Large Hardon Collider

[Psion]

I'm assuming that with all the safeguards the plants have, the actual chance of another disaster like Russia's is slim to none, despite the explosion?

[Ferion]

This is really off topic, but I figured I'd ask here since a lot of people who post in this thread tend to be in school or about to graduate. I'm a senior in college, but I will be three credits short of officially graduating at the end of this semester. However, I will still be walking at graduation because I'm planning on taking a summer class to make up for those three credits I'm missing. I was just curious if anyone knows how companies react to this situation. Would a lot of companies not really care and I can just take a class at night or is there basically no point of even starting applying for jobs? Does anyone have any kind of experience with this situation?

[Eliseos]

I'm not in that situation, but I would still start looking. If you have an interview, just explain it. One class isn't really that big of a deal, and there won't be as many good jobs during the summer as there are now. They might start you at a lesser rate, then bump it back when you're officially done with the class. I don't really see it affecting a hiring decision though.

[Ferion]

Alright thanks, that's what I was thinking but I just wanted to make sure I wasn't being over optimistic about the situation.

[Ferion]

Anyone else seeing news channels trying to claim that there's a chance that the nuclear fallout from Japan could spread to the U.S? Am I wrong or is this complete crap.

[Eliseos]

Oh, something I forgot to mention. I wouldn't put that you won't technically be graduated in your resume/cover letter/other things. The recruiter might read it wrong with how fast they go through those things, and pass you by on the position. If they ask why you didn't mention it in your resume/cover letter just tell them you weren't sure whether to include it or not, or that you didn't know how to properly express it without getting looked over by the recruiter.

And about the fallout, the winds are technically headed this direction from Japan, but with the situation how it is, I don't think there will be any fallout this side of the pacific. It's mostly just the usual crisis fearmongering.

[Ferion]

Yeah I still had that I'm graduating in May on my resume. Mostly because I just realized that I'll be short three credits after sending out my applications, but I most likely wouldn't have changed it even if I had realized it.

[Eliseos]

Since you brought up job hunting, I'd just like to say that cover letters can eat the biggest bag of dicks. I don't really get the HR culture at all, but having to apply to somewhere with a letter that basically states "HAY LOOK AT ME IM AWESUM PLZ PICK ME" seems asinine. Pretty much everything they need to know if I'm qualified enough is in my resume.

[Shiroikage]

You have no idea how many resumes and CVs end up looking identically awesome or at least identically decent.

[Rhinox]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0315163330.htm

I'd quote the article but the formating doesn't come out right

Thoughts? Is this anything new?

[Woozie]

Anyone else seeing news channels trying to claim that there's a chance that the nuclear fallout from Japan could spread to the U.S? Am I wrong or is this complete crap.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-united-states

Spoiler: show

Serious nuclear incidents that followed Friday's catastrophic Japan earthquake has raised fears of radiation leakage, a weather-dependent matter that could have a far-reaching impact.

Were there to be a significant release of radiation, tracking the fallout would become a meteorological problem.

Japan lies in the mid latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, as does the United States. Likewise, its weather is dominated by prevailing westerly winds, but with significant variation near the earth surface.

Exactly where a hypothetical "radiation cloud", from either Fukushima Daiichi or Onagawa, would go should depend upon the weather pattern at the time of, and following, the release.

Moreover, it should depend upon how high the cloud rose into the atmosphere. This is because the winds normally vary widely between the near-surface and the upper atmosphere, home to the eastward-flowing jet stream.

Generally speaking, any radioactive cloud rising significantly into the atmosphere would travel essentially eastward and northeastward across the Pacific Ocean, eventually reaching North America anywhere between Alaska and California. The precise details as to timing and path taken would depend upon the state of the atmosphere at the time of the hypothetical radiation release.

Although such a cloud would pose virtually no threat while in the upper atmosphere, the fallout at the ground of radioactive particles from it should be a concern for any monitoring authority.

A hypothetical release of radiation staying near the ground would be subject to low-level winds, which are more prone to varying.

Commonly, during cooler months of the year, surface winds blow off shore, or essentially west to east, in northeastern Honshu. A release of radiation confined to the lower atmosphere should be steered out to sea under such conditions.

Still, there are times when area winds blow on shore, and a hypothetical release amid a setting of onshore wind would undoubtedly be of great concern to authorities in Japan.

Calculated time for radioactive particles to cross the Pacific from the power plants in Japan to big West Coast cities if the particles take a direct path and move at a speed of 20 mph (estimated distance and time):

Anchorage 3,457 miles 7 days
Honolulu 3,847 miles 8 days
Seattle 4,792 miles 10 days
Los Angeles 5,477 miles 11 days

[Woozie]

Rhinox's article:

Large Hadron Collider Could Be World's First Time Machine, Researchers' Theory Suggests

ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2011) — If the latest theory of Tom Weiler and Chui Man Ho is right, the Large Hadron Collider -- the world's largest atom smasher that started regular operation last year -- could be the first machine capable of causing matter to travel backwards in time.

"Our theory is a long shot," admitted Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University, "but it doesn't violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints."

One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.

According to Weiler and Ho's theory, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.

"One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes," Weiler said. "Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future."

Unsticking the "brane"

The test of the researchers' theory will be whether the physicists monitoring the collider begin seeing Higgs singlet particles and their decay products spontaneously appearing. If they do, Weiler and Ho believe that they will have been produced by particles that travel back in time to appear before the collisions that produced them.

