Will the LHC mean the end tomorrow?

Posted on: September 9th, 2008 by Gareth Robinson

Tomorrow morning first thing. The Universe is going to end. That’s right The Universe. Not just Switzerland, Not Just Europe, Not Just StumbleUpon and Facebook. The whole Universe. It’s going to implode into the Earth instantaneously. You can find out when it’ll happen by listening to BBC Radio 4. They’ll be covering the whole event live.

The end of the world. Just after breakfast
The end of the world. Just after breakfast

So, what am I talking about? It’s the LHC, of course! The Large Hadron Collider, a big thing in Europe is the machine that is causing so much worry and concern. This 17 mile ring of particle accelerator is due to be turned on and tested tomorrow morning at 7:30 am so I’ve forgone with loading up this blog tomorrow and will load it up tonight. Just to be sure.

Just to be clear, this rather oddly named thing is a particle accelerator. It throws very small things at each other to try and create and find even smaller things. To find out the beginning of the Universe.

What\'s going on up there
The universe – what’s going on there – and how did it all begin? The LHC will find out!

These particle will unlock the secrets of the beginning of time and us. The problem is that something so big has never been used before since the dawn of time, so there is a chance it’ll create a black hole that will suck in the whole universe, with us in it.

Forget that Credit Card bill or the mortgage repayments you’re off. Well, not really. It’s not going to happen. We’ll all get up tomorrow as usual and everything will be fine. I think I’m with D:Ream’s keyboard player on this one.

Tomorrow - at about lunchtime. Everything\'s just as it should be
Tomorrow. About lunchtime. Everything’s just as it should be.

But, that’s all fine and dandy, what does it have to do with travel?

Well there is that high possibility that we won’t die tomorrow morning, but what is going to be the result of the magnets down there? The LHC uses a lot of magnets. A massive amount of magnets; it has over 3,000 magnets, with some of them weighing 27 tonnes each. That’s an awful lot of magnetic power. And, if you believe the scientists, 10,000 times more powerful than the Earth’s magnetic field.

So, it is plausible that this massive magnetic disruption may cause a few problems along the way. One of these being that the field could disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field and upset plane’s navigation, causing problems as far reaching as planes losing their way and crashing, to mobile phones not receiving their text messages.

The magnetic force may upset a plane\'s navigation
Plane’s navigation may get confused due to the LHC’s magnetic field

The plane story could happen, but you’d have to be flying exactly over the LHC when it’s actually running and you’re flying low enough to get interference from the deeply-buried machine.

So, what’s the long and the short of it? Don’t worry. If it does happen, we’re all in the same boat, with everything happening at the speed of light there will be no winners or losers. And if it doesn’t happen – we’d all just focus on this lacklustre English summer. Perhaps we all need to book a winter break.

What do you think? Leave a comment if you think the world’s going to end or survive.

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  • Lee Williams
    CAREFUL! You're going to scare all those Luddites who believe the world will end in 2012 because the Mayan calandar says so and who think the dinosaurs are extinct because they allowed gay marriage. Ya gotta go easy on the kooks. Sarcasm is beyond them.
  • Lurker
    @Sam,
    You're a fool. The first section of the article was a joke. "Forget that Credit Card bill or the mortgage repayments you’re off. Well, not really. It’s not going to happen. We’ll all get up tomorrow as usual and everything will be fine. I think I’m with D:Ream’s keyboard player on this one."

    Read the whole article before you criticize it.
  • Hevach
    Actually, it won't even be quick. Black holes this small will absorb mass very slowly - on the order of protons per hour. Each one has a reasonable chance, if it doesn't cease to exist, of eating up several grams by the end of the universe.

    So it's a very real possibility that after centuries of smooth sailing, the LHC will no longer be able to continue functioning as millions of tiny black holes slowly push its inside diameter out of tolerance.
  • Dood
    You have no clue what you are talking about. It's like people hear about LHC and all they hear is BLACK HOLES WE ALL GONNA DIE!

    Not gonna happen.
  • race
    A junkyard electromagnet is about 1,000 times stronger than the earth's magnetic field.
  • yeesh
    Thank you ST. People need to get over this thing. There will be NO, none, zero, nada, zilch, collisions until sometime in October. Tomorrow they are just turning it on and sending the hadrons around in circles to make sure it works the way it is suppose to.
  • BirthdayGirl
    My sixteenth birthday is the day after the day they're starting it up. I want to turn sixteen!!
  • jake
    Wow, you're obviously not educated about the LHC at all. There are millions of black holes all over the universe in existence right now, so its not like one made by the LHC will "suck in the whole universe, with us in it". That's just a stupid comment. The LHC has been planned for years and has met regulations and been through theoretical situations. The LHC is going to change the way we look at the universe and broaden our knowledge about subatomic particles. Horrible article. Do some research.
  • wayne
    What a first class loads of Bollards! Are we really that stupid to think that anything that would/could remotely cause something like this, would not get flagged up by the government and stopped!

    I will enjoy sleeping tonight knowing that when i wake up in the morning, most of the silly people who actually believe this shit, will have done their browns in their underpants for nothing!
  • timmoth
    -.- your all paranoid, do you have any physical proof that the magnetic field will mess with the planes computer navigation, or that it will have a huge explosion that will end the world
  • Me
    Actually, if a black hole is formed, scientists believe it will take a couple of years to reach a dangerous mass, at least one dangerous enough to start sucking in large chunks of the planet.

    Regardless of what happens, we won't see the world end within a few hours, it will be much longer than that.
  • bill
    The nice part is, if it does end things, it happens very, very quickly. Imagine realizing that you're going to die...in about six hours.

    I doubt anything will happen, but I'm not sure of it. MSNBC's laughing physicist ("We just drag these things out to scare people.") did nothing to reassure me.
  • stupid bloggers
    If there are any black hole(s) created they will be very tiny and will disappear out of existence very quickly. The universe will not get sucked into one big black hole, you idiot. Also, there will be no collisions tomorrow only acceleration. So I guess you can put your clothes back on and take off the wooden "end of the world" sign for now. Stop stirring up unnecessary fervor.
  • matt
    eeek

    I'm only a few KM from Geneva tomorrow, so if I see any signs of impending world endage I'll try and get an email out sharpish, so you'll all have a couple of seconds extra notice.