back to article 'Something may come through' dimensional 'doors' at LHC

A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or "unknown unknowns" - for instance "an extra dimension". "Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it," said Sergio Bertolucci, who is …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Life imitating art?

    Sounds like we can expect a Combine invasion then.

    I'm off to buy a HEV suit if they have any left in Argos.

    Alien icon obviously.

  2. Ralphe Neill
    Alien

    Come on!

    Who is going to be the first to welcome our new demonic soul-reaping, parallel globo-Nazi, hyperspherical juggernaut-dinosaur overlords?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pull the plug

    > "And of course no risk to the stability of our world."

    Unless there's an unexpected result. The odds of which are, by definition, unknown.

    It's fairly safe to risk unexpected results with experiments which, say, mix a couple of chemicals.

    No-one should be doing experiments which create the conditions just after the Big Bang, where the unknowns are things like the consequences of making new dimensions, mini-black holes etc.

    The more such experiments we make, the surer you can be that eventually the unknown unknown will occur.

  4. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge
    Welcome

    May I be the first...

    ...to welcome back our ancient overlords from beyond space?

    Cthulhu ftaghn, etc...

  5. Fluffykins Silver badge

    I for one

    welcome our figmentarian overlords

  6. xyz Silver badge
    Gates Horns

    Ahh...you mean Hellboy

    Mines the coat with the horns

  7. Jon Green
    Welcome

    It is, of course, a known and proven fact...

    ...that whatever we see through the warp portal wormhole will be humanoid, with only intricate cranial ridges and perhaps an unusual skin colour differentiating it from human life.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Quality

    "Various eccentric nutballs", "cack-handed boffins" and "the button marked "Call Black Hole Into Being""

    Hats off to Lewis and The Reg, you just don't get this quality of journalism anywhere else. Long may you lead us in the forthcoming struggle against the Nazi supermen that will march out of the rent in time & space deep under Switzerland (where the clocks come from)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    @AC 12:17

    Spoilsport. Or basement dwelling agrophobic mummys boy. I'm not sure which.

  10. Steve X
    Thumb Up

    What will come though?

    A Post-It note saying "for Cthulhu's sake, shut that thing off NOW!"

  11. NB
    Boffin

    well

    I just hope Gordon Freeman is on hand to deal with anything that comes through, should it be nasty that is.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    H2G2

    <q>

    hyperdimensional "doors" out of which might come unspecified "somethings".

    </q>

    I'm expecting them to look like little white mices, singing "How many roads.....?"

  13. The Original Ash

    Mini black hole

    Considering that black holes are known to have a magnetic force, maybe we can contain such a mini black hole within the confines of the LHC's super conducting magnet lined chamber?

    Something tells me that doing anything than keeping it suspended in a vacuum will be quite dangerous, so no dumping to core.

    Now, where's my crowbar...

  14. Craig Vaughton
    Alien

    Stood too close?

    I'll have whatever he's on!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    What if its the other way around.

    Maybe they know exactly what they are going to create and we have an invasion force ready and waiting to go in hard on some unsuspecting alternative dimensional species.

    you never know! however, the chances are we are we are doomed!

  16. Adam Salisbury
    FAIL

    Can you say resonance cascade?

    I can't believe these idiot scientists harking on about opening doors to alternate dimensions, stranglet soups and black holes are flatly refuting even the merest possibility of monumentally screwing the planet. The unknowns and improbables are possible but no one know the odds. Would anyone reading this wander blindly into a bookies and bet the farm on a funny named horse whose odds of winnning aren't known?

    I'm all for scientific progress but a) at what cost? and b) without condecending to the masses without astrophysics degrees and letters after our names thank you. For all their knowledge and suffixes they can't seem to grasp the fact that most people only hear about these things in sci-fi flicks and perhaps a little more education on the secret underground is on order, what we had so far? An alarmist documentary and a catastrophic failure when attempting to boot it up, makes the unknown odds look bad doesn't it?

  17. SmallYellowFuzzyDuck, how pweety!
    Thumb Up

    I vote for Combine

    "There's no maths in it," added Lamont encouragingly, having assessed the intellectual level of the Reg news team with disconcerting percipience.

    That line made me laugh so hard. Excellent!

    Looking forward to the switch on of the LHC.

    Maybe I should buy a crowbar just in case.

  18. Hooch181
    Black Helicopters

    Nah, not at Argos!

    Ace hardware though does have a special online, comes with free Crowbar!

  19. MonkeyNuts.Com
    Alien

    Why fight them...???

    I for one welcome our new insect overloads..

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Halo

    G Man

    Meet Gordon.

    Gordon meet G Man...

  21. Eddie Edwards
    Thumb Up

    *applause*

    Orlowski should do an anti-global-warming story with this level of self-deprecation

  22. Gavin Jamie
    Alien

    Probably safer

    to relocate the whole thing to Phobos.

  23. Paul_Murphy

    Hmm - a distracting thought...

    'My god - it's full of boobies!'

    Of course we will be wanting pictures, or maybe playmobile?

    ttfn

  24. SteveCluk

    ahuh...

    "rise and shine Mr Freeman. rise and shine..."

