Science: how far is too far? - Page 2

August 31, 2008, 9:01 PM

Well, if we went and took particular chemicals in a lab and accidentally mixed them together, you might blow up the entire lab; it's entirely possible that those chemicals are both used in the same experiment, but different times; it's not like scientists don't know what they're doing. These accidents happen because people read the wrong labels, don't know what they're doing, or don't read the safety precautions; happens in labs all the time--a student accidentally poured acid on her hands and got burned seriously. These risks will always have a chance of occurring, no matter what safety precautions you take--there is always a chance that in any given experiment, there is always a risk that you may end up destroying the lab or otherwise completely sabotaging the experiment in other horrible ways. What matters is the likelihood of the accidents happening. In most cases, the probability of a devastating accident occurring in a careful, controlled and well designed experiment is very unlikely. If the problem with an experiment involves the destruction of the universe as a side effect, then scientists should probably take some time to reduce the probability of this happening or design the experiment in such a way that the side effects would not be so drastic. I consider it unscientific to perform an experiment without having calculated the probability of any risks occurring in said experiment.

Either way, I'd rather the end of the world happened because some scientists were conducting an experiment and destroyed it purely by accident, and for which they already reduced the probability of it happening as much as possible than the world end at the hands of politics.

Here's another interesting thought though--what if these scientists hadn't known or realized that they could actually be conducting an experiment which may involve the destruction of the universe?

September 1, 2008, 6:38 AM

"The Higgs Boson particle is a theoretical particle that causes gravity"

No. It has absolutely nothing to do with gravity. It explains how particles acquire mass.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tessbot

Well, if we went and took particular chemicals in a lab and accidentally mixed them together, you might blow up the entire lab; it's entirely possible that those chemicals are both used in the same experiment, but different times; it's not like scientists don't know what they're doing. These accidents happen because people read the wrong labels, don't know what they're doing, or don't read the safety precautions; happens in labs all the time--a student accidentally poured acid on her hands and got burned seriously. These risks will always have a chance of occurring, no matter what safety precautions you take--there is always a chance that in any given experiment, there is always a risk that you may end up destroying the lab or otherwise completely sabotaging the experiment in other horrible ways. What matters is the likelihood of the accidents happening. In most cases, the probability of a devastating accident occurring in a careful, controlled and well designed experiment is very unlikely. If the problem with an experiment involves the destruction of the universe as a side effect, then scientists should probably take some time to reduce the probability of this happening or design the experiment in such a way that the side effects would not be so drastic. I consider it unscientific to perform an experiment without having calculated the probability of any risks occurring in said experiment.

There is a key part that you're missing here. Scientists KNOW for sure what reactions will occur when you mix certain chemicals. Physics is a far cry from chemistry. This experiment is dealing with a very theoretical particle. There is absolutely no way that scientists can ascertain whether this particle accelerator is safe or not. They can assume that THEORETICALLY it should be. However, no one has ever hurled protons at each other with a giant collider (hence the Higgs Boson particle still being a theory), so I think your parallel to a chemistry lab is a little misguided. Scientists aren't trying to mix a bit of chemicals here; they are trying to recreate the conditions of the big bang. And it has never been attempted before. Bit of a difference.

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Either way, I'd rather the end of the world happened because some scientists were conducting an experiment and destroyed it purely by accident, and for which they already reduced the probability of it happening as much as possible than the world end at the hands of politics.

....Right, well, I like living, so I'd prefer it didn't end in several months. That's just me. And politics can't end the world. You'll find that black holes can. In my opinion, to compare them is a bit ridiculous.

Quote:

Here's another interesting thought though--what if these scientists hadn't known or realized that they could actually be conducting an experiment which may involve the destruction of the universe?

The large hadron collider cannot destroy the universe. At worst, it can create a black hole that could swallow up all the planets in this solar system. There are millions (well, I'd guess, anyway) of black holes in the universe.

September 2, 2008, 3:30 AM

Erythritol is right. the large hadron collider can't destroy the universe. and the probability of it causing any sort of destruction on a macro scale is negligible. science has only ever made calculated moves to learn more about the world around us.

as far as the point made that this type of experiment won't have any effect on our daily lives or really explain anything of relevance, that's just ridiculously stupid.

particle physics is probably one of the most fundamental and important fields. it explains how nearly everything works. learning more about the relationship between matter and energy as well as how to convert them effectively between eachother could solve countless problems. problems like the energy crisis.

September 2, 2008, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erythritol

"The Higgs Boson particle is a theoretical particle that causes gravity"

No. It has absolutely nothing to do with gravity. It explains how particles acquire mass.

There is a key part that you're missing here. Scientists KNOW for sure what reactions will occur when you mix certain chemicals. Physics is a far cry from chemistry. This experiment is dealing with a very theoretical particle. There is absolutely no way that scientists can ascertain whether this particle accelerator is safe or not. They can assume that THEORETICALLY it should be. However, no one has ever hurled protons at each other with a giant collider (hence the Higgs Boson particle still being a theory), so I think your parallel to a chemistry lab is a little misguided. Scientists aren't trying to mix a bit of chemicals here; they are trying to recreate the conditions of the big bang. And it has never been attempted before. Bit of a difference.

