back to article LHC pulverises previous record: 2.36 TeV surprise collision!

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), already the most powerful particle-punisher ever built, smashed the collision record yesterday night as humanity's first 2.36 Tera-electron-volt collisions were recorded. Scientists at the colossal subterranean ATLAS instrument cavern, located on the 27-km underground orbital motorway for …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    ...and

    if anything does come through a portal - we are not going to get told about it

    and

    if the universe was an 'easy' thing to destroy, someone would have already done it, i am going to be so disappointed if we are the most technologically advance species in the universe.

    1. Stoneshop
      Coat

      This portal

      couldn't we just mount a doorbell on the other side, so that whoever wants to come in can announce itself?

    2. Quirkafleeg
      Go

      Re: …and

      Somebody already has. This is that universe's replacement.

      1. Simon C

        that would be an awkward return sale

        Yes, erm God/Ethereal Being/Cthulu/Whoever,

        This erm...wow this is embarrassing...

        this Universe you sold me, with its promise of a lifelong observation tank for the perpetuation of life...

        well urm...

        wow....

        one of these life forms, well it kind of just broke the universe.

        Can I exchange it for a new one?

        No no no,..I dont want a refund, I just want one thats not going to fail.

        Ok thanks

        Appreciate that God/Ethereal Being/Cthulu/Whoever, I'll be sure to tell my friends about you.

  2. Gordon is not a Moron
    Coat

    Is it just me...

    or does the rapid progress by those clever chappies point to them turning the LHC up to 11 on 1/1/2010 at about 6pm-ish GMT, the broadcast time for David Tennent's last outing as The Doctor in "The End of Time" ?

    I'm not crazy, I'm not paranoid & my coat isn't lined with tinfoil

  3. Scott 19

    Stand back

    If my name was Sam Beckett, i wouldn't stand anywhere near this machine.

    Saying that the tinfoilers maybe praying for aliens that can/can't (delete as which side you tinfoil hat leans) survive in a rich CO2 enviroment.

  4. Andus McCoatover
    Boffin

    Maybe we're already ...

    ...in a Black Hole, no-one knows. Would we? How would it appear to us mere mortals? Dimensions would look precisely the same, surely.

    However, I know what a Brown Hole looks like, having partaken of the splendid advice of El Reg and the 'Reverse Cowgirl' technique, but that's another story...

  5. rpjs

    What I still want to know...

    Is the LHC a Hadron Collider which is Large, or a Collider of Large Hadrons?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Or

      A collider for large hadron collisions.

      1. Chris Bradshaw
        Boffin

        Or

        Actually, the LHC is a large collider for large hadron collisions.

    2. Stoneshop
      Coat

      In the same way

      that PIN stands for Personal PIN Number, LHC stands for Large LHC Collider.

  6. Jeremy Chappell
    Flame

    Ahh so confident.

    Good old El Reg, so confident in the face of Universal Armageddon. Won't you look silly when the Universe ends and you're forced to put a grovelling retraction on your website?

    (And where is the icon for Universal Armageddon?)

    1. Ian Stephenson
      FAIL

      Think about it...

      When the Universe ends there will not be any chance to post the grovelling retraction so Win-win for El Reg really.

      (and where is the icon for facepalm)

      1. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge
        Troll

        Now I'm confused...

        Just who is being ironic and who is being obtuse?

      2. TeeCee Gold badge

        Though about it.

        Ah yes, but as El Reg is always right on the ball news-wise, I'm sure they'll be able to get an apology out in the few nanoseconds between the start of Global Custardification* and the Dessert-topping conversion process consuming Vulture Towers.

        *Handily, with Global Warming, any custard generated will be piping hot and go nicely on Rhubarb crumble**.

        **This just leaves the question to be settled of where to get enough Rhubarb crumble to put 1.083e+24 litres of custard on.

        1. Rob
          Go

          Thanks TeeCee...

          ... I'm now looking forward to the end of the world/universe, I love crumble and custard :)

        2. Quirkafleeg

          Re: Though about it.

          Roobarb crumble? That doesn't sound right…

      3. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        FFS

        Its SARCASM!

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Up

          Phew..

          Glad you mentioned that, I generally fail to spot it unless I'm concentrating.

          Thumb up for any passing space craft..

  7. James Hughes 1

    Have they started making the anti matter yet?

    For the destruction of the Vatican?

    1. Chris Bradshaw
      Coat

      Uh..

      Does the anti-matter really matter??

      Yeah, the lab coat please

  8. ThomasF
    Big Brother

    Lord Byron will be pleased

    "A Runaway Conceptual Custardisation Process Caused by a Collaptical explosion"

    It cannot be put more eloquently than that. Even Luis Sancho will be nodding his head at that statement.

    Its up there with "The Best of Byron Xmas Hits"

    Methinks the Pan-Continuum police force will be making notes as to the flowery nature of our regard for "The Higgs bosons experiment"

    As Higgs Boson turns out to be indeed his own sister.

    The "custardisation process" thickens

  9. Steven Raith
    Thumb Up

    To paraphrase Frankie Boyle

    "I hope they do destroy the universe, and when the debris has cleared, all that comes up is a big sign saying "Welcome to Level 2""

    Mangled the quote a bit, but you get the idea.

    Bring on the TeV.

    Steven R

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    All is fine

    Ah yes, nothiinngg ttoo wwwooorrrrrryyy abbbooouuut aaattt aallllll

    III ffeeeeeelll qquuiittee ffiine now thank you :-)

  11. Bod
    Coat

    So that's what they've spent all this money on

    It's a giant Tempest machine

    (see picture)

    1. Sodabread
      Thumb Up

      @Bod

      That made my day. Thank you.

  12. John Sager

    Prose energy

    Lewis, your prose is not just purple, it's becoming positively ultra-violet! When, I wonder, will its photon energy reach 7Tev?

  13. ShaggyDoggy

    Well ...