    Mine's the one with the crowbar in the pocket.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    "countless aeons"?

    What's wrong with "13-14 billion years"? Too sciency? Excessive factiness?

    There's enough ill-educated hogwash being bandied about in relation to the LHC already, ta.

  26. Richie Hindle

    Lewis

    Lewis, whatever they're paying you, it's not enough.

  27. Iain 15
    Grenade

    Where's me crowbar?

    Or, obviously, the more up to date Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator

  28. Cameron Colley

    RE: Pull the plug

    So, there is an infinitesimal chance that this will end the world as we know it -- so what? Or are you some kind of Timelord who will be here to be upset by it if it does? For that matter, how do you know the world didn't end last Tuesday and continue in another set of dimensions?

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Call black hole into existence" button

    Surely this doesn't have a cover ... its black with black writing on it but displays "don't press this again" when pressed

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "Call black hole into existence" button

    Surely this doesn't have a cover ... its black with black writing on it but displays "don't press this again" when pressed

    I'll get my towel

  31. Secretgeek
    Happy

    Two things.

    "Calling Dr Freeman. Dr Freeman to the red emergency phone please."

    Second, don't you just love this stuff. Seriously, portals into other dimensions, you just couldn't make this shit up. Alright, you can, and have, but we're talking real life here people! Real life!

    Bring on the end of the world! Mwuahahahaha.

    Yeah, I'm done now.

  32. Campbell
    Coffee/keyboard

    errr...

    if there's is an unknown unknown event or otherwise, how can we be sure we'll know anything about it?

  33. Jim Carter
    Terminator

    Oh dear.

    Where's Gordon Freeman when you need him

  34. Sam Cogan
    Black Helicopters

    Resonance Cascade

    I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade.....

  35. Annihilator
    Coat

    Ah... crazy predictions

    I think the earth might fall into the sun tomorrow. Scientists strongly disagree with me, but who ya gonna believe??

  36. Simon Round
    Paris Hilton

    Shurley Not......

    "someone living on a single 2D plane-space - that is as a mysterious circle suddenly blossoming into existence, growing, perhaps moving about and then shrinking down and vanishing again."

    Surely for somebody to see the circle they would have to be living in 3d plane-space. Somebody living in 2D plane-space would just see an object (possibly like a line or wall) pop into existance, move about, grow wider, move nearer or further away and would curve away from them on either side.

    Paris - Because she likes things that pop up, get bigger and move towards her!

  37. Mr Lodestone

    Blossoming circles

    For an insight into how those Randallesque 3D objects on a 2D plane would look, see the absolutely lovely CC licensed POVRay-made film, Dimensions.

    Chapter Two covers this, but it's all quite, quite beautiful.

    http://www.dimensions-math.org/

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    Which item of the User Requirement Specification

    has the requirement

    "Capability to generate local black hole"

    or

    "Provide N Dimensional opening when button B is pressed and held for Time = t nanoseconds"?

    Sounds like the Users are "big-ing" the (w)hole thing up to gain interest?

    I wish them good luck in their enterprise but I hope/doubt they'll create anything more life threatening other than ideas. But that is startling enough for some to want to run back into their religious order and shout "Nay, deity protect me....".

  39. Christopher Rogers
    Thumb Up

    I love it

    Talk about giving the media what they want! I'd bullshit my ass off doing that job :-) The only limitation is imagination!

  40. Lee Dowling Silver badge
    Alert

    Well

    To the naysayers, I say:

    There's an entire universe out there. The human race occupies approximately nothing of it. Seriously, so small as to be completely, entirely insignificant. And in terms of mass/energy, we really are using *nothing*.

    Even if we could harness the power of the entire planet, or even solar system, and focus it onto warping space and doing other tricks, we aren't going to destroy the world accidentally. There might be a big bang at the LHC in the conventional sense (smoke, flames, loud noise) but we're not going to be kick-starting the second Big Bang from the Starbug's engines.

    If we could, we'd be witnessing Big Bangs and self-created black hole all over the cosmos and they would be our primary indicator of "intelligent life". And if we could do that, we'd still be an insignificant speck compared to the civilisations that manage to survive *their* "LHC era" and move on to the next "theoretically-safe" experiment. But if we don't at least try, we might as well have stayed in caves eating cold veggies because we had no tools to hunt or cook with.

    It's actually a factor in things like the Drake equations if you do it properly - scientists take account of the fact that any intelligent civilisation might well do something daft and blow itself to pieces. Personally, I think the sword or bullet would prove to be a much more devastating invention to help that along without the need for advanced scientific research on it.

  41. ravenviz Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    LOL@LHC

    Register writing stype top-notch as ever, keep it up!

  42. MPT

    Bring it on!!

    Not going to know to much about it this if it does happen. Forces involved are beyond our comprehension leaving little time for anything to be done apart from utter the immortal words

    "Oh F*&K!!"

    Probably even the boffin's at CERN won't have time to say that.

  43. John Irwin

    Before They Go Ahead

    Well hope before they commence the operation they set a system restore point, oh how I have learned from that lesson !