Weiler and Ho's theory is based on M-theory, a "theory of everything." A small cadre of theoretical physicists have developed M-theory to the point that it can accommodate the properties of all the known subatomic particles and forces, including gravity, but it requires 10 or 11 dimensions instead of our familiar four. This has led to the suggestion that our universe may be like a four-dimensional membrane or "brane" floating in a multi-dimensional space-time called the "bulk."

According to this view, the basic building blocks of our universe are permanently stuck to the brane and so cannot travel in other dimensions. There are some exceptions, however. Some argue that gravity, for example, is weaker than other fundamental forces because it diffuses into other dimensions. Another possible exception is the proposed Higgs singlet, which responds to gravity but not to any of the other basic forces.

Answers in neutrinos?

Weiler began looking at time travel six years ago to explain anomalies that had been observed in several experiments with neutrinos. Neutrinos are nicknamed ghost particles because they react so rarely with ordinary matter: Trillions of neutrinos hit our bodies every second, yet we don't notice them because they zip through without affecting us.

Weiler and colleagues Heinrich Päs and Sandip Pakvasa at the University of Hawaii came up with an explanation of the anomalies based on the existence of a hypothetical particle called the sterile neutrino. In theory, sterile neutrinos are even less detectable than regular neutrinos because they interact only with gravitational force. As a result, sterile neutrinos are another particle that is not attached to the brane and so should be capable of traveling through extra dimensions.

Weiler, Päs and Pakvasa proposed that sterile neutrinos travel faster than light by taking shortcuts through extra dimensions. According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, there are certain conditions where traveling faster than the speed of light is equivalent to traveling backward in time. This led the physicists into the speculative realm of time travel.

Ideas impact science fiction

In 2007, the researchers, along with Vanderbilt graduate fellow James Dent, posted a paper titled "Neutrino time travel" that generated a considerable amount of buzz.

Their ideas found their way into two science fiction novels. Final Theory by Mark Alpert, which was described in the New York Times as a "physics-based version of The Da Vinci Code," is based on the researchers' idea of neutrinos taking shortcuts in extra dimensions. Joe Haldeman's novel The Accidental Time Machine is about a time-traveling MIT graduate student and includes an author's note that describes the novel's relationship to the type of time travel described by Dent, Päs, Pakvasa and Weiler.

Ho is a graduate fellow working with Weiler. Their theory is described in a paper posted March 7 on the research website

I haven't read it yet and wont be able to until tomorrow morning because I'm high on sleeping pills. However, I did ctrl-f for "string theory" and "m-theory" and m-theory returned a result, so I predict that my response will be something along the lines of "this is interesting, but is also bull", but written in a more informative way.

[Eliseos]

I'm high on sleeping pills. .

http://i55.tinypic.com/2cqe0w9.gif

[Woozie]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0315163330.htm

I'd quote the article but the formating doesn't come out right

Thoughts? Is this anything new?

I think this is new. I've never seen this before. They admit themselves that this is a long shot, but what makes this more interesting to me than most other things I read coming from m-theory is that they came up with a way to test this particular prediction (which isn't common from string theorist/m-theorist). Since it apparently doesn't break any laws of physics, I guess there's no reason to assume it's impossible. But, since it's based on m-theory, it's probably more science fiction than science fact.

[Plow]

they're stuck in a conundrum, though

if you're going to know rather it worked or not before you do the experiment, then why actually do the experiment?

so if they didn't find anything, and decided then not to do it, would that mean it was never going to work, or that it didn't work because they didn't do it?

further, if they find the positive results beforehand, and then decide they no longer need to do it, how did they get there, what happens then?

[Kaylia]

"One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes," Weiler said. "Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future."

I'm no string physicist, but what happens if you send someone a message to kill your parent? >_> Or shit, send yourself a message that ask you to do something you didn't do for shit and giggle.


I'm sorry Woozie, I couldn't finish reading this articles about imaginary particles surfing the 5th dimension.


[edit]
Actually, it was Rhinox's. Sorry.

[Eliseos]

they're stuck in a conundrum, though

if you're going to know rather it worked or not before you do the experiment, then why actually do the experiment?

so if they didn't find anything, and decided then not to do it, would that mean it was never going to work, or that it didn't work because they didn't do it?

further, if they find the positive results beforehand, and then decide they no longer need to do it, how did they get there, what happens then?

Back when the big bang theory was actually funny, there was an episode where two of the main characters are working through their roommate agreement. One of them suggested, "if we ever invent time travel, the first thing we'll do is travel back to exactly 10 seconds from now.". No one ever showed up and they kind of just looked at eachother dejectedly. I'd like to imagine the scientists who came up with this theory went through the same agreement, and the same dejection when their particles didn't go back in time.

[Woozie]

My bad, Kaylia, I didn't even notice the part about sending messages into the past. That actually is a violation of the laws of physics and has every paradox associated with time travel. Information/messages can't go faster than light or backwards in time. Somehow I didn't even see that part.

[Max™]

/sigh

No, sending messages into the past isn't a violation of physics, the laws of physics are time reversible.

It can be a violation of causality, which then requires that the universe must be local, you gotta pick one at least.


Hell, it requires some interesting gymnastics to model advanced wave propagation as anything other than into the past.

The article is definitely meh, but at least they're trying to produce an experimentally testable prediction, right?

[Woozie]

You know, if you had actually been studying physics these past few years instead of just pretending to, you wouldn't be nearly as annoying (and consistently wrong) as you are now.