    Either

    (a) this is the future, and we didn't realise it

    (b) this is the present, and we can't see forwards

    (c) this is the past, and we think it's the present

    Yours,

    H. Boson

  14. luis sancho

    ONE GIANT LEAP BACKWARDS FOR MANKIND one little step for nuclear physics

    The idea that the most expensive, perfect weapon ever constructed, the light speed, super-fluid, 7 teravolts quark cannon built by the Nuclear Company of Europe (the LHC) represents no danger to mankind, because it has also some peaceful fringe benefits (the study of subatomic particles) is an oxymoron. All military technologies have peaceful applications but those facts must not hide the primary consequences of their use. Weapons are lineal systems that release enormous quantities of energy, able to erase the complex, fragile information that creates life; and the quark cannon, called in the peaceful ‘newspeak’ of the new era, the Large Hadron Collider, is not an exception. It is the final evolution of the Industry of Cannons, intimately related to the evolution of Physics, the science that studies energy and motion, founded by Galileo, a mechanist working for the Arsenal of Venice, which discovered those laws of motion, studying cannonball trajectories, 400 years ago. The duality of the fruits of the tree of science, with its positive influence on knowledge and its negative consequences for human life are exemplified as never before by this quark cannon. Yet in this case, the negative consequences, the possible extinction of life, far outweigh the benefits for our knowledge of the Universe, and this is the key fact that the Nuclear Company has successfully hidden to the public and governments that founded this absurd quest for reaching the energies of the big-bang that once might have destroyed the Universe and now menace to destroy the planet Earth.

    ‘Technological civilization is programmed by the principle that something ought to be done because it is technologically possible. If it is possible to build nuclear weapons, they must be built, even If they might destroy us all. Once this principle is accepted, humanist Values (something has to be done because it is needed by man) are Dethroned and technological development becomes the foundation of ethics'.

    Eric Fromm, father of political psychology

    1. Gordon is not a Moron
      Alien

      I can't decide

      Is luis sancho either :

      a) a tinfoil hat wearing loon

      b) taking trolling to a whole new level

      c) amanfromMars's sister

      answers on a postcard to the usual address

      1. Rob
        Go

        I don't really care...

        ... who or what he is, but if he stops me from a having a marathon session of crumble and custard I'll be inserting him into the LHC and firing it up.

      2. John 90

        Luis is right.

        The LHC really is a weapon. It was built by the Swiss to prevent the French from invading.

        But the French think they themselves built it to prevent the Swiss from invading France.

        It's situated on the border so that both nations get the defense benefit.

        One false move and it's Mutually Assured Custardification!

      3. Stoneshop
        Joke

        You forgot

        d) yes/no/undecided/can'tbebothered/alloftheabove

        e) none of the above

        f) badgerbadgerbadger

    2. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      From physics to hippiness?

      Before it was quark matter, detailed predictions of what energy levels kill our poor hadrons and create all-collaptical black holes etc.

      Today, it's the general immorality of cannons, LHC is a weapon, weapons are bad, war is bad, white dove is good, peace and love, peace and love...

      Why is the sudden change of heart?

    3. Steve X

      final evolution of the Industry of Cannons,

      Rubbish. They still have to get it working at room temperature and without the need for that tedious vacuum. Lots more cannon evolution to go...

      As for "If it is possible to build nuclear weapons, they must be built, even If they might destroy us all." I think the reality is more like "If it is possible to build nuclear weapons, they must be built, before someone else builds one and uses it on us". Do unto others before they do unto you, etc.

      (and I think you'll find that Harold Lasswell was recognised as the "father of political psychology", about 40 years before Fromm. Unless of course this is an LHC-inspired time loop, and Fromm is Lasswell's grandfather, or...)

    4. Scott 19

      Luis Sancho

      I appreciate your words of wisdom but before i can accept them into my view of the ever changing world can you please clarify your feelings towrds the below :-

      1) Global Warming now known as Climate Change

      2) Paris Hilton

      3) Smoking

      4) M$ v Apple

      A score of 3 out of 4 will see me convert to informing everyone that the world will end through the LHC.

      1. Stoneshop
        Pint

        I'm not Luis Sancho

        but it's clear that Ms. Hilton is often responsible for at least some Local Warming, possibly followed by smoking. Whether this ties in with M$ versus Apple too, I'm not entirely sure.

    5. Yes Me Silver badge
      WTF?

      luis sancho's ranting and raving

      It really isn't worth deconstructing such drivel. Just one point: the notion that CERN has hidden anything, including the arguments that show why sancho's drivel is ...drivel, is, well, counterfactual. Anybody who knows anything about CERN, or the high energy physics community in general, knows this.

      Let's be collectively glad that sancho is tilting at *this* windmill and not at climate change science. (Wait a minute, didn't Sancho try to keep Don Quixote *away* from those windmills? Something wrong here, shureley?)

    6. HoRnO
      FAIL

      Luis Sancho

      The only signs of the coming apocalypse are the posts from people like you.

      Long, rambling, walls of text seemly thrown together at random and then posted anywhere that mentions the LHC across the internet.

      In your last post you managed to invoke Godwin’s Law which instantly means you lose.

      However I think I see the problem.

      If you were dumbing down what the LHC is to someone what would you say?

      Probably that it’s a big gun that fires small particles at other particles really quickly and looks at what happens when they smash to see what they’re made of.

      Now because you hear, big gun (or cannon in this case) and explosion! Then you hear reports of massive energy levels, the speed of light and world records and even though you don’t understand the scale, you go back to your simplest view of things you end up with….

      A big cannon that could destroy the world!

      Then you dig around the internet, throw some random phrases together, pick quotes and phrases out of context and create a massive conspiracy theory to fit your ‘big cannon’ idea and bingo, a Luis Sancho is born!

  15. Steve X

    It's already begun.

    A landed at GVA last night at 22:00. The Easyjet flight was 20 minutes early, which can only be explained by a major rupture in spacetime. It did seem a bit bumpy on the way down, I must admit.

  16. This post has been deleted by its author

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Hmmmm

    How do we know we haven't already slipped through a parallel dimension and carried on without realising it?

    Alright it's utter bollocks, just trying to raise some interest on a boring Wednesday lunchtime!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's more likely than you think.

      Well no, not actually, but it's probably the excuse that the doomsayers will start to adopt now the thing is working and nothing bad has happened; they'll just insist that it has, but we are all too blind to see it. Did you know there are people out there who still think that the millennium bug actually did happen, and that there's been a massive cover up? The world as we know it came to an end on New Year's Day 2000, and the dang gubbimint has been hiding it from us ever since!