  44. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Lee Dowling

    But what about if by a million/billion/whatever to one chance we are the first "intelligent life" to emerge. Someone has to be, and we all know that the thing about million to one chances is that they happen nine times out of ten.

  45. RainForestGuppy

    I love the smell of Hadrons in the morning

    Hand me my BFG, I'm going in.

    Of course the real use of the LHC is to move all the molecules in the party hostess under-garments 2 feet to the left, in accrodance with the laws of indetermincey

  46. Graham Bartlett

    Gotta love the theorists

    "Hey, our maths says there's an infinite number of universes out there, and they all really exist!"

    My maths (thanks to a Monseiur Fourier) says that I'm not twanging a guitar string, I'm actually flipping a switch on an infinite number of sine-wave generators. Which of course must exist, because the maths says they do.

    I really wish these guys could tell the difference between what's reality and what's a mathematical model which closely approximates reality.

  47. Barn
    Grenade

    @ First AC

    Glad I'm not the only one who suddenly thought of Black Mesa....

  48. Paul Kinsler

    How unlikely is a doomsday catastrophe?

    http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512204

    Abstract

    Numerous Earth-destroying doomsday scenarios have recently been analyzed, including breakdown of a metastable vacuum state and planetary destruction triggered by a "strangelet” or microscopic black hole. We point out that many previous bounds on their frequency give a false sense of security ...

  49. Number6
    Boffin

    What caused the big bang?

    Perhaps it was someone in the previous universe turning on their LHC and sucking it all through in zero time to create this one.

  50. IndianaJ
    Alert

    Haven't these people

    seen Event Horizon? That'd make 'em think twice.

  51. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    @ Adam Salisbury re: Can you say resonance cascade?

    Seriously though, who cares?

    If anything bad happens, we'll either have a hell of a view of the greatest scientific discovery ever or we won't know anything about it.

    LHC goes "pop" and we go "blink" out of existence.

    The human race has only got where it is byblindly ignoring the possible negative outcomes and chasing the dream.

    When they split the Atom, they thought there would be a good chance they would burn off the planets atmosphere but they did it anyway.

    The possible benefits are worth the possible risks.

    Big green GO button for "Make it so!"

  52. Ed Blackshaw Silver badge
    FAIL

    Oh Noes!

    Microscopic black holes!

    Would those be the same microscopic black holes that only contain the amount of energy you put into them, and then evaporate pretty quickly by re-emitting as Hawking radiation?

    Of all the things likely to cause the destruction of the earth, I'd be MUCH more worried about our Merkin cousins...

  53. Graham Marsden
    Boffin

    Err, sir...

    ... there's this business card come through from some outfit called Cybus Industries, offering us all "upgrades"...

  54. Sir Sham Cad

    Black Holes, Dimensions and Space Nazis

    I've read most of the articles about all the nasty things the LHC "could" do to the planet, the Universe, because "we just don't know". Junk science can be amusing.

    Firstly, the thing that makes a Black Hole scary is the mass squished into the singularity as this, essentially, defines its gravitational influence. Any "Black Holes", or singularities that would be formed by smashing two Hadrons together (as opposed to a massive star collapsing in on itself) are going to have, well, the mass of two Hadrons, and would almost instantly decay into Hawking radiation. They would, however, be an awesome thing to detect and would go a long way to confirming our ideas of particle physics and cosmology.

    I love the idea, also, that, at these energies and sensitivities, we could "see" a new dimension. One of my favourite books of recent years was "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene. It explains, both theory and history of String theory, 11 Dimensional supergravity, eventually becoming "M-Theory". It goes on to describe how these other dimensions that could make up our universe but we do not notice, could be seen from our perspective and there's a wonderful chapter explaining about our chums in 2D land. The sphere simply would have no depth in that 2-Dimensional world because depth was not a characteristic it could posess there. So instead you get an infinite series of cross-sections representing it's possible states in that flat world. So, no, you wouldn't get "lines" but "circles" with widths ranging from a single point to the diameter of the original sphere.

    Having said all that, and knowing that the HLC would not have been funded, let alone built or turned on (well, assuming they ever do turn it on) if the science had said it's going to destroy the planet but fuck it, it'll be fun, I think the best proof we have that the LHC is actually going to open a doorway to a universe of Gollum-esque Space Nazis is that our future selves have sent back armies of avian agents armed with baked goods and strategic maps of weak points in the structure in order to prevent the invasion that wiped out all the fish in 2048.

    I can't wait until they turn it on!

  55. Flugal

    Sucked into oblivion

    I was at a talk at the Wellcome Collection yesterday by Tejinder Virdee of CERN fame, and the question of how we can be so sure we won't be opening a black hole that will suck the Earth and everything on it into it.

    His answer was that these experiement is effectively being done all over the planet, with cosmic rays crashing into each other at similar speeds to those created by the LHC. If it was going to create conditions in which we get sucked into oblivion, it would have happened already. Of course, as we don't have the equipment to analyse these various cosmic ray collisions in the right place at the right time, we haven't been able to make use of them, as a cheaper alternative to the £3-4 billion (or dollars?) kit stuck in at CERN, but hey, that wouldn't be as exciting for the black helicopter brigade either.

