Death by [theoretical] Black Hole

 

Large Hadron Collider

“People in india have stopped eating, are flocking to temples, and one girl has killed herself because the LHC may destroy the world, according to the fear-mongering thugs at india TV (a news channel that makes fox news look fair and balanced)”

By now you must have heard about the new “Doomsday” device designed by thousands of physicists, built under farmland on the France/Switzerland borders; the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC for short. If you haven’t, Google is your best friend…

 

Quite a few seem to have thought that Wednesday, September 10th, 2008, was the “End of Days”, as we call it in the religious circuit. CERN successfully guided protons around the collider first in a clockwise direction, and then counterclockwise. The whole test took less than an hour, and was quite a success.

 

The huge controversy that’s floating around the LHC is that there are dangers of forming a black hole using this device. In anticipation, there has been fasting, praying, and a suicide in reaction (or dread) of the foreboding end of the world – by black hole. I think this one actually trumps the dinosaur-extincting meteor… Uhmmm, there are a few atoms that are going to be circulating within this collider at any time, so if we do manage to create a black hole (and I think we give ourselves too much credit there), it just might be big enough to swallow a fly that made its way into the LHC…

 

In any case, if you are not convinced that the LHC is the least of our worries at this point, then, no need to fear! (Sorry for the bad pun)… The countdown has begun to a full scale experiment; mark your calendars to the new date for Death by Black Hole… October 21, 2008. Cheers!

On Science and Religion… Can’t We Just Get Along Already????

Can’t We Just Get Along Already???? Just had to respond to the latest bit of news to get my attention recently:

Now the sientists are trying to say DNA proves Big Foot. I told you they just make this stuff up.

Science is a hoax!

DNA IS FAKE « Another God Feering Conservative.

I know, two of the topics I hate to mix…. Because of my background, I hate to talk about religion, even more now that I’m a scientist. But growing up, I’ve always loved science, always believed in it. Why? Because, the proof is there! I can touch it, I can see it, smell it… You get the idea.!

Let me start with a story…. As a kid, I remember learning about rainbows and how they were created. You see, light goes through a prism (in this case, the raindrops on their way to earth from heaven), and the light gets split into the different wavelengths (ie, the rainbow of colours). I was so excited when I learned about this, I ran home at the end of the day to tell my mom what I had learned; that the sun and the rain together made rainbows…

“That is nonsense!!!”, was her surprising response. “Everyone knows that God makes rainbows!!!”.

I know what you’re thinking, Mr. and Mrs. super conservative, God-Feering, Xtian, “God is responsible for making rainbows!”. Ok, but how do you explain to your children just HOW God makes them? Is it just a wave of the world-creating hand, and Shazzam!, we have a rainbow? Or does He just blink and bat his eye like a genie, and PRESTO! One rainbow appears?

C’mon, how long do you think you can fool them? What is so wrong in explaining that God made rainbows, but using a set of observable laws that we can test? Everything (well, most all of it, anyway) that we experience can be explained to some degree with scientific laws that we as a human race have to ability to apply to the living world around us. After thousands of years, why is religion still at odds with science, and why is it so hard to accept that science is the tool that God used to build this world? Think about it for a minute, and when you think you understand, ponder it some more. Don’t call me, I’ll call you…

It would be kind of cruel if God gave us all this intelligence to build cars that take us to work everyday, to sit at home with air-conditioning on a hot day, to have a sip of coffee in 2 minutes instead of 15… All made possible by the wonders of science. To have all this knowledge, and not use it, instead, just content to sit back “believe” in everything, is a waste of time…

Still think science is a hoax? Fine, keep eating those fatty hamburgers, sit in your chair, and lets see God help you out of that inevitable heart attack; you know, the one science says is bound to happen? Don’t believe it; He’ll stop your heart attack and all will be fine. Or maybe you’ll tell me different in the afterlife…

T.

A Flat Earth… Seriously???

Ok, so I’m not writing this because I’m a scientist (Ok, maybe I am!), but as an informed individual. And when someone, or some-bodies, imply that I’m an idiot, “Lost”, or a ‘poor soul that needs to be saved’ for believing in something for which EVIDENCE exists, I have to wonder who the real idiot is..

Of course I’m talking about the “Flat Earth Theory”… Haven’t we been through this already? Like two thousand years back? How is it possible with all the knowledge we have acquired (Oh, I forgot, some of us are “Lost Idiots”) that some still believe that the world is flat, and that the earth is the center of the universe?

Get off your fricking high horse, and yes, Mr. D, I do indeed “believe such dribble”

T.