Aoeworth Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 Well, if you're in the know... CERN fires up today to try and create black or anti matter or something like that. 'A glimpse' into what it was like just after the big bang. 100m underground, 27km circumference, accelerating protons to near the speed of light and then smashing them into each other. cost. Over 5billion POUNDS. Why? In a nutshell, to answer: What is mass? Ummm....tad misapplication of funds? I mean, why? really. Lets say the whole thing is a resounding success and this dark energy and dark matter (which supposedly makes up 96% of the universe...(err, why can't you find it then??), the other 4% is galaxies, stars, planets and gas (and how you know that? You've measured it all ya?)) is found/created, then what? Cost of living will go down? War is over? Oil costs down? Everybody switches over to electric cars? Cancer is cured? Global warming reverses? I GET TO HAVE A COOKIE? What is Mass? 5billion pounds later, we might have an answer tomorrow.... /FACEPALM So...what do you think? :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delphinus Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 First, i want to thank you for not mentioning the absurd and stupid "black hole" question. Research is good. Even if you can't see the benefits immediately, (or there might be no one) scientists from all over the world must continue their studies, and should always have a lot of funds for this(except for military research of course!!!) For me, that i am not scientist, it's fascinating the idea to look deep into the origin of things... maybe we can understand a thing or two more about the universe... and maybe one day we can use this knowledge to make our life better than now... who knows? Scientists will always have my support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UQForgotten Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 If, for example, William Weber, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr and all the other famous scientists of the late 1800s and early 1900s didn't ask themselves the question "What are electrons?" we probably wouldn't be sitting here, having this discussion over the internet with the help of all those tiny little electrons jumping back and forth across those tiny chips of electrically conductive silicon that allow us to compose and relay these forum posts all over the globe. Science works in mysterious ways... We can thank all of those seemingly unrelated and esoteric scientific discoveries for pretty much all of our modern technology today. That's why basic ground breaking science is so important. There's simply no telling where a scientific discovery might lead us in the end. :wink: Cheers, UQF Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark0ne Posted September 10, 2008 Share Posted September 10, 2008 I believe the experiment is looking extensively for two particular particles, atoms, photons or whatever they are, and researching deeply into them. Apparently these particles are/were only present within the big bang reaction. From my understanding, imagine the amount of energy that must have existed during the big bang reaction, and imagine if we could replicate these particles that can produce/store/whatever this energy...you'd be on the first step towards a ground breaking new form of energy that would totally dwarf nuclear power with the obvious implications being nukes that can take out galaxies rather than countries (WE NEED THEM! SRSLY!) and energy systems that might kick start the space race etc. etc. etc. As you can probably tell, I'm quite the physicist ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philosopher101 Posted September 11, 2008 Share Posted September 11, 2008 Mass is whatever you wish it to, be. The universe is composed of whatever you see it as. (for me the moon really is cheezy) For the benifit of science 5 billion pounds is a small price to pay to discover a new fact that cac be added to knowledge. However the only problem is that, that is 5 billion pounds. which may or may not be composed of mass. In essence man has spent time and effort and used copious amounts of resources to figure out what a pound really is. So therefore to discover what a pound of mass is, Í would have only paid one pound. This does not nesscasarily mean that it was a waste of 4,999,999, pounds but rather that the efficency is not so good. and that perhapes the anti-matter in question. wasn't the best test subject. in anycase i wounder what would happen of the moon really was made of cheese, but then again it is. right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaysus Posted September 11, 2008 Share Posted September 11, 2008 money is no problem... just print it... manpower, skill, knowledge and material is...i just find it spooky that the people are never asked nor told about such matters until its too late... well if you enslave enough people to work for that imaginary money you can join such projects tho... lets see what the people gain from it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarya Posted September 12, 2008 Share Posted September 12, 2008 Bosons. It's bosons, not atoms. Why such prejudice against proving the Standart Model (it's that in english, right?)? Bringing technologies to a new level require a vast amount of theory and theory requires to be proven - by experiment and there's no other way. I wish our scientists could spend so much money for their work, THAT'S what is worth tax paying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaysus Posted September 12, 2008 Share Posted September 12, 2008 as far as i understood its not just to proove somin but to witness the state of the big bang and to pull out some info on energy, matter, reality, blablabla :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarya Posted September 12, 2008 Share Posted September 12, 2008 Emmm, to witness the state of the big bang? You mean recreating some forms of matter that only existed then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delphinus Posted September 13, 2008 Share Posted September 13, 2008 Well i talked with some of my friends that are studying physics about this experiment... It's all very complicated and fascinating... but i understood a few things. The big bang has generated the matter (is that the right word? i mean that thing that is everything that surrounds us) from energy; now by making collide the particles from two opposite directions at speed of light (speed of light + speed of light apparently is equal to speed of light, don't ask me why) should have the same effect... create the bosons, that little particle that has taken the name of "god particle" (stupidly adjusted to particle OF god) because it generates the mass and so everything around us. An experiment like that is worth thousands times the cost of the accelerator, in my opinion, and not only for knowledge, just imagine the benefits in the global research for energy supply, for example, that this experiment will surely bring to us. Ah and yes, apparently from what i heard this creates a black hole, but so tiny and instable that it collapses immediately... so there is no space for silly alarms that are not worth of the dumbest sci-fi movie... :biggrin: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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