about, like rifle ballistics, driving and the history of the NRA...

Or so the theory goes...But since nobody's ever created, much less dealt with a black hole of any size, it's impossible to predict exactly what might happen, Hawking's musings aside. And "undergraduate physics 101" is no help to you because nobody's seen the inside of a black hole or what goes on in there so your certainty is misplaced. What if creating a black hole creates a conduit to another universe that's filled with matter which adds mass to the black hole, which then acts like a vacuum to suck matter from this universe into that universe which perpetuates the "pinprick in the universe" that then proceeds to suck in everything around it forever?

However unlikely or "unscientific" you might claim that might be, the point is that physicists don't know everything about everything, and they especially don't know everything about something that they themselves admit they know nothing, which is what they know about what goes on inside black holes. Which is why it's not just me that demonstrates concern about such things.

Remember, it wasn't long ago that physicists at Los Alamos, NM thought that setting off a nuclear device might ignite the entire atmosphere in a self-perpetuating wave of fire that would sterilize the planet.

Not everything physicists can or eventually might be able to do are things that they should do, or be allowed to do, merely because they want answers. Due consideration must be given to the safety of the rest of us when we allow physicists to play with dangerous toys.

Now, you may well be right, but your cavalier attitude about the safety of everyone else is pretty disturbing. You may trust physicists, but then again it's physicists who have put the entire planet in mortal peril by willingly misusing their knowledge to create both fission and fusion nuclear weapons. Had those physicists refused to participate in the Manhattan Project, which physicists themselves thought up in the first place, we might not today be faced with extinction because some nutcase like Putin makes a rash decision. But they didn't, which was by any measure a gross ethical and moral failure on their part.

If ever there was an example of the failings of science and "pure knowledge" it's the existence of nuclear weapons...not to mention weaponized anthrax, VX, Sarin, and weaponized smallpox.

Scientists, you see, cannot automatically be trusted to do only that which is in the best interests of the human race, and it's been demonstrated thousands of times that when scientists become focused on their individual or collective hunger for knowledge to the exclusion of ethics, morals and public safety, bad things happen. Which is why science needs to be kept on a short leash by the rest of us, purely as a matter of self defense.

So, if I raise concerns about CERN causing the ultimate destruction of the planet, it's hardly irrational or unreasonable of me to do so. I do not have the sort of blind religious faith that you demonstrate as you genuflect before your idols and gods. I'm a skeptic, and I'm even skeptical of science.

[JimC]

All that emerges from your last post is an abysmal ignorance of physics, and the nature of black holes.

I'll give you a clue: physics is not the same as science fiction...