  18. Secretgeek
    Grenade

    @luis sancho

    A couple of very minor points.

    Surely, Nuclear Company of Europe woud be NCE not CERN (unless that's what it stands for in French)?

    Also, I wouldn't consider Large Hadron COLLIDER to be a peaceful name given that it implies the powerful smashing together of hadrons.

    Fail x 2?

    Also I'm pretty sure the energies of the big bang actually created a universe not destroyed it (clue: take a look around). To be honest on the grand scheme of things if it takes destroying the Earth to create a whole bright and shiny new universe then I'm pretty comfortable with that.

    Referring to an earlier comment, maybe that's why we appear to be the most advanced race in the universe. Everyone else that's got to this level went *blink*.

    I'n no physicist but I certainly have appear to have a better understanding reality than you, you fruit loop.

    1. Steve X

      Yes, it's French

      Centre Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire

    2. Dale Richards
      Stop

      Re: luis sancho

      CERN originally stood for "Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire" (European Council for Nuclear Research). The name later changed to "Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire" (after they got organised?), but the acronym stayed the same.

      Of course, the research undertaken by the LHC can't really be described as "nuclear research", as they have gone beyond the atomic nucleus and are working with much smaller subatomic particles.

      1. rpenner

        Heh, an expert

        Not everyone who decides one morning to sue CERN can be bothered to look that up.

    3. Quirkafleeg

      Re: @luis sancho

      I blinked when I r

  19. umacf24
    Badgers

    Not really the first TeV collisions

    Cosmic hadrons have been observed to go up to a billion TeV -- that's one proton with the energy of a hammer blow.

    Now that would be a particle cannon but unfortunately you seem to need a galactic core to generate those energies.

    Fortunately.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Nurse! ...

    ... He's out of bed again.

  21. Simon Waddington
    Alien

    Luis Sancho...

    ...has definitely just arrived from a parallel dimension

  22. teacake

    @luis sancho

    Well, if it's going to destroy us all, don't sit around here moaning about it. Go and wave a placard or something. We'll still be here when you get back. Or not, depending on how successful you are.

    I don't know about quark cannon destroying the universe, but I do know that oxymoron doesn't mean what you think it means.

  23. Winkypop Silver badge
    Alien

    2.36 TeV !!!!!

    No wonder the quarks are restless tonight

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Lost

    When's the next big collision scheduled? I want to go home!

  25. hahnchen

    Re: Luis Sancho

    Luis Sancho is the guy who filed a lawsuit in Hawaii to stop the LHC being built, because he thinks it'll create a black hole which destroys us all.

    He seems to have switched his line of argument to one against the dastardly military industrial complex.

    Either way, he's a worthless crank.

    1. Stoneshop
      FAIL

      No he isn't.

      At least, regarding the bit about starting a lawsuit. That was Walter Wagner, a Hawaii-based botanist. Apart from that, they're both proud bearers of the Tinfoil Badge with the Unicorn Cross and Astral Fringes. Grade A Certified Loonies.

      Please don't mix up your nutjobs, lest they attain critical mass. A nutjob chain reaction may well prevent Total Earth Custardificulation, and what would we do with the Rhubarb Crumb in that case?

      1. rpenner

        Not quite

        Courtroom papers reveal the Hawaii lawsuit was filed by both Sancho and Wagner. Sancho didn't sign many of the papers, and Wagner has been scolded by at least one judge for acting improperly as Sancho's lawyer. But it is Sancho's name which is first on the case (dismissed, appeal has been fully briefed but no word on when it will be argued).

        Original complaint:

        http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-hidce/case_no-1:2008cv00136/case_id-78717/

  26. Secretgeek
    Coffee/keyboard

    @ teacake

    Seconded.

  27. Chris Simmons
    Alien

    Paging Mr Freeman

    "Why didn't they listen? We tried to warn them."

    "I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone

    create one."

    1. Greg J Preece

      Rise and shine, Missster Freeman

      That's DOCTOR Freeman to you, sonny jim.

  28. Secretgeek
    Thumb Up

    @ Steve X

    Consider me educated. Thanks.

    Sancho's still a fruit loop though.

  29. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Tullibardine
      Thumb Down

      Ah but!

      Try getting the mosquitos to bash into each other, let me know how you get on.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  30. Chris Miller
    Coat

    I knew it!

    I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of protons suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

  31. ShaggyDoggy

    Party

    Come on you guys at the LHC we want to have an end-of-everything PARTY and want to know when to start

    oh wait ...

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Custard?

    If the earth does disappear in a mass custardisation, would that be known forevermore (at least by civilisations that haven't been annihilated) as the moment the earth was destroyed at the Custard Stroke?

    Would that make people who believe in this as a valid theory "custard strokers"?

    Just wondering....

  33. Schultz
    Troll

    @BKB, four flying mosquitos

    Ever saw flying mosquitos collide? Thought not. My money would be on the LHC, but maybe for some billion Eur. one might come up with a suitable mosquito collider ...

  34. David 9
    FAIL

    @hahnchen

    "Luis Sancho is the guy who filed a lawsuit in Hawaii to stop the LHC being built, because he thinks it'll create a black hole which destroys us all."

    Typical yank who seems to think that him filing a lawsuit in A DIFFERENT FARKING COUNTRY can stop something happening in another.

    1. Steven Knox

      Typical Euro...

      Presuming that a whack-job is a "typical yank".

      Indeed, implying that you can even have a "typical" individual in a population on the scale of hundreds of millions seems to indicate an immature understanding of the diversity of the human species.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Ptchhh...

        Typical bloody yank.

      2. Stoneshop
        FAIL

        Typical Yank

        Glossing over the fact that Luis Sancho is considered a typical Yank for being an utter nutjob *and starting a lawsuit* against the target of his nuttiness, not just being an utter nutjob in general.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Troll

        @Steven

        "Indeed, implying that you can even have a "typical" individual in a population on the scale of hundreds of millions seems to indicate an immature understanding of the diversity of the human species."

        Which isn't as large as some might think.

        Most of the diversity is only skin deep and when you have, let's say, 80% of the population fitting into description, you can say quite safely that description describes a "typical individual" (in that sense, of course). Statistical fact, not just an opinion as you seem to suggest.