    Tejinder Virdee was quite engaginging chap BTw - certainly recommended for anybody interested in the subject, although I will confess to *ahem* a few things going over my head.

  56. Chris007
    Joke

    @ It is, of course, a known and proven fact...

    you missed the fact that everybody speaks English as well...

  57. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    I feel vindicated ...

    All those years playing Doom were NOT a waste of time then, EH??!!??

  58. Peter Mc Aulay

    @Adam Salisbury

    Calm down. The LHC doesn't nearly have enough energy to "reproduce the Big Bang" or probably even generate black holes, turning the planet into soup etc. is definitely out of the question. We need about 18 orders of magnitude more energy for that. What they hope the LHC can do (and it turns out scientists do have a good idea of what's going to happen before they build experiments like this, surprise surprise) is operate around the scale of the weak nuclear force so aspects of supersymmetry and various string theories can be tested, many of which begin to make very specific predictions around that energy scale. On a cosmic scale, that's still relatively modest.

    I've read Warped Passages , it's fascinating.

  59. sig

    Large Hadron Wheelie Bin

    We could 'solve' our global waste problem by chucking it through these temporary inter-dimensional holes. CERN: Fly-tipping the universes.

  60. Trevor 3

    10^26 seconds?

    Yeah, ok it maybe 10^ -26 seconds on our side, but if they have a different temporal linear time frequency to us, it may be open on their side for...well...years...

    Or if time is actually their 3rd dimension what could be 10^ -26 seconds for us could be a location 900 metres to the right of where they are stood.

    No-one ever thinks about this! Or the children in the other dimension!

  61. Bassey

    End of the world

    Am I the only one not in the least bit bothered if the Universe turns into soup? I'll be dead. You'll be dead. Neither of us will be in a position to give a shit.

    The end of the universe, by it's very nature, will be the least eventful event in the Universe' history as there will be no-one (alive) to see it.

    It's utterly unimportant so please, carry on cleaning your compost bins with half lemons or whatever it is you lot do to relax.

  62. This post has been deleted by its author

  63. Bilgepipe

    Lazarus

    I think they'll find that guy from Star Treks The Alternative Factor - Lazarus.

  64. Nettleship
    Megaphone

    Has the large hadron collider destroyed the world?

    For anyone worried if the LHC has destroyed the world they can review the situation on this website.

    Read the URL.

    http://www.hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

  65. Joe K
    Alien

    Get Peter Weller on the phone

    Buckaroo Banzai predicted all of this.

  66. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    As a resident of Geneva

    I'll have to make sure to get my quota of partying done before they switch this on.

    Just in case of course.

    In the incredibly remote possibility of a black hole being created, might as well go down with a pint in hand

  67. Valerion

    The problem I have

    Is the whole "recreating the conditions just after the big bang" thing.

    The last time that happened, as I recall, the entire Universe sort of came into being and proceeded to grow continually outward at, presumably, the speed of light.

    Seems to me that starting off another one of those in Switzerland could be considered A Bad Thing.

  68. BristolBachelor Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    May I be the first...

    ...to recommend that Mandelson be sent though the door. Tell him that the controllers of all filesharing are on the other side, and if that doesn't work; push him.

    Even if the door doesn't open, the family car travelling at 1000mph can get him.

    Form an orderly line please:

    Mandelson

    Waqui Jacki

    Bush

    The other Bush

    All the execs of:

    RIAA, FAST, MPPA...

    Barclays, Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of America...

    .....

  69. Chris Griffiths
    Coat

    Makes me wonder...

    ...what computer they're running there? Hope it's not GLaDOS.

    Why yes, mine IS the one with the Portal gun in the pocket. Thanks... ;)

  70. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Bugger Gordon..

    Everyone in know, knows that this thing is actually built to manufacture anti-hydrogen so that it can be reacted with element 116, the gravity engine that lets UFO's fly...

    Thats the real story!

  71. Disco-Legend-Zeke
    Boffin

    Compressed Photons = the Big Firecracker

    Although very small in size, the Big Firecracker contained all the photons that now make up our Universe.

    Since Everything is made of Photons, this pinpoint sized object thus contained, well, Everything.

    Consider the Yin and Yang symbol:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg

    Two very tiny dots, each surrounded by an energy field, and orbiting around each other.

    This is a simple conceptual model of a photon, there may be more than two kinds of particles and they are orbiting in 10 or 11 dimensions, but the Universe and everything in it is it made of these. The orbits vary in size and the spinning happens at varying speeds, giving a photon a "frequency." Viewed as it approaches, a photon appears circular, at an angle it traces out a helix, and from the side, it looks like a sine wave.

    Although the size of the orbits may very, the particles themselves are probably the same size... VERY VERY tiny. Very! Tiny! So tiny that all of them fit inside a firecracker smaller than a proton.

    When ancient boffins lit the Big Firecracker 13.7 (possibly by building a giant accellerator) billion years ago, the photon particles immediately began separating from each other, trying to form traditional photons.

