Stephen Hawking: Research on the ‘God particle’ could cause space-time to collapse

originally posted by: roadgravel

originally posted by: Fylgje
Just a question; If time/space did collapse, wouldn't the simulation just reset itself?

Is it built to reset or just a blue screen of death. I guess we wouldn't know either way.

I just realized something extremely profound. Does the blue screen of death happen because of bad programming, or do the characters inside our computers turn on the 100bn GV collider?

a reply to: choos

"which could mean one or two things:

we are probably the most advance beings in the universe (looking at the world this is worrisome) or,

theres some sort of force or organisation which magically appears to stop it before it happens."

In answer to the above, sheer arrogance, organised religion and a completely misunderstood notion of how our universe functions as a whole would be the only reasons to assume humanity is the most advanced species doing the rounds, past present, and future if indeed time follows a linear path. As to the second statement certainly seems a possibility, but then again i do subscribe to the notion of a holographic universe considering the mounting evidence that implies such.

en.wikipedia.org... Holographic principle

Personally i think we are all just Boltzmann brains we just don't realise our potential never mind our reality which is most lightly of our own creation.

en.wikipedia.org... Boltzmann Brain

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: rickymouse

Lol! If you're looking to make $$$, don't go into particle physics!

Anyway, back on topic:

In his preface, Hawking stresses that the possibility of the Higgs boson behaving in such a way is highly unlikely — and that creating the conditions in which the particle would is impossible given the current state of technological development.

^this is the important takeaway, not the over-sensationalized headline.

What kind of work would they be doing if there were a lot less jobs? Washing dishes at Big Boy restaurant? There are a lot of particles in the dishwater.

I'm sure they make more than a school teacher there, unless of course the teacher is a coach of the football team in college.

No, the average wage is actually 10-20K less than a high school teacher for the average researcher stationed at CERN, it also depends upon the country the researcher comes from.

What ignorance like that displays is the lack of ability to realise that most of the money spent is basically injected back into the economy, rather than it being injected into the fat wallet of some pig who does his/her upmost not to even pay tax by running a business deemed too important to fail.

originally posted by: choos

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: olaru12
Has not happened yet and our universe is doing just fine. One would think some other civilisation on the past would have destroyed our verse with there own version of partical accelerators long, long ago if this was indeed the case.

which could mean one or two things:

we are probably the most advance beings in the universe (looking at the world this is worrisome) or,

theres some sort of force or organisation which magically appears to stop it before it happens.

I don't think it means we are the most advanced species in the Universe. The bubble of 'true vacuum' would expand at light speed, which gives plenty of space (~90 billion lightyears?) and plenty of time (13.7 billion years) for 'true vacuum' to be erupting all over the universe, and simply not having reached us yet.

This is more proof that Stephen Hawking is one of the stupidest humans on the planet. He can make silly statements because for him it's all theoretical but that's all it is.. a barely educated guess - Hawking doesn't do, never has done real hands on research - he just reads books and formulates theories based off other peoples work.

One.. just one gigaelectronvolt, is a unit of energy equal to 1 billion electron volts. Hawking doesn't want just 1 or 100 gigaelectronvolt's, he needs 100 Billion gigaelectronvolt's to do his Universe going Poof magic.

Thats 100 billion x's one billion volts! There is No way on this Planet we will ever harness that kind of electricity to perform such an experiment and Hawking knows it.

Hawking as made an entire career based on dreaming up theories that can never be fact check-able in our lifetime.

Ya know what.. I'm glad he's a cripple, he deserves his confinement.

originally posted by: ErosA433

originally posted by: rickymouse

originally posted by: GetHyped
a reply to: rickymouse

Lol! If you're looking to make $$$, don't go into particle physics!

Anyway, back on topic:

In his preface, Hawking stresses that the possibility of the Higgs boson behaving in such a way is highly unlikely — and that creating the conditions in which the particle would is impossible given the current state of technological development.

^this is the important takeaway, not the over-sensationalized headline.

What kind of work would they be doing if there were a lot less jobs? Washing dishes at Big Boy restaurant? There are a lot of particles in the dishwater.

I'm sure they make more than a school teacher there, unless of course the teacher is a coach of the football team in college.

No, the average wage is actually 10-20K less than a high school teacher for the average researcher stationed at CERN, it also depends upon the country the researcher comes from.

What ignorance like that displays is the lack of ability to realise that most of the money spent is basically injected back into the economy, rather than it being injected into the fat wallet of some pig who does his/her upmost not to even pay tax by running a business deemed too important to fail.

I looked at articles like this: www.ehow.com...

The top paid teachers in high schools here are around seventy grand. The starting teachers wage is around thirty five grand. The top wage of a teacher here is just above the minimum wage of the particle physicists. I think maybe you should actually research something before Commenting. Did you think I was just going to accept what you say just because you say it. I had researched their wages back about three years ago. I provided evidence, now I expect you to since you challenged me.

originally posted by: JohnPhoenix
This is more proof that Stephen Hawking is one of the stupidest humans on the planet. He can make silly statements because for him it's all theoretical but that's all it is.. a barely educated guess - Hawking doesn't do, never has done real hands on research - he just reads books and formulates theories based off other peoples work.