        It's almost funny that someone think that they are unique when there are hundreds of millions of people, isn't it?

        And not notice the obvious irony of the idea. (Not that I suggest that some of the writers are slightly irony-impaired or something like that.)

        Result of the schooling system of our friends from other side of the pond, is it?

      4. Mike Flugennock

        Typical, indeed

        I was born, raised, grew up and currently live here, and I can tell you... that Sancho guy _is_ your typical American. I'm considered _atypical_ around here, i.e. someone who has two brain cells to rub together.

    2. Deadlock Victim

      The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

      "Typical yank who seems to think that him filing a lawsuit in A DIFFERENT FARKING COUNTRY can stop something happening in another."

      That sort of goes towards that whole "nutjob" thing, wouldn't you say? I'd say the typical yank wouldn't know where Switzerland *is* let alone how to interact with their legal system.

  35. Michael Noonan
    Alert

    Area Effect

    Just a little bit of info about cosmic ray collisions. A cosmic ray has been recorded 110 million times more energetic than the billions being collided at CERN. Such high energy collisions light up a patch of sky similar in size to the full moon for a trillionth of a second or two. The speed of the energy flash is why you do not see them but it still means an area effect miles across.

    All points on earth can be hit by highly energetic cosmic ray collisions including the beam crossing point and its immediate surrounds which unlike the rest of the planet has an energy density 100,000 time hotter than the core of the sun. New science means new risks. That is not rocket science. What people like Luis Sancho and hopefully myself are doing is asking have enough questions regarding the risk assessment been asked.

    Scientists are paid to think of the risks and so have the scientists at CERN thought about a collision event in the beam crossing millions of times more powerful than the little ones they are claiming are safe. People have the right to know if these safety questions have been asked. Or am I to assume people are so stupid that their safety means nothing to them and their children. In the absence or good information I am tending to lean toward people are stupid.

    1. Stoneshop
      Headmaster

      Your very last statement I agree with

      The rest, not so much. If you think Sanchez is asking questions regarding the safety of the LHC experiments, then you clearly wouldn't recognize a loon when you see one, if not that you're one yourself.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Yes they have thought about it...

      ...the good news is I'm sure they have thought about it. That's what they do: putting out papers.

      ...the bad news is that, unless you have the toolset (mathematics of QM and possibly QFT, be at home in the Standard Model, know how to deal with experimental statistics, have a good intuition about what to look for, have colleagues in astrophysics to query about what they see or do not see happing in the universe at large etc.) you do not even have the wherewithal to ask the correct question.

      The real world is not like Star Trek where anything can happen and any question that a writer got from the hole in his wall makes sense. Worrying about Stable Black Holes in the LHC is like worrying about mutant ooze coming out of your fridge at night and strangling you. Rather unlikely to happen.

      So. Hurry along now.

    3. Chris Miller
      FAIL

      Nothing to see here

      Mr Noonan's first paragraph is correct, but he then loses the plot. High-energy cosmic rays all interact with nuclei high in the atmosphere, producing a shower of secondary and tertiary particles each with far less energy. Even if, magically, a high-energy particle made it to the ground and interacted with a proton in the LHC, the additional energy over a collision with a 'stationary' particle would be a tiny fraction of a percent.

      Collisions with energy levels equal to or vastly exceeding those encountered in the LHC occur many times a day in Earth's atmosphere and must have happened billions of times in Earth's history. If they had even a tiny probability of producing a catastrophic result, it would already have happened and we wouldn't be here to argue about it.

    4. luis sancho

      Lies and dogmas of a worldy profession...

      - false statements that portrayed the quark cannon as a harmless cosmic ray factory, when it is a fact of science that quarks and cosmic rays are completely different kind of particles. We have in fact excellent cosmic rays observatories and we never found quarks in cosmic rays.

      - marketing campaigns affirming that this machine will prove a series of fringe theories, pumped up as the ‘meaning of it all’: The company said that the quark cannon would find 'God' s particle', a hypothesized particle called the Higgs, which acording to the company shall explain the meaning of mass. This again is false. The particle is self-similar to a well known quark, the top quark. It has the same mass and properties, and so it is very likely, since the Universe is efficient and not redundant, that the Higgs, which we haven't found in 30 years do not exist, as we shall explain in detail. Further on, even if it exists it is only useful to explain a reaction, the death of our matter, as neutrons and protons decay into 2 particles called W and Z, which then seem to transform themselves into Higgs=Top quarks (the sum of their masses is that of the Higgs/Top: W+Z=T). So this hypothetical Higgs merely would be the end result of our death as matter. And a factory of Top/Higgs means only a factory that will kill us.

      Apart from that, the Higgs does not explain at all the meaning of mass. All that marketing about the Higgs/Tops is ludicrous and it has to do with the confrontation between quantum physicists and Einstein, the scientist who worked out a theory of gravitation and mass, which still stands. In essence, Einstein defined masses as 'whirls of spacetime', attractive tornado-like vortices that followed his principle of equivalence between mass and acceleration. So as a hurricane accelerates towards its center attracting all what surrounds it a mass is an attractive whirl of space-time.

      -The second 'job' of this quark cannon, which obviously will provoke an enormous explosion when it creates a quark condensate is, CERN says, to replicate the big-bang ( not of the Earth but of the cosmos). Yet today the cosmic big bang is an increasingly discredited theory, which astrophysicists are substituting by the concept, recently proved by the Hubble, of a ‘fractal Universe’ of infinite hierarchical scales, similar to those fractal drawings that self-repeat their form at different sizes,

      Plainly speaking, the ‘Quark Cannon’ is just a relic of the Cold War industry of Nuclear Devices, ‘reconverted’ to spurious civil use; a weapon that menaces for the first time in history the survival of our species and will not bring any remarkable advance for science. Since all the observations that matter to cosmology can be obtained with the use of safe telescopes. The idea that the understanding of the Universe is achieved through the use of Atomic cannons and Nuclear, Quantum Physicists hold the key to the secrets of the universe is a myth, built during the cold war, when this specific branch of science reached its zenith of undisputed military power.