    At first there simply was no room for them to do that, so, instead of forming photons, the photonic particles dance around each other in tighter and more compact patterns forming first the very simplest of sub atomic objects, higgs bosons. As the universe becomes larger and larger, more complex objects can be formed, but there is still no room for light.

    Finally, after about 10 seconds, the universe was big enough for photons to assume their traditional form, and they began to fly away in all directions at the speed of light, carrying heat away with them, and a few minutes later, the universe is cool enough for atomic nuclei to form.

    A nice timeline is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang

  72. Stu
    Pint

    Jeez.

    If I had a quid for each of the utterly predictable Half Life / Half Life 2 references we get for every LHC related article, I'd be a millionaire.

    Have a beer or two - you might grow some testicles.

  73. Anonymous John

    Re "Call black hole into existence" button

    See? An antimatter Anonymous Coward has already come through the rift and posted an almost identical comment.

    Which is the one from our universe?

  74. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Friday Again Already .... Crikey ....Tempus Fugit in Deed, indeed.

    "Well ... There's an entire universe out there. The human race occupies approximately nothing of it.Seriously, so small as to be completely, entirely insignificant." ... By Lee Dowling Posted Friday 6th November 2009 13:18 GMT

    Well, .... that equation changes quite radically, if the entire universe is an Elaborative Invention of Global Operating Devices .... Networks InterNetworking JApplications .... a Conspiracy of Enlightened Future Thought[s]?!.

    "Hats off to Lewis and The Reg, you just don't get this quality of journalism anywhere else." ... By Stuart Monro Posted Friday 6th November 2009 12:31 GMT

    Nobel Prize for Phormation Stuff and Perfect Nonsense, Stuart Monro, without any Doubt. And a Knightmare for Puppet Governments and Poxy Foxy Proxy Establishment Muppets to Try and Suppress.

    And Failure to Acknowledge and Reveal what is Thought to be Known about Unknown Unknowns is the Jack S*** Straw they are given/have drawn to Remain Germane in the Great Futures Game.

  75. Bassey

    Re: Valerion

    "Seems to me that starting off another one of those in Switzerland could be considered A Bad Thing."

    Why?

    I'm not trying to be funny. Just wondering. Can't think of any reasons myself.

  76. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    @ AC living in Geneva

    You utterly jammy, jammy barsteward....

    PS I believe it's glasses of wine with lunch & cafe creme's at the lakeside are the order of the day, not pints? And it's only 2pm...shouldn't you still be on lunch?

    I'm not jealous. Oh no.

  77. Keith Oldham
    Joke

    Assessed by a superior civilisation

    If anyone or thing does manage to peek at us through this portal they will slam it shut rather quickly.

    "Clearly an inferior species - most of them don't use *ix !"

    Have a good weekend

  78. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Gordon Freeman is already at the LHC...

    See for yourself.

    http://mix.epicfu.com/profiles/blogs/699622:BlogPost:151768

  79. breakfast Silver badge
    Pint

    How best to respond...

    Shouldn't we all lie on the floor or put paper bags over our heads?

  80. Law
    Go

    don't worry people...

    ... optimus will save us, and to prove it, I expect photographic evidence provided by el-reg... thanks guys! :)

  81. Eric Kimminau TREG
    Headmaster

    2 birds, one stone

    I had a hard time dseciding whether the Zero Wing reference or the Buckaroo Banzai reference was most appropriate. So here they are in one place.

    "All your base are belong to us!"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us

    The Oscillation Overthruster represents the culmination of many years of research and experimentation by such august scientists as Emilio Lizardo, Prof. Hikita, Buckaroo Banzai and his parents. The OO allows one to penetrate other dimensions by acting on a solid surface in threespace; through the creation of multiparticle standing waves inside the object under projection, the surface is 'rotated' out of threespace into the Eighth Dimension. Passing an object through the convex hull surface thus rotated will, in effect, move the object entirely out of threespace by converting the object's three-dimensional momentum into eighth dimensional displacement.

    John Whorfin: "Where are we going?"

    Red Lectroids: "Planet 10!"

    John Whorfin: "When?"

    Red Lectroids: "Real soon!"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckaroo_Banzai

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Buckaroo_Banzai_Across_the_8th_Dimension

  82. Dale Richards
    Go

    @Valerion

    "Seems to me that starting off another one of those in Switzerland could be considered A Bad Thing"

    I think starting off another Big Bang in Switzerland would a Great Thing. Surely we're about due for a brand new Universe?

  83. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Sorry to drop this to gutter level but....

    "I've read Warped Passages , it's fascinating"

    I've watched something with a similar title to that - that too was quite fascinating.

  84. multipharious
    Boffin

    Warped Passages?

    a race of carnivorous dinosaur-men, the superhuman clone hive-legions of some evil genetic queen-empress, infinite polypantheons of dark nega-deities imprisoned for aeons and hungering to feast upon human souls, a parallel-history victorious Nazi globo-Reich or something of that type.

    Brilliant.

    On a serious note, I got going on Warped Passages and put it down. I do recommend the two following books though:

    Dimensional Structures of Consciousness - a Physical Basis for Immaterialism

    and

    Faster than Light - Superluminal Loopholes in Physics

    Guess I ought to give Warped Passages another chance, I cannot remember why I did not like it. I think it duplicated too much I had already read...nothing wrong with that if you are new to this stuff.

