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

a reply to: nonnez

Need to be a one hell of a super collider to obtain those kind of electron voltages. The next few iterations of CERN will be nothing special, hence no danger regarding the destruction of reality laid out in the manner Hawking describes. But build one in low Earth orbit and power it with the Sun and i imagine we could quite possibly produce such voltages, hence conduct the postulated scenario. Dont know about it destroying our reality/universe or i imagine some kind of sentient race would have done it before given the age and vastness of the universe we inhabit.

a reply to: AtomicOrbital1

It's necessary research.

Uh, No, no it is not necessary.

A space-time collapse is not as painful as it seems

How many "space-time collapses have YOU lived through?

Can it become unstable? Yes.

Nuff said.

a reply to: olaru12
I am not certain "God" would allow the human (as its creation point 0s or 1s binary all existing animals/insects material; the description of ITS existence) would allow a perpetration: such a comedy of ERRORS that could destroy everything known or in progress potentiality to be known.
Why destroy the greatest LIBRARY of specie ever existed (one planet specialized to house all physical/idea forms sprung from the imaginations of those [perceived gods] existing in the higher dimensions)?

I have a gift, i can form the god particle to anyones desire. Does it make me a bad person? Ive been asked what i want, i want to be left alone.

Collapse of space and time?! Holy cow that sounds serious. Kinda drastic. What would such an event even be like?

There has been a crazy amount of threads lately on the subject of absolute catastrophe brought on by the LHC at CERN, and messing with these particles. It freaks me out.

However I think I'll take the space-time collapse over being feasted upon by ancient demons released through some portal from hell.

originally posted by: Hyperia
I have a gift, i can form the god particle to anyones desire. Does it make me a bad person? Ive been asked what i want, i want to be left alone.

If true you do not profligate/engender the enterprise of potentials (not a positive for/of the growth of this vast intricate system based in 'profitability' exponentials) you are a dismal FAILURE as far as better expectations were concerned (you gave up).

a reply to: vethumanbeing

Spoken like a real capitalist, if you had to kill several billions of people to make it work, does the profit justify it? An honest answer would be grateful since you are an American

Its all about context. Steven even says 100bn giga electron volts, which is orders of magnitude outside the capabilities of the LHR. I would bet that if you asked Steven about many other types of collider bombardment at these levels, there would be catastrophe of one sort of another possible in most of them as well.

originally posted by: Hyperia
a reply to: vethumanbeing

Spoken like a real capitalist, if you had to kill several billions of people to make it work, does the profit justify it? An honest answer would be grateful since you are an American

Fiscal Conservative/Social Democrat. If I had to kill several billions of people to make this work; I would have to follow the plans of the (COMMUNIST/SOCIALIST/NATIONALIST PARTIES). I would use Stalin's plan for murdering millions of his own people; the same one that Hitler later used as a blueprint to murdering anyone and everyone that presented a threat to his Aryan Nation breeding program (and he wanted their wealth; talk about nationalizing businesses and GOLD TEETH extraction). Shame on the Swiss banks. Stalin gave Hitler the entire idea of 'mass genocide made easy'
and Hitler (a perceived ally) betrayed that alliance and invaded HIS domain and failed in that attempt *Stalingrad in winter*(that's between Stalin and Hitler perpetually embraced in a death grip forever).

originally posted by: charlyv
Its all about context. Steven even says 100bn giga electron volts, which is orders of magnitude outside the capabilities of the LHR. I would bet that if you asked Steven about many other types of collider bombardment at these levels, there would be catastrophe of one sort of another possible in most of them as well.

Space time collapse is only possible, if you manipulate time on a table top, as this is literally planet busting stuff.
But particle collisions in the LHC? Nein.

originally posted by: kaylaluv
Jeeze... I think I'd rather deal with ebola than a frickin' space-time collapse!!

The good news is space-time collapse would be a lot faster.

originally posted by: TechniXcality
a reply to: olaru12
I always figured this is how the big bang occurred, some other failed monkey species in an alternative universe playing with particles and then poof.there universe ends and ours begins only to repeat its self infinity, have we considered that there may be a learning cap because once we get the tech to make true break throughs we destroy all life as we know it. The Greeks had it right remember the poor fellow sentenced by zues to push a rock up a hill for eternity only to have it roll back down...

If so, isn't safe to assume that someone in the universe another civilization has already messed around with the fundamental particles?

We all have to live here on this planet together. I would appreciate it if these scientists would stop messing around with mother nature. The chances of them ruining it for everybody is highly possible. Why can't they cure cancer? Dig wells for other countries? Educating others to get along instead. All this greed and control is going to cause chaos. We are not God, we are simplistic beings, we should just make the most out of ourselves. Pick up road side trash if your want to feel important and intelligent.

a reply to: kaylaluv

Pretty much anyone but the most Hardcore nihilist would. It would mean the end of everything as we know it. Literally everything. All matter.
But, luckily, the LHC hasabsolutely 0 chance of producing a Higgs Boson at these energy/mass ranges. What Hawking is describing is a theoretical 'stable valley' of mass for the Higgs Boson that would be capable of completely altering the nature of the way it interacts with matter to give it mass.
It would certainly be an unfavorable situation, but it isn't the way that the Universe is built to function.

a reply to: GoShredAK

Well, luckily, an absolute collapse of space-time would be a nearly instantaneous event as there is no evidence that propagation of the Higgs Field is constrained by the speed of light. At least, none that I know of. So you wouldn't notice a thing. You'd just cease to exist, along with everyone and everything else in the hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe.
But the stories of the LHC possibly tearing apart reality are nothing more than fear-mongering by people who either can't or don't wish to understand the science behind it. What it does is accelerate protons to energies of approximately 14 TeV (terraelectronvolts) and collide them to tease out the elementary particles they are built from. And in the process other particles can briefly be created or observed, such as the Higgs Boson.
While this can certainly sound like a dangerous practice to those who don't understand the physics involved, there are particles with energy levels which are orders of magnitude greater which strike our atmosphere on a regular basis. We refer to these as Cosmic Rays. They are generated by stars, supernovae, quasars and other celestial events. And they interact with our atmosphere in a completely uncontrolled manner, and produce cascades of particles which rain down on all of us when they occur. These energy levels are far beyond anything we can achieve in our accelerators, even the LHC.
Additionally, the 'threat' of the LHC creating a subatomic singularity (black hole) is often seriously exaggerated as well. If it did occur, it would evaporate almost instantly. Also, it would have no more mass or gravitational attraction than the two particles which formed it. And that is not nearly enough to overcome the velocity of the other protons in the collision point and draw them in. The gravitational attraction of a proton is so small as to be practically 0. Singularities only have the mass and gravitational force of the mass they are created from or have additionally absorbed. If our Sun were to turn into one right now, in about 8 minutes we would be plunged into darkness, but unless it went supernova first (which it doesn't have the mass to do), the planets would continue orbiting as they do now. We wouldn't suddenly be pulled into it because we would be subject to the same gravity as we were when it was still a star. (Actually, even a bit less, because the volume of the singularity would be much less than that of the Sun, and gravity weakens at an inverse square rate)
The only thing I can't say with confidence that the LHC isn't capable of doing which could be hazardous to the planet is the potential production of a theoretical particle called a Strangelet. The particle isn't at all likely to be something that can even exist via the theories that predict it, but the potential pathways to it's creation are rather complicated and I personally don't understand the level of physics involved well enough to be certain that it is an impossibility. Though others on this board do, and have said in other threads that it is not a viable outcome.