Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider is a giant machine-thing underground that does some seriously advanced scientific shit that you'll never be able to comprehend. Or it would, if it worked.
Just The Facts
- It's basically like when you were a kid, how you put Hot Wheels cars on the track and watched them crash into each other
- Except this time it shoots pure particles, costs billions of dollars, is miles long, and theoretically has the capability to end the world
- Whoa, dude
Cracked on the LHC
The Large Hadron Collider, built and mantained by the multiational laboratory CERN (which somehow stands for European Organization for Nuclear Research) is a "high-energy particle accelerator" that "collides opposing particle beams" of "protons" or "lead" "nuclei" at "99%" the "speed" "of" "light".
Ok, what. We here at Cracked are not, in fact, a team of thousands of brilliant scientists, so we requested the help of renowned physicist Remington Binary to break the LHC down in simpler terms for us to understand. According to his official definition, the Large Hadron Collider "isolates individual particles, like protons or electrons, accelerates them at almost the speed of light and smashes them together so we can observe theoretical super-tiny particles that result from the annihilation."
...
Then we consulted our cousin's cool friend, who told us that the Large Hadron Colliders makes huge explosions out of tiny things and has the possibility to create black holes. Fuck yes. He provied this helpful diagram so we could digest these extremely advanced particle theories more easily:
However, this apocalpytic God-machine has been plagued with errors. And you know these are some seriously complicated problems when the world's most intelligent scientists can't figure out what the fuck is going on. Physicists believe that what is causing the LHC to fail time and time again is the elusive and technically non-existent (yet?) Higgs boson particle. Basically, the Standard Model of particle physics (more informally known as "Da Rulez") predicts a certain amount of supertiny particles that make up the particles that make up the particles that make up the particles of one atom. This is really fucking small. Your dick? It's smaller than that. Half of your dick? Still smaller. Anyways, with various experiments and tests with other particle rings (like Fermilab's way cooler-named Tevatron), all of these predicted supertiny particles have been discovered, except for the Higgs boson.
Scientists theorize that the Higgs boson is the particle responsible for giving matter its mass. So as you stare down at your disgustingly hairy beer belly, you can have some confidence in knowing what gave you your fattitude: The Higgs boson.
THIS IS YOUR FAULT HIGGS BOSOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHN
Basically, scientists think that the Higgs boson is traveling back in time from the future to prevent itself from being discovered by humans, which is why the LHC has been having so many problems. Talk about anti-social. Going to all that trouble to stay a loner? Higgs, just apply some corpse-paint to your face and become obsessed with black metal and no one will want to be near you. Really.
The LHC wont create a black hole, thats rubbish. They are simply recreating the conditions of the universe a millionth of a second after the big bang. ATLAS, ALICE and CMS all now use lead ions and have thus far been successful (unless i am mistaken), but they will go back to using protons eventually.
ReplyAnd, although there was one major misshap a while ago (a battery or some s**t broke), its been pretty smooth from the start.
And, while we are discussing the stupid black hole theory, even if it did miraculously create one that wouldnt be the end of the world or anything because, like everything else in the universe, black holes have to obey the laws of physics and thus wouldnt have more mass than the sum of its parts and so probably wouldnt be very big. Not that it matters though, because it isnt going to happen.
IMHO, LHC in its OPERA neutrino anomaly has stumbled on to something really, really
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesinteresting.Could it be the famous "warp" or even the "wormhole"? I suspect it is.
Look, neutrinos are, for all intents and purposes, massless (according to the Standard Model).
They are also without charge, i.e. neutral. This means that whilst everything else is affected by
gravity and electricity and whatnot, neutrinos are not! The experiment showed that neutrinos seem
to arrive at Gran Sasso, from Geneva, faster than the speed of light. This could only happen in
two ways, which are, firstly, if the particle itself is really faster than the theoretical
universal speed limit, or secondly if the distance for the neutrinos is shorter than for photons.
Are you getting my drift here?
If my hunch is right, then Einstein was never wrong. Neutrinos did not travel faster but the
distance was actually made shorter. Why and how?
Now, this experiment was conducted along a line from Geneva, Switzerland, to Gran Sasso, Italy,
with a distance of about 720 km. If you were to draw a (straight) line connecting these two
points, you will notice that the line passes through Mont Blanc, which happens to be the tallest
mountain in Europe! Furthermore, the line also passes through the Apennines, culminating at the
Gran Sasso detector. Gran Sasso itself is perched on top of mountainous region (in WWII, the
allies hid Mussolini up there!). This means that the particles passed through two massive
material along their way. Since they are not affected by the mass of the rocks, they had an easy
passage. However, they also did not travel by the same path that light would have taken!
Now Einstein showed that light travels along the curvature of space-time (proven through general
relativity by the eclipse experiment in 1919 by Arthur Eddington). Neutrinos on the other hand,
do not! Are we getting it now?
I postulate that the two massive rock formations, as in the Alps (Mont Blanc) and the Apennines,
did curve space and shorten the space between the two points (Geneva and Gran Sasso). I further
postulate that this is the first instance of a "wormhole" as seen by man! IMHO.