      If we were to go deeper in the history of human thought, as the French Philosopher, Paul Virilio, one of the critics of CERN, explained, our western civilization was built based in the power of cannons and weapons, on the search for news speeds of destruction and we have adapted our theories of the physical Universe to that concept. It is the secret history of physics and its ½ reality, its passion for 'entropy=energy' theories that justify the military profession, Since if God created the world with a big explosion and the 'Universe is dying' (Helmolth), then warriors and weapon-makers are the 'chosen'. Ultimaely our civilization hasnt changed. The first Aryans worshipped Shiva, God of Energy, which has a statue at CERN. in the middle ages the popes backed as high priests the king-warriors. Now physicists back, as high priests of science, all violent theories of reality, so the industry of war can go on and we can make quark cannons 'to understand the Universe'. And of course,

      we have the Saint Nobel of dynamite (Nobel was the biggest arms dealer of the XIX century) to give the prizes to our best. This biased vision of reality explains why Mr. Wheeler, the maker of the H-bomb, substituted Einstein theory of black holes, he called frozen stars; how Gamow imposed his big bang theory over the peaceful, creative steady state of Fred Hoyle that now has a resurgence in the 'Fractal paradigm'; how Galileo imposed

      his studies on cannonballs and the concept of time as only the change in motion of things, over Aristotle classic concept of time=change as a dual process (change in motion/energy AND

      formal change, proper of life beings). Not even when Darwin explained time with his theory of evolution, as change in the information=form of beings, physicists understood the limits of their inquire. On the contrary, physicists, as warriors do, imposed their inquisitions of thought and Mr. Nobel, expressely forbade to give his prize to 'evolutionary' models of reality. WHile in any Congress of astrophysics the Big-bang is dogma and no other model is allowed to be discussed.

      1. Stoneshop
        FAIL

        @Luis Sancho

        You don't have one millionth of the intellectual capabilities to understand what you are worried about, and your capabilities to express your worries in a comprehensible way is equally lacking.

        Will you kindly Fornicate Off And Decease?

    5. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      Does not really add up

      If the cosmic rays (the passing of each is apparently harmless to baryonic matter) are indeed 110x10^6 more energetic than the collider-accelerated particles then even if two accelerated hadrons will collide simultaneously with such cosmic ray particle they should affect its energy about as much as a couple of mosquitos hitting a jumbo jet will affect your flight time to NYC.

  36. Stevie

    LHC Test Run == No Worries?

    Then how come I woke up the day after this so-called "harmless" experiment in a world where Apple computers were not the ubiquitous household appliances I grew up with, George W. Bush won the 2000 US Presidential elections and my Lotus/Matra Strato-Cruiser was replaced with a Hyundai Elantra with, of all things, *wheels*?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      Ahh, welcome back

      You've been in a drug induced schizopphrenic fantasy for the past xx years, Apple computers dominant? Must have been some really bad stuff you were on.

      Paris, in my fantasy world......

  37. Geoffrey Summerhayes
    Unhappy

    All I know is...

    The Vogons are going to be pissed when they find their work done for them. Think of all the extra paperwork!

    1. Stoneshop
      Grenade

      Vogons

      Their bloody singlemindedness will compel them to order a new one to demolish. Which would surely keep the amount of extra paperwork well down. It's a bit like Mythbusters too: "never mind that it's broken and falling apart already, we'll build a new one to see what happens when we stuff it with umpteen kilos of high explosives *AND BLOW IT UP* [insert Adam's maniacal laughter here]"

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    As Ford Prefect would say...

    Don't Panic!!

  39. Doug Glass
    Happy

    Downtiming The Night Side

    It's just one huge scam to hide the power requirements of a viable time machine.

  40. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Interesting days ahead ....

    "I can't decide .... Is luis sancho either :

    a) a tinfoil hat wearing loon

    b) taking trolling to a whole new level

    c) amanfromMars's sister" .... Gordon is not a Moron Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 12:58 GMT

    I can decide c) for you, Gordon is not a Moron, and definitively advise you that I am not her brother.

    And "Yet in this case, the negative consequences, the possible extinction of life, far outweigh the benefits for our knowledge of the Universe, and this is the key fact that the Nuclear Company has successfully hidden to the public and governments that founded this absurd quest for reaching the energies of the big-bang that once might have destroyed the Universe and now menace to destroy the planet Earth." .... luis sancho Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 12:43 GMT .... is the most idiotic of speculative sentences, and some might say that I might know what I'm talking about. :-)

    Maybe we should add d) American.

    1. Stoneshop
      Headmaster

      Interesting indeed

      This is the second post from AManFromMars1 in as many weeks that is largely comprehensible even without any cranial gymnastics. If this isn't a sign that the Apocalypse (in the shape of piping hot custard on Rhubarb Crumb) is upon us, I don't know what is.

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    It begins...

    I can only point you all to the Sun web site. It is slightly odd this story :

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2764647/Spiral-UFO-puts-Norway-in-a-spin.html

    Just shortly after the fire up the beast to a 'warm' setting, strange sights in the sky above Norway?

    As I say, this is just the beginning, wait till they set the LHC to hot, then we will shurely see some fireworks!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Dull but far more plausible suggestion.

      Exhaust ejecta from a russian missile test taking place off the coast nearby.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx8i5EfmYU4

  42. Goatan
    Flame

    LMC

    Does anyone else feel the urge to build an over the top mosquito collider?? I think we could make something that would put the LHC to shame with a few McDonalds straws and a hair drier

  43. buffmuffin

    Uhhh, and just shortly after...

    So much for the boffin Nay Sayers... This does look and act suspiciously like an evaporating black hole, doesn't it???

    http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2764647/Spiral-UFO-puts-Norway-in-a-spin.html#mySunComments

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      In unrelated news, unrelated things continued to happen everywhere on Earth.

      Sorry, are you claiming to have ever seen an evaporating black hole or to know what one looks like?

      No?

      Then you're just making it up, aren't you? You have no idea what one looks like, but you say it looks like this thing. You have no idea how one behaves, but you claim it behaves like this thing. You're full of it. So, according to you, a black hole is something that sits there, frantically spewing *out* *light* and not sucking stuff in at all is it? No, it isn't. This thing behaved and looked nothing like a black hole and you're a hysterical idiot for even suggesting the possibility.

      Hint: You try and find any time of day or night that anyone could ever switch anything on anywhere without there being a UFO sighting *somewhere else* within say plus or minus 48 hours. Let us know how that works out for you, won't you.