  85. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Dont these people know..........

    You should NEVER cross the beams!

  86. Dr. G. Freeman
    Pint

    Seeing as I'm being called

    Right, Ok... I'll go deal with it again....

    Probably a bit of fuss over nothing

    Wish the guys wouldn't read the excuse folder to the media

    "yes dear, I'll be late home... it's er... because ,,,we think we've opened a black hole to another dimension"

    or "Boss, we need new computers as...erm,... the strange matter release will render the old ones usless"

    Going newa few beers after this...

  87. Wile E. Veteran
    Coat

    Torchwood

    Are Captain Jack and crew on all in case they are needed?

  88. bRick
    Black Helicopters

    We already know

    We already know it doesn't work- because in one of the parallel universes the LHC wouldn't have had that glitch that we had last September...

    So if it had worked that dimension would have already invaded ours ages ago.

  89. Charlie van Becelaere
    Alien

    Looks like my chance

    at Wimbeldon, what with the blancmanges headed in from Switzerland and all. Disguised in a kilt, I'll be the only one left to defend the honour of all tennis-playing nations of Earth!

  90. Kevin 43
    Boffin

    What no "another world" reference?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j4gO9sR7zs

  91. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Boffin

    You are

    all wrong with the bad consqences of the LHC

    The doorway will open briefly , but a virus will be sucked through into our universe and 2 weeks after the first infection all thats left of humanity is several million zombies and 4 immune survivors........

    I'm off to make pipe bombs and molotovs

  92. Justin
    Thumb Up

    Have they thought of

    getting Ali G to be their Press Officer?

  93. 3BEPOTEKCT
    Boffin

    Verschlingen II ?

    Hmm, that old trick again. Put in the LHC half of the U-Crane, and you'll find it moved to the Poa-Land.

    73

  94. Daniel B.
    Coat

    The LHC guys never played DOOM, it seems

    Otherwise they'd know they're supposed to do this on Phobos, not Earth! Anyway, stand by for Hell's invasion into Earth!

    Mine's the one with the BFG9000

  95. Petrea Mitchell
    Alien

    @Peter Mc Aulay

    "[T]urning the planet into soup etc. is definitely out of the question. We need about 18 orders of magnitude more energy for that."

    And just HOW do you coincidentally happen to have just precise knowledge about planetary liquification, Mr. McAulay? Hmm?

  96. Petrea Mitchell
    Coat

    Well, if you want a non-Half Life reference...

    ...this is obviously the first step towards humanity creating its own CVEs, thus draining off excess entropy and filling the void left by the destruction of Logopolis.

    Mine's the one with the yo-yo, blue crystal, and original-style sonic screwdriver in the pockets.

  97. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Oh my ... Doom and Half-Life

    I see I've not only been won on the Doom reference, but the equally appropiate Half-Life ref as well.

    I propose renaming the LHC site as "Black Mesa"!

  98. Flakey

    Can I be............

    .like Kurt Russell in Stargate and go through first? I might find some remotely arab-looking tribe with some remotely arab-looking really fit totty and I wouldnt come back :)

  99. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Greetings from dimension 24

    Hello Earthlings,

    Kind of you to leave a rift open, your scientists know exactly what they're doing....haha....NOT!

    We popped through for bonfire night because that's when we thought you'd all go up in smoke.

    It's ok.... we're on holiday...so we can hang about a bit..

    In our future history (temporal mechanics anyone?) LHC stands for Large Hole (in the) Cosmos ;)

  100. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    maybe?

    Aliens will turn up and be like "wtf you doing?" before scientists destroy the world

  101. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    You earthbound beings amuse me

    Why is it that you always wish to define the unknown in terms of your greatest fears?

    What has happened to the adventurer in you?

  102. This post has been deleted by its author

  103. Robert Hill
    Terminator

    @Flugal

    MANY THANKS for your Tejinder Virdee discussion...it makes sense. However, I have also heard a counter arguement that while these collisions and microblack holes occur in the normal course of events here on Earth, they are usually formed MOVING at very high rates of speed when they are formed, whereas they will be confined in the LHC and at much lower velocities.

    I have heard that the statistical probability is that a micro-blackhole will evaporate before it can accrue enough mass to be dangerous (thank you Hawkins radiation!). Umm, however, that is, um, er, statistically speaking, of course...and there is a minute, very minute chance...that it might not...

    Perhaps LHC-type devices are an evolutionary test for advanced intelligence - you either are smart enough to do it outside the gravity field of your home planet, or you are not...

  104. Anonymous Coward
    Heart

    Hawking radiation

    Thanks for getting into it Lewis. We have no conception of Plank time/space, alternative realities, etc. We hope that when reality changes you will be on the forefront and the register will be the first to know.

  105. Stephen Huyssoon
    WTF?

    Once Upon Time In A Galaxy In A Galaxy

    You know, you guys...

    Seriously, there is something here to take notice of.