Not really. If scientists did know what would happen if they mixed certain chemicals together, there would be no need to test them, would there be? What they think will happen is theory until it is actually tested; the fact that chemistry and physics are not the same fields of science has no bearing on how both kinds of experiments are conducted--they both use the scientific method. Which means, if chemists have never performed an experiment before and don't know whether or not mixing particular chemicals will yield a particular reaction and their knowledge of it is only theoretical, then there's still always the risk the reaction will be much stronger than they predicted, and destroy stuff they didn't predict. So does that mean we shouldn't do any scientific experiment just because there's a risk?

Quote:

....Right, well, I like living, so I'd prefer it didn't end in several months. That's just me. And politics can't end the world. You'll find that black holes can. In my opinion, to compare them is a bit ridiculous.

People have been speculating ways in which the world will end, and nuclear warfare might actually be one of them. Of course, nobody would be stupid enough to use nuclear weapons to destroy the world, but thanks to politics, people do stupid things. What I meant to say was that if the world were to end at our hands, I'd rather it ended while we were trying to use our minds to understand something than to end it over senseless bickering.

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The large hadron collider cannot destroy the universe. At worst, it can create a black hole that could swallow up all the planets in this solar system. There are millions (well, I'd guess, anyway) of black holes in the universe.

That's not the point though--I'm asking if they should still go ahead with the experiment if they hadn't known this risk.

September 3, 2008, 2:36 AM

We'll prolly shrug off the developing black holes, but will end up complaining when we see unexplained meteors falling on our lawns.

I wanna laugh about it, but I think there's some seriousness attached to that first sentence. The effects either will happen, are happening or already have happened and are about to expose. All we know is that something bad will happen and it might involve our homely little planet.

September 3, 2008, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tessbot

Not really. If scientists did know what would happen if they mixed certain chemicals together, there would be no need to test them, would there be? What they think will happen is theory until it is actually tested; the fact that chemistry and physics are not the same fields of science has no bearing on how both kinds of experiments are conducted--they both use the scientific method. Which means, if chemists have never performed an experiment before and don't know whether or not mixing particular chemicals will yield a particular reaction and their knowledge of it is only theoretical, then there's still always the risk the reaction will be much stronger than they predicted, and destroy stuff they didn't predict. So does that mean we shouldn't do any scientific experiment just because there's a risk?

Speaking as someone who has studied chemistry, I can tell you that's not true. We know with quite a degree of certainty how something will react. That you need to put over .25 squared cm of lithium in water for it to burst into flame. We didn't always have this knowledge but that's not the case with the LHC. We are colliding protons together, something which is unpredictable. It's like tossing a coin, the outcome isn't certain.

Also the risk of a black hole is much greater than anything that could occur whilst practising chemistry.

September 3, 2008, 7:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Placebo

Speaking as someone who has studied chemistry, I can tell you that's not true. We know with quite a degree of certainty how something will react. That you need to put over .25 squared cm of lithium in water for it to burst into flame. We didn't always have this knowledge but that's not the case with the LHC. We are colliding protons together, something which is unpredictable. It's like tossing a coin, the outcome isn't certain.

Also the risk of a black hole is much greater than anything that could occur whilst practising chemistry.

I have no idea what you're getting at. All I meant to say is that we do science experiments because they either disprove what we thought we knew or becomes evidence for our theories. It doesn't matter whether it's phsyics or chemistry; we do these experiments because we don't know for sure what will happen; the experiments confirm for us what does.

September 4, 2008, 8:30 PM

Ugh, this is just science for the sake of science in my opinion. It just seems to me as if scientists are going as far as they can just because they can. I know that's probably not their reason, I'm not an idiot. But wanting to study black holes and the universe... I just think, where's the need? Okay, so this IS something that clearly interests them deeply but it just seems that they could could have put their time and money and brains to much better use, such as improving the world we live in instead of creating black holes which could destroy it completely.

September 4, 2008, 8:41 PM

The attempt to understand the universe may lead to more practical applications. It is not immediately obvious how yet; that's what makes us short-sighted. But there are quite a few examples. Many people considered number theory, a very pure field of mathematics to be useless. It was, until of recently. People use number theory a lot in key-encryption systems; it keeps most data safe. Our clock and other similar units require the concept of number theory to work, and counting larger amounts of them is nearly impossible without the techniques of number theory. But lots of people say math is useless, when in fact, they refuse to acknowledge that they are using math without realizing it, and much of what they take for granted is impossible without mathematics.

But enough about mathematics. You can take any scientific fact into a particular context and say it's useless. People may say they don't need to know that the Earth is round, the moon orbits it, or that there's the grand universe and the sun all around us, and what they might possibly look like. But when we make satellites and predict the weather, it's hard to believe that astronomy is useless. Or people may say they don't need to know about evolution because the stuff that happened in the past before we lived doesn't concern us. When we find new cures for diseases and predict what happens to bacteria as they grow and trace geneology in an attempt to learn some history and improve medicine in general which may save people's lives, it's hard to believe that evolution and biology are useless.

It is simple to say that scientific fact, or any fact obtained relative to reality is useless. But that's only because you stop thinking about it. Who knows; scientists may discover an alternate source of energy by doing this.

Knowledge is important to practical applications. You can't manipulate that which does not exist.