      Hint2: An evaporating micro black hole "looks like" a tiny shower of gamma rays. You'd need a cloud chamber to see it and it's minute.

  44. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Happy

    How about

    we put the mosquitos in the LHC and see what happens

    Then CERN really will have bugs in their machine

    1. Brutus

      @Boris

      Just because you're a cockroach, you want to start executing the the mosquitos! That's not on, dude, even if you are trying to disguise it behind 'research'.

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    @luis sancho

    Hey Luis, get a load of this story on the BBC news:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8401349.stm

    An all new campaign to solve some of the fundamental challenges in Artificial Intelligence! MIT (every right thinking man knows the M stands for Military) are gathering together the 20 best AI scientists in the World.

    Just think, in 2020, wars will be fought for us by clever robots packing LHC cannons. It'll be awesome... and all the Rhubarb you can eat!

  46. Bruce Ordway

    No fear but, why bother?

    I'm pretty sure the U.S. gov killed a new collider project a while back because it was deemed too expensive and the justification presented wasn't persuasive enough.

    No doubt knowledge of physics will be advanced but what else?

    Anybody want to speculate on how the LHC will have benefited us 20 years from now?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      "No doubt knowledge of physics will be advanced but what else?"

      Dude, you may have slept through the 20th century, but in case you haven't noticed, increasing our knowledge of physics has brought us one hell of a lot of benefits, not the least of which is the semiconductor technology that you used to post this know-nothing comment. So, I will happily speculate that it'll bring us more of the same sort of stuff: advanced materials and technologies that we'll all end up using every day. You want speculation? How about stable fusion power, or usable desktop quantum computers? The LHC can answer the sorts of questions we need to ask in order to solve the problems with those and many other potential advances.

    2. Yes Me Silver badge
      Gates Halo

      Re: No fear but, why bother?

      The timescale's too short. The payback period from fundamental physics is typically more like 50 years and more (quantum theory is a good example - developed starting ~1900, turned into quantum mechanics starting ~1920, resulting in transistors and semiconductors starting ~1950).

      And no, I don't want to speculate what may be invented in 2060.

  47. Blue eyed boy
    Boffin

    To the Ufonauts, and to the naysayers.

    You went wrong at the last hyperspatial junction. You should have turned left for Switzerland.

    And can we have all those prophets of doom taken into custardy?

  48. Simon Waddington
    Alert

    #Michael Noonan

    Doesn't the average human being have a higher average "energy density" than the core of the sun. Or is that different from heat generation? - hell it's in Wackypedia so it must be true. The core of the sun has a pretty low, "specific energy" doesn't it?

    Cripes, it may me just want to sit in an icy bath of water to think I could be responsible for spawning interdimensional beings.

  49. Mr Young
    Pint

    Playmobile?

    I haven't looked at that for a while. Maybe an LHC boffin/collision/custard/portal/alien/tinfoil thingy? Surely thats been suggested already

  50. h 6
    Pint

    Top notch

    A pint for the caption writer! Top notch stuff indeed.

  51. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    currant bun

    Yeah, but it's in the Sun. So it's not actually true, is it?

  52. Scott 1
    Go

    Welcome!

    I, for one, welcome our most handsome pan-continuum overlords.

  53. Mike Flugennock
    Thumb Up

    "runaway conceptual custardization"?

    Damn, that's a good one. Best turn of phrase I've heard in a good while.

    Sounds kinda' like the title of an old George Harrison song.

  54. luis sancho

    food for thought

    fascinating, i have a question for all of you, since it seems a pattern of history to go always against those who defend people and cheer those who ab=use others. why?

    i mean i might be wrong and the dangers of lhc be smaller, hopefully so

    but anyone with minimal knoweldge of physics knows the risk exist

    and any calculus even for a simple 10% risk (unlikely) which was in

    the first reportsof the company before confidenciality statements were signed, shows:

    10% risk x billion = 60 million legal holocaust..

    So to the point it is CERN not ls who might harm all of you.

    and yet the pattern repeats itself anywhere anytime... you attack me and defend CERN

    this hail hitler, hail bush, hail cern, hail stalin, etc. thing... maybe is the justice of the

    Universe? i mean if you all want CERN whatever happens you all will deserve?

    food for thought

    1. Gordon is not a Moron
      WTF?

      Luis, me old china

      You really want to know why you get so much grief and there is so much support for the LHC ?

      Well here's a few things off the top of my head:

      All the geeks that roam this forum, are all 5 year boys at heart, so smashing stuff together just to see what happens is cool.

      If the bods ar CERN get thier act together, there is the outside possibility of a functioning Stargate program. Again this appeals the kid everyone as being cool.

      Your ranting and meadnering posts make absolutely no sense, and do make you look like the type of person that would run outside and rage and the moon or go round licking windows take your pick. I mean really wtf does "10% risk x billion = 60 million legal holocaust.." actually mean ? Use the Queen's English, words to have no more than 3 syllables.

      And finally you forecast doom and destruction if the LHC does something a little unexpected, CERN are promising Rhubarb crumble and custard if things fail. And we all prefer the crumble option thank you very much.

    2. Andy Enderby 1
      Flame

      luis sancho

      fruitbat of the week ?

  55. luis sancho

    a la tercera

    for those who dont know the history of atomic cannons:

    the first atomic cannon was constructed by otto hahn, working for hitler. the next one was constructed before the manhattan project. The idea was to make the A-bomb by colliding with an accelerator two critical masses, but the size of the thing and the impossibility to escape the boats that would carry them decided for the bomb...

    the first doomsday bomb was projected by teller who wanted to blow the entire URSS, eissenhower toped it

    the second was projected by lederman who convinced reagan of a false higgs particle

    clinton stopped it

    in spanish they say 'a la tercera va la vencida'

    also in spanglish 'good luck y buena muerte'

    1. hahnchen
      FAIL

      Re: Luis

      The reason no one takes you seriously, is because you've taken the population of the earth, picked a random number, and then multiplied it together. It makes absolutely no sense.

      You've also switched your original "end earth" argument to a pathetic strand regarding weapons research.

      Do you remember the internet? It was created so a communications network could survive nuclear war, by making nuclear war more survivable, it upsets the MAD equation. I take it had you been around then, you'd be campaigning against that too.