    1. An interdimensional event showing, following sufficient analysis of observation, existence and characteristics of previously unknown dimensionality is not really something worthy of only jokes.

    2. Use of the term "dimension" is very loose. Of interest in this case is an undiscovered aspect of matter or energy or simply existence of a nature not seen in other aspects of matter or energy or existence. Something new.

    3. Thinking that our universe will end during such an event is presupposing an incredible instability. Do you think perhaps were our universe that unstable that we would have come thus far? Ok, so this view is subjective. Nevertheless, this is incredibly pessimistic. Do any of your really think our universe was formed as an accident?

    4. That you can think of and discuss this subject as a joke displays a shallowness of thought and a closed state of mind. I get so tired of this. Shoot yourself.

  106. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    many worlds

    "Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it. "

    What an amazing world we live in when some one can say that and it's no big deal.

  107. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Alien

    Invasion of the Hermitian Hilbert Space Operators!

    Yes!! Imminent Transdimensional Invasion threatens. Upgrade to plan CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and implement shoot-to-kill police state immediately. Then strike a NuLabour/NuOverlords deal. Win/Win situation.

    As for the rest of us, anyone who judges himself able to understand modern QFT and assorted mathematical tooling enough to be able to even judge the likelihood of an LHC event killing the planet or whatnot can probably understand http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381 And thus the case rests.

    > Considering that black holes are known to have a magnetic force

    > The unknowns and improbables are possible but no one know the odds.

    > Hey, our maths says there's an infinite number of universes out there, and they all really exist!

    > Perhaps LHC-type devices are an evolutionary test for advanced intelligence

    > Since Everything is made of Photons, this pinpoint sized object thus contained, well, Everything.

    LOL NO!! This is like listening to a badly tuned radio.

    Ok, enough of this, I'm going home.

  108. bexley

    the first sensible thing i've read all week

    he problem I have #

    By Valerion Posted Friday 6th November 2009 14:22 GMT

    Is the whole "recreating the conditions just after the big bang" thing.

    The last time that happened, as I recall, the entire Universe sort of came into being and proceeded to grow continually outward at, presumably, the speed of light.

    Seems to me that starting off another one of those in Switzerland could be considered A Bad Thing.

  109. Astarte

    Progress

    Keep banging the rocks together chaps - look what happened when that was tried a long long time ago. We'll end up with either income tax and rice pudding or expose a portal through which unstoppable hoards of Auditors come marching through. However I'm sure Gordon and (Her Ladyship) Alyx can deal with it - until the next time.

  110. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    RE: Well @Lee Dowling

    "If we could, we'd be witnessing Big Bangs and self-created black hole all over the cosmos and they would be our primary indicator of "intelligent life""

    .....

    Maybe your exactly correct. Science is only just beginning to be able to detect these 'black holes' (black spheres in my book)... what IF these ARE exactly what you describe - life that was a little more advanced than us that pissed about with this exact same experiment?

    Now I bet you wish you had not thought that up!

  111. Rattus Rattus
    Thumb Up

    Fascinating, Captain

    Yes, yes, Gordon Freeman, I for one welcome etc etc but honestly, this stuff is fascinating and really important. Basic research without an eye to the commercial implications, poking the fabric of space just to see what happens. I am really looking forward to the flipping of the Big Red Switch, and can't wait to see what kind of results start to appear once they start gethering data and analysing it.

    I think the most disappointing result possible would be if nothing at all unusual is seen or even hinted at. After all, the most exciting phrase in science isn't "Eureka!" but rather "That's funny..."

  112. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Stephen King would be proud

    Just fill in your own scary thoughts at this moment. Personally in circumstances like these I prefer to have my back close against several thousand meters of granite. I know they could come in from that direction but I also keep a sheet of aluminium foil handy just in case.

  113. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    @Stephen Huyssoon

    "Do any of your really think our universe was formed as an accident?"

    Ehmm.. are you saying that you believe that our universe was formed according to some plan made by a great space monkey?

    For all you fools that wanna hide your head in the sand till time stops or what ever.The only way to find out if your idiotic fears are correct is to go ahead on turn the damn thing on.

    If the world come to an end. So what.

    If we open a gateway to another dimension? Cool but so what they will be as tired of us as we are of them. Besides its a tiny tiny tiny speck for a fraction of a second. I doubt anyone in this other dimension would notice it.

    CERN! Rock on.

  114. fajensen
    Grenade

    More advanced civilisations

    Maybe the gamma ray burst we see are just the firings of whatever passes for alien naval guns!

  115. Wilko
    Thumb Up

    I know it's been done, but..

    They're waiting for you Gordon...in the test chamber.

  116. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    I was under the impression

    That a dimension was just an infinite line stretching out from whatever point you care to move, with pairs of perpendicular dimensions forming a plane and three perpendicular dimensions forming a space and four perpendicular dimensions forming space-time. Something like Back to the Future or Star Trek or... well, the general concept of what could happen with time travel requires more of a time-plane rather than a time-dimension as you can have parallel streams of time.

    So openning a gateway to another dimension wouldn't really do anything. The matter's already there and pretty much anything non-intelligent that can move into human-intelligible spacetime already has in the same way that a cube of water will flow out into any direction along which it's not constrained.

