Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Cynthetiq
I have never been exactly sure just what the actual benefits of these scientific endeavors are. I know that they mean something and are positive studies, but I don't really know exactly what they produce as far as cause and effect.
|
The LHC is just like any other technology. We use it, we learn from it. Learning is a noble pursuit in ts own right, but the next inevitable steps are to try to weaponize it and then to revolutionize the way we do something. Once we figured out that the atomic bomb worked and wouldn't end the world, we made a whole lot of them and started figuring out how to make energy without reducing air quality. I don't really see dark matter being weaponized for earth-based use, but it does have implications for a cheap energy source for interstellar travel .
The people who claim that this will release a strangelet or create a black hole are doing so out of ignorance. A strangelet would decay to its ground state before it could escape the containment field, and there it would interact with matter like any cosmic ray. At the energy level of the LHC, a black hole would evaporate before it could suck down more than a few atoms, and it would be completely contained within the accelerator ring.