      Nuclear war possibility x Population of Earth = LEGAL HOLOCAUST

  56. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
    Alien

    SHADO

    I have just received an anonymous tip off that this is a SHADO funded project for the development of a blackhole projector. Apparently we need to hit those pesky aliens with a bigger gun or something.

  57. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Pirate

    CERN is much more than just a Colossal LHC Project.

    "Finally, the team aims to end the division of mind and body to produce systems whose intelligence derives from what they can do.

    The ultimate aim for the five-year project is not to produce an artificial human ..." .... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8401349.stm

    You can be sure that in Advanced IntelAIgent Research and dDevelopment, producing an artificial human IS an ultimate aim ....... and in Military circles will All related information be zealously and jealously guarded and given Top Secret Top Priority Classifications given the Dual Use potential of the product/being/Manturian ..... and you will hear very little, if anything at all, about the Program and ITs Projects/the Project and ITs Programs/Pogroms.

    And to imagine that in such fields, a $5m (£3.1m) grant will buy you anything other than just peanuts for monkeys, is to not know what can be done by such systems, which you may like to consider are systems which can do virtually and practically anything and everything.

    And as has always been the case in such cases of quantum leaps of "human" advancement, you will only get to hear about those parts of the program which are deemed perfectly suited for more General Knowledge and Present Placement in what would be ITs Own Further Future Developments ........ and thus is the Virtual AIMachinery, SMARTer Recursive and Rapidly Evolving.

    "I'm pretty sure the U.S. gov killed a new collider project a while back because it was deemed too expensive and the justification presented wasn't persuasive enough." ... Bruce Ordway Posted Wednesday 9th December 2009 22:27 GMT

    Bruce, that would be unequivocal confirmation of a Lack/a Hole in U.S. gov intelligence and its "scientists" in what are QuITe Enigmatic Purple Prose Fields. .......... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose

    Obscenely Lucrative and Perversely Rewarding Fields always Floating in and out of the Market Place too, Phishing and Testing for ITs ESPecial Clientele ..... which could also be considered as Stealthy Grooming for Currency Power Packs/Pacts ......within Noble Pirate Territory too.

  58. Rocket
    Stop

    Another high energy run from the nightmare machine

    Another night's sleep ruined ... Lights in the sky, dreams of clowns with custard pies; and Augustus Gloop

    Will the nightmares never end? Switch it off now!

    Pleeeaase!

    1. Stoneshop
      Boffin

      There's this remedy

      The Percussive Insomnia Eliminator, the result of solid fundamental research and backed by aeons of worldwide practical validation. It may look like a simple hammer to the untrained eye, but it actually is a finely-honed scientific instrument created by the cooperation of medical and physics disciplines.

  59. Barnsey123
    Pint

    Warning: remember Tempest

    Is it me or did the screenshots from the LHC system bear a passing resemblance to an old arcade game called TEMPEST where "things" from another dimension kept climbing out the hole in the middle (in a range of about 8 colors) and you moved around the outside shooting inwards with your erm, partical emitter which "collided" with the crawly things and destroyed them.

    Is this the same thing? Is it? IS IT? We need to know the truth.

  60. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Suddenly

    2012 seems a little bit more prophetic!!!

  61. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    You just wait until the junior techies get bored...

    Boxing Day. 2:37pm

    "Jeff? What do you think would happen if we sent a sprout round one way, and a Terry's Chocolate Orange round the other?"

  62. Estariel
    Happy

    TimeCops

    I liked the idea that the LHC boffins are trying to steal a march on the TimeCops by scheduling the opening of the dimensional portal for Friday, and then sneaking it in on Wednesday.

    Question is, do the TimeCops read El Reg ? Or whatever quantum computing archive still exists in their future.....

  63. Lloyd
    Welcome

    Project Arrowhead

    The Mist anyone?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      Or...

      Another World/Flashback (dreams of the days when the French were pumping out excellent computer games).

  64. MH Media
    WTF?

    Luddites R Us

    Okay, so call me a Luddite, but .. they've managed to get a result, so how exactly does this benefit mankind? In real terms. No flames please!

  65. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Doom!! We're all Doomed!!!

    Or are we just playing out the initial scenario from the original DOOM game?

    You know, experiment gone wrong, lots of dead scientists and a lone grunt struggling to fight his way through the hordes of demons and undead until backup from the Marines arrive...

    Luis old chum, it was just a computer game - not a vision from the future!!

    Pineapple, just in case...

  66. jonmonkeys

    Let it be

    I for one hope we all crumple into a singular mass at the core of a black hole. So moments before my concious is extinguished completely, I can finally say "I've been inside Megan Fox" and it will be unequivocally true.

  67. transientcylon
    FAIL

    WTF?!

    I was promised world eating black holes! Where are my world eating black holes?!

  68. Mr Young
    Pint

    Hello luis sancho?

    Can you help with my math? I forgot how many fingers I have?

  69. luis sancho

    hasta la vista

    . the post got cut

    10% was the initial assessment of the company (unlikely, in statistics is 10%)

    10% x 6 billion humans = 600 million legal holocaust

    (probability x potential victims is how insurance companies calculate their premiums)

    The reason nobody takes this risk (no luis sancho which is totally irrelevant to the objective risk) seriously here, is obvious. This is a tech-nerd group... very similar to the people at CERN. big boys with big toys... I was curious because of the total lack of 'dignitas' in the posts (insults, flames, ad hominem attack, zero knoweldge of quark science, neofascist backing for weapons, etc.)

    but the problem is not CERN but the politicians/press who must watch over them. CERN DOES the only thing it knows, machines (but NOT understanding the Universe, that is the work of philosophers of science, cosmologists, etc.). If and when something happens, either CERN will blow up or Geneva if the helium ignites or the world if a quark condenste becomes stable, i would not blame CERN but the people that paid them.

    In any case this is not my job. It is part though of a scientist to fight for bio-ethical causes, not only for knowledge. But i did enough, as suit, a film lhcdefence.org a book... My work on non-euclidean geometry (completition of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th postulates of non-e), fractal cosmology (unification of forces by self-similarity, definition of fractal time, resolution of masses as frequencies of an Einsteinina vortex of information etc.) is far more pleasant, certainly far more important for the future of astronomy that CERN's quark cannon.But that is another story not worth to mention here. 'no esta hecha la miel para la boca del asno' (-;

    What we are doing, nottale, pietronero, myself inf ractal cosmology will be the XXI century paradigm, when the nuke obys blow up themselves, if we survive.