One.. just one gigaelectronvolt, is a unit of energy equal to 1 billion electron volts. Hawking doesn't want just 1 or 100 gigaelectronvolt's, he needs 100 Billion gigaelectronvolt's to do his Universe going Poof magic.

Thats 100 billion x's one billion volts! There is No way on this Planet we will ever harness that kind of electricity to perform such an experiment and Hawking knows it.

Hawking as made an entire career based on dreaming up theories that can never be fact check-able in our lifetime.

Ya know what.. I'm glad he's a cripple, he deserves his confinement.

What an ignorant post! How is this Hawking's "fault" that we (currently, and possibly never) can harvest this type of Energy? What are you actually blaming him for?

By the way..I myself have posted about the "false vacuum" and the theoretical (!) chance that the universe could literally vanish by triggering it skipping into a "true vacuum" several months ago, not sure whether here on the forum.

By the way, he is (AFAIK) not the "inventor" of this theory...but you sound angry and almost as if you blame Hawkins for theorizing about this. Why? It's entirely legit to theorize incl. speculative scenarios. It is also relatively irrelevant whether WE can ever create/harvest this energy...it is for example likely that such amounts of energies exist elsewhere in the universe and could trigger the literal "vanishing of the universe"....respective it is ALSO *thinkable* that this event has actually already started (who knows?) maybe even multiple times...but billions of LYs away. In other words: The end of the universe already started.....somewhere..out there...

It's an extremely fascinating and also frightening theory....and I think your reply there was entirely off the mark and ignorant.

Also....we're talking about the far future here...maybe not even decades.....possibly centuries, maybe millenia.

Who says that we won't build a GIANT collider some day in space which could create those energies? It is a likelihood. If a scientist warns there are potential "problems" (the word"problems" being a ridiculous understatement since we're talking about the literal destruction of the universe...)..this is entirely legit!

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: Char-Lee

Doubtful.

The earth's circumference is ~24000 miles. Imagine the amount of material it would take to build an accelerator that size?

Ironically, I can think of a huge collider being built in space, easily. And I am talking about in the rather near future, some decades. 50, 60, 100 maybe 200 years. Not far off by a long-shot. You think a collider the size of earth sounds so far-fetched? I don't. In fact, thinking it would ONLY need a collider the size of earth for those energies is actually frightening since this is THEORETICALLY possible (and likely).

a reply to: rickymouse

So what this article fails to point out is that the average wage of a faculty can be anywhere between about 70-150 K, however the reality on the ground is that the people doing most of the work, hands on or otherwise, are not university faculties, but research associates. In the UK the average wage of an RA is about 28-35K (56K max USD ish) It depends upon institute but it is around that mark. In Canada the wage you can expect for an RA is somewhere between 40-55K depending on several factors.

Now the ratio of RA to faculty is... well i dont know but it is from my own observations around 5:1

Where do i get my sources from? Well not from a question asked on ehow thats for sure, because I am a particle physicist and I am exposed to the realities of working in this field. I know a little bit more than the page does. and Dirk who wrote it referencing statistics should really be honest and point out that a Gradiate student completing his / her PhD and going into the hands on field of particle physics isn't going to be making an average of 100k... by any stretch of the Imagination.

The only way is to make faculty. Which is a mix between a lottery win and knowing the right people.

So evidence good enough for you there? Statistics come from personal communications of people I know and have worked with who span across 7 universities and 1 national lab in the UK, 2 universities in France, 5 universities and 1 national lab in Canada, and 2 universities and 2 national labs in the US... covering both fields of Dark Matter and High energy physics.

Soooo i think my knowledge of pay scale as an average physicist in the field of particle physics is a bit more accurate than someone looking at the university lecturer pay stats and equating the two together.

a reply to: ErosA433

We are comparing particle physicists to teachers, not research assistants. That is what we were both discussing. The research assistants are just regular jobs. They do not apply for funding for their science. The physicists are the ones that write the papers to get money to their organization. They are well paid after they get in their job.

You cannot compare the work and pay of a doctor to that of a nurse or secretary.

Yes, I know there are many other workers dependent on the scientists with less pay. A salesman for a business sells the product and this keeps many workers collecting a paycheck. A doctor not only has to make money, they have to make sure all the office staff keeps working. But, when this goes astray, the doctors can send patients to the wrong specialist to support their colleges. Is Cern actually going in the right direction or are they just trying to stimulate interest to keep their people employed. Remember, this is good for the local economy also.

I think they should put these guys researching some system where we can provide our energy with less environmental impact. Units safe and small enough to put into a town or near a house. Now, this would mean we will be less dependent on the economy, so I doubt if this will happen.