Ahhhhh! Double spaced!!!
I am sorry about the double spacing. I tried twice to place the comment, but cracked gave me an empty space and a broken avatar link.
Anyway, from the OPERA findings, I also think we can't rely on light anymore as our time and distance keeper (with apologies to Michaelson and Morley). Light was a good measurement tool since Einstein's days. This experiment will also prove that photon is a composite structure, and is unreliable when used as a measuring tool especially within an asymmetrical spacetime matrix. What we need now, as the technology expands beyond the capability of light to keep time, is a particle that is not encumbered by mass or charge. My bet is the neutrino.
Oh okay sorry it was a good comment though.
CERN is an evil organization with a monopoly on TIME MACHINES or anything related to TIME TRAVEL! As with the John Titor story, in 2036 the world will be a DYSTOPIA.
ReplyBut don't worry everyone, I got this. I've got a gadget called the PHONE MICROWAVE. I'll be back in thirty minutes, okay? I've got this! TOTALLY.
Love the Jack 2 reference!
ReplyI would just like to say that when you reach the afterlife, do you not think the only remaining way to ridicule people is based on how they died? Now what streetcred do you want, black hole engulfing the planet, or shitting your pants and slipping in the shower at 90 years old. I'll be over at the bar with the guys who died from incredible orgasms.
ReplyMost people I know like the LHC because of all of the things that could be learned from it, you're the only person I've ever heard of that likes it BECAUSE of the potential for a black hole.
I resent the black metal comment. And laugh at it.
ReplyCracked really s**t the bed with this one...
ReplyCracked on Advanced Physics? How could that go wrong?
You do know it never had the capabilities to end the world, they used the words black hole in one of the papers explaining how the protons destroyed each other and the media took it waaaay out of context, there is no actual black hole formed anywhere realistically or theoretically anywhere,
Reply Hide All See All 3 Repliesalthough the proton stream does have the momentum of a jumbo jet and could vaporise almost any object put in the system,
No scientist thinks the higgs is going back in time to sabotage the system, thats silly... particles cant think or time travel, at least not for more than about a billionth of a second forward in time.
Actually they might travel backwards sometimes. It happens in some collissions when an extra partical shows up for no goddmn reason. Some physicists theorize that rather than violating the law of conservation of matter/energy they are simply violating linear time. Which is plausible given their habit of non-local interactions. Ah wait this is Cracked right? Umm boobs!
@Eigen - Nicely said XD
So basically it can't be violating this one rule we made up based on previous experience, it has to be breaking this other rule we made up?
"Higgs, just apply some corpse-paint to your face and become obsessed with black metal and no one will want to be near you. Really."
ReplyHahahahahaha
I love the fact that the people in charge of a device that might end end the world don't understand anagrams.
Reply Hide All See All 3 Replieswhere in there is an anagram? if you mean cern (which is an acronym), it's french.
uYo on'td nokw hatw na agmnaar si.
Feryll, I'm confused, was I supposed to be able to read that?
I like the way these scientists think. These are the grownup versions of the kids who threw their toys at block walls and smashed them apart because they "wanted to know how it works." Awesome.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesYou can rest easily with the knowledge that you will never be able to think like a scientist.
that's actually pretty close to how science works.
yeah, i'd be more worried about the kid who doesn't smash anything because he doesn't care how it works. Although you'd probably have got a heads up on the prenatal scans..
I can never not laugh at "Large Hardon collider"
ReplyWhat short, misinforming, unfunny article.
ReplyWhat dodgy grammar.
the higgs boson doesn't give particles mass, they all decomposed nanoseconds after the big bang, what gives particles mass is the Higgs field, which can only be proved to exist if the Higgs Boson is discovered. This article wasn't even that funny so you have no excuse to be wrong.
ReplyErr, you do know Cracked had a magazine as well, right?
ReplyOMG! this article is so wrong! didnt ya'll know ۲/۪=‰∕ﭗѾ ?
Replythis principles are intergers!
nah, im just kidding.
if ya'll were wanting some "accurate information", mayeb you shouldn't look to a "humor" site..seriously, it's in the title! "americas only HUMOR site since 1958"
the fact they blatantly try and tell you they've had a website since 1958, or that they tell you they're the only ones in America- these should be clues to the lack of FACT. the "humor" bit? thats just letting ya know it's all a f*****g joke.
I'm disappointed. Only one large hardon collider joke. Tsk, Tsk.
ReplyActually, the LHC project at CERN has already given us a lot of useful discoveries - the World Wide Web, for starters. The project is easy to ridicule when you know little about it, but the knowledge we get from it will almost certainly be applicable to future inventions that we have no way of imagining yet.
ReplyDude. The ending was so true. f*****g make lo-fi static in your basement, and yell at your parents when they mess up your "recordings", and nobody will like you. And also the Jak reference was pretty damn sweet.
ReplyJak for the WIN.
I practically nerdgasmed when I saw Dark Jak.
Reply