    Then, the censorship on 'real SXXI century cosmology' will end, and the 'military theories' of reality, aka the big bang will dissaper.

    So i wish you all the best and hopefully nothing happens this time.

  70. Michael Noonan
    Coffee/keyboard

    #Simon Waddington#

    _____________________________________

    # Doesn't the average human being have a higher average "energy density" than the core of the sun. Or is that different from heat generation? - hell it's in Wackypedia so it must be true. The core of the sun has a pretty low, "specific energy" doesn't it?

    Cripes, it may me just want to sit in an icy bath of water to think I could be responsible for spawning interdimensional beings.#

    _____________________________________

    Core density is the pressure and heat in the middle of the sun. It is fairly hot and in the center of the sun is under a bit more pressure than I am. Actually it is hot enough and 'dense enough' through all the sun stuff around it that it 'pushes' hydrogen together to make helium. The process is called nuclear fusion. That is the process that makes hydrogen bombs go 'bang'.

    Second there is enough hydrogen in the water of the average human body to level a whole city if the nuclear fusion process ever got started in people. Crikey mate, if I had more energy density than the core of the sun an icy bath would be just the start of something much worse.

  71. HoRnO
    FAIL

    luis sancho

    10%.......

    So given that they've already done 2 tests (that we know of!) how long before the legal holocausts?

    The reason no one takes the risks seriously (especially from you) is because you can just about write a sentence, and you ask us to believe that a) you've written a book?! or b) that you have any idea what you're talking about.

    If our only experience of you is online then were further do people need to look than your own words to see that you come across as confused:

    'understanding the Universe, that is the work of philosophers of science, cosmologists, etc'

    And partical physics that could prove the existance of the Higgs or Supersymmetry would have no impact on our understanding of the universe?

    You include yourself with such people as Luciano Pietronero and Laurent Nottale however these are published scientists, respected people that don't copy and past the same badly written, doom predicting rubbish anywhere they can find online.

    1. luis sancho

      stop talking about me thanks

      you are silly, individuals dont matter is what risk matter i published 5 books, like nottale i dont care much about translating/going to english congresses - the european tradition doesnt, specially with the 'manners' of the english school and the absurdities you work in (higgs, hawking, string theory)

      pietronero is more of an experimentalist he must publish to advance the facts of the fractal paradigm. only when those facts are known the theoreticians (nottale in fractal space myslef in fractal time) will be read and translated... again the register like cern is just a place of people insulting ad hominem not to argue the risks.

      it is ridiculous to aruge with people with bad faith. if you put my name in google you will get conferences specially if you read spanish, here one in english, which is interesting for this case on the expansion of non-euclidean geometries to all fractal systems of the universe.

      http://journals.isss.org/index.php/proceedings50th/article/view/29

      the problem with tech people is that you dont understand how science evolves: by evolving maths and logic, this is what riemann did (5th non-euclidean postulate) mandelbrot did (fractal equation) and i did (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th non-euclidena posutlates) you can see that in this post in the web. After that, i took an ethic decision as very few scientists have the guts to do. i can only remember einstein oppsoing the bomb industry and being laughed at his last 10 years at princenton where only godel talked to him. In that congress i was offered all kind of positions in american universities no need to mention who, i knew if i sued cern i would be treated as einstein was after he rejected the ether theory (first einstein) and the nuclear industry (2nd einstein lonely years). So from being heralded by all the big names of this industry as the most revolutionary mathematician/cosmologist (that article is only the tip of an iceberg of over 1000 pages of papers and books publishe din spanish and dont come with anglopocentric idiocy, we can publish in our languages whenver we want), in the making to being crackpotted by every blogger like you... i dont mind/didnt mind as long as i got what i wanted, to alert the world and the world learnt thanks to our suit what cern will do, killing all of you/us 'unlikely' regarding my future in sicnece if we survived, doesnt matter how i write, what i crackpot, which 'manners' i display the EVOLUTION OF NON -EUCLIDEAN MATHS was a 100 years pending subject that truly opens XXI century science, and you can't take that from me. Now just stop lowly flames or dont, just dont expect more answers from me, i had enough of this thread adn suit, now is over, because now the machine is on and nobody is going to stop it. Obama was the last chance and he is a bush-like character, frankly i liked more bush, was not so much full of himself. we are noting ok? just dust of space-time, wheatever we do in this planet, whatever we find, there are billions of other planets like this self-simiarl sanchos warning mankind self-simiar yous insulting me self-similar cerns blowing our lives.

  72. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bring on the Tev

    Bring on the Tev? I was hoping more for Gev, Pev and (Oooohhhh) Eev!

    They go well with custard.

  73. Michael Dunn
    Paris Hilton

    @Steve X

    Yes, why do the French always get their acronyms backwards? (But they always manage to get their benefits from the EU the right way round)

    C'est la gloire as de Gaulle would have said..

    Paris, obviously.

  74. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Galactic Core?

    Now that would be a particle cannon but unfortunately you seem to need a galactic core to generate those energies.

    The idiots in our (British) gubmint seem to think they have got one that generates money.

  75. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @rpenner

    Yes, a bit difficult to stop the construction now. Anyway, would US law apply in Europe if they got a positive judgment?

    Yeah, I know our own Attorney General/Home/Sec knuckle under to US pressure, but the EU might have more b**ls

  76. Michael Dunn
    Coat

    Hey, it's our money

    According to Wikipedia, 1 TeV is 1.602×10-7 J, the kinetic energy of one flying mosquito.

    All this money to achieve such a pathetic level of energy output? UI'd happily trap a few mosquitoes for you for a couple of Euros/pounds.

    I've a mosquito net in the pocket.

  77. Rocket
    Stop

    just trying to pre-empt the next story, but ...

    Another night's sleep broken ... what power did it get to, then?

    trains crashing into nuclear storage casings, fireworks exploding, icecaps melting ...

    Nightmare machine indeed!

This topic is closed for new posts.