Let's all hope Dr Who shows up soon.
He seems to have all this space/time thingy all figured out.

a reply to: rickymouse


once again you dont really understand what you are saying

A research associate or post-doctoral research fellow is a PhD, A Doctor, These are the people who do research, in fact the majority of the research is carried out by such people. I am, a particle physicist, yet I am not a lecturer.
I have authored papers, and in a great many cases most PhDs and RA's will author papers on the work and research they have done.

Funding applications are more often than not a group effort that are a collaborative effort bringing together the work of many people in order to make a grant application. Yes in the end it is the Faculty holder that becomes the man / woman at the top.

It is absolutely irrelevant to say its like comparing doctors and nurses.

Anyway, doesnt matter really, don't have to accept anything i say speaking from someone who is actually in the field you criticize, you find your excuses anyway in order to keep your current point of view. And each time i read the garbage, i will likely post a rebuttal...waste of everyones time really.

Deny ignorance

CERN's interest is blue skies research, it stimulates more than just interest... they did manage to build the largest coldest place known in the universe... this technological development push has stimulated industry into developing super conducting systems for power grid, as one example.

CERN's early stimulus is the reason why computing developed so rapidly through the 70s and 80s, Particle physics's and a small other number of applications where the only people interested in large computing power. These are the people who drove some of the field forward.

WWW was invented at CERN.

Early PET scanners were largely developed by particle physics

deny ignorance once more

a reply to: ErosA433

Hey, I have nothing against particle physicists. I think they are intelligent and have great knowledge in their field. I just think that they could examine their direction better and create things that would be more beneficial to the environment and our societies instead of studying the god particle.

The intelligent are supposed to be overlooking the ones that are not so smart. They have a gift. They do deserve good pay but must produce things that will benefit our future. That Nuclear weapons did not do that, in fact they made things worse. Cern does have a few benefits, but like I said, all these good minds should be fixing things instead of just being off in their little world ignoring the stuff that is going on. People would listen to them, well maybe not the ones that profit from the destruction and power they hold.

I suppose if you guys invented technology to do what I said in my last post about energy, you would lose your paycheck as this would create change that would possibly cause a loss of control of power by governments. Also a lot of what I have researched and have engineered in my mind could be turned into a weapon. So I abandoned it. I suppose you guys have the same reasoning.

I am questioning the direction, not the science or the people doing this.

WWW was invented by a couple of people working at CERN, not by CERN

originally posted by: NoRulesAllowed

How is this Hawking's "fault" that we (currently, and possibly never) can harvest this type of Energy? What are you actually blaming him for?

For being an Alarmist.

originally posted by: ErosA433
CERN's early stimulus is the reason why computing developed so rapidly through the 70s and 80s, Particle physics's and a small other number of applications where the only people interested in large computing power. These are the people who drove some of the field forward.

In actuality the economic development of supercomputing was driven by the demand & much larger expenditure of money by the national laboratories, military contractors, and signals intelligence community. The primary applications were nuclear weapons simulation, aerospace dynamics & radar simulation, and unspecified intelligence work.

a reply to: mbkennel
Couple of people working at CERN... yes pedantic, but they where working for the field of particle physics and developed it to aid science, the off shoot being used widely today. Without that environment, it would have turned out quite differently.

Use of computing for number crunching and simulation, nuclear, aerospace, weather prediction is one and the same, the point was that it helped drive the technology forward, so it wasn't ONLY military contracts is really the point. Sure there are many things, not one single driving force, but the point still remains true.

Its much like cloud computing today also, The ability to throw around large amounts of data, mass storage and retrieval and a few other things, have somewhat been related in a way to the development of GRID for the LHC. No not the only driving force, but a extremely strong one.


The thing about blue skies research is that there is not an obvious goal, do you suppose we should not develop our knowledge? and only develop technologies forward? The two are related and both are required. You people on ATS constantly talk about thinking outside of the box, and yet when it is something involving a field that is actually rather badly funded you get all upset about it.


You know? If americans drank 20% less beer in 1 year, and donated all that money to science, you would have enough money to build another LHC. 1 year people. The amount of money spent, bailing out the banks and the pigs who caused the financial crisis world wide, was an embarrassing amount of money. it was 500 Billion in the UK alone. And yet what? People complain about a running budget which is an absolute pittance by comparison of how much money is lost by not taxing religious establishments, and by providing corporate benefits? Large corporations hold governments to ransom because they dont like paying Tax and thats somehow not a problem because there are about 2000-3000 scientists somewhere trying to figure out how the universe works.

You know, the field of Dark Matter research is in total world wide, probably less than 1000 people. Oh yeah, and the vast majority of scientists i know in particle physics, have absolutely no desire to make it rich. We tend to care more about our research than anything else.

What a way to stir up controversy around a book, lol.

Oldest trick in the book.

a reply to: ErosA433

talking about money always divide people, it's the purpose of monetary system..

So is he (Hawking) talking about when the SuperCollider goes back into operation in 2015. . . or just at anytime just because space-time feels like collapsing upon us?

Great! . . . just made plans for the future too . . .