    An odd sensation, I guess, would be shifting yourself along the time axis at a rate greater or slower than 1second per second. I mean imagine the huge problems you'd have with, say, heat buildup. Your body's pumping out all this heat and it can only drain away to the outside universe at, say, half the speed it normally does. Yes there's less flowing in but you've still got a load of stored energy inside you being released through muscle action.

    Anyway, pan-dimensional thinking is incredibly difficult and tedious and provides no significant benefit unless you can jump sideways along an unknown dimension into a voided parallel-to-ours universe or space between universes, move unimpeded along axes parallel to "our" 3 and then jump back to our own. Still doesn't let you beat the speed of light, but it might just make spacetravel a whole lot safer if we didn't have to worry about radiation or asteroids!

    Anyway, this beer's working nicely so I'm off to bed.

  117. Dr.

    Don't use gold nuclei in the LHC!

    I liked the comments by Lee Dowling (6. XI, 13:18 GMT), saying that "There might be a big bang at the LHC in the conventional sense... but we aren't going to destroy the world accidentally," and by Peter McAuley (6. XI, 14:09 GMT), pointing out that we would need "18 orders of magnitude more energy..." And even then, with the Planck energy of E* = 1.956 x 10 exp. 16 erg or 2.177 x 10 exp. -5 grams or about 10 exp. 20 TeV in each particle, one would only create a few John Archibald Wheeler's "undressed electrons" or vacuum density fluctuations which are being formed everywhere spontaneously and vanish in Planck's unit of time T* = 1.616 x 10 exp. -33 second (cf. Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, "Gravitation," Freeman, .San Francisco, 1973, pp. 1190-1194). Even if the cosmon was such a vacuum density fluctuation, one would need 10 exp. 61 of them for the present mass of our universe, about 2 x 10 exp. 56 grams. Without inflation, the LHC, with an energy of up to 7 TeV, may at best produce a Higgs boson, not the higgsino or the particle for the unification of three basic forces of nature at 10 exp. 16 TeV (Alan H. Guth, "The Inflationary Universe," Perseus, Reading, MA, 1997, pp. 254-269). However, he also states that "a patch of false vacuum 10 exp. -26 cm across is all the recipe demands" for the creation of a "pocket universe" which, disconnecting from our universe "in roughly 10 exp. -37 seconds," would leave behind a black hole which would evaporate (by the Hawking process of pair creation) "in roughly 10 exp. -23 seconds, releasing the energy of a 500 kiloton nuclear explosion," about 17 times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb in 1945. If the LHC could produce such a patch of false vacuum (and if the inflationary theory is right, as to increasing the initial energy many times by the inflation), then the prediction by Lee Dowling as to merely a local explosion would come true. Something like that also appears to be predicted by Michael Nostradamus ("Les Propheties...", Rosne, Lyon, 1557, verse IX-44) in Geneva, when a transmutation of elements is done there ("Saturn will transmute gold to iron") by that opposite to a positive ray (RAYON POSITIF, abbreviated to RAY POZ), followed by "extermination of all", in Old French: IX-44: "Migrez, migrez de Geneue trestous, Saturne d'or en fer se changera, Le contre RAYPOZ exterminera tous, Avant l'advent le Ciel signes fera." Mentioning Saturn connects this prediction to his verse IV-67 which specifies that this will happen in "the air very parched, by a long trajectory", when Saturn and Mars will be equally fiery", at the time when they are in a conjunction; "by secret fires, a great place will be scorched.". The next time when the closest conjunction of Saturn and Mars will take place is July 31, 2010 at 0 degrees 0 minutes 50 arc seconds in Libra, almost ideally on the cusp of Virgo and Libra (N. F. Michelsen, "The American Ephemeris," Astro, San Diego, CA, 1982, cf. positions of planets in July 2010). Nostradamus wrote, in Old French: IV-67: L'an que Saturne & Mars egaux combust, L'air fort seiche, long trajection; Par feux secrets, d'ardeur grand lieu adust, Peu pluye, vent chaud, guerres, incursions." The two verses are also connected by the equal numerology of their numbers (since 9 + 4 + 4 = 17 and 4 + 6 + 7 = 17; this method is often used by Nostradamus to connect verses with a similar content, about the same event). But the disaster is predicted to be only local, since one will be able to escape just by leaving Geneva in time (IX-44). Up to now now the rays of positively charged protons accelerated in opposite directions ("Le contre RAY POZ") and lead nuclei have been used in accelerators and planned for the LHC, but gold nuclei have been used to make new superheavy elements. According to the prophecy IX-44, all one has to do in order to avoid this fairly local disaster in Geneva is to avoid using gold as a target as well as accelerated gold nuclei!

  118. Toe
    Thumb Up

    Cool

    This is extremely COOL I want to see what transcends as the result of this impressive experiment!!

  119. Pete 43
    Alien

    Awsome

    How much can they lend us?

  120. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Peas

    Apparently, the beings on the other side of the portal know we are trying to open the gate and will help us test it, by first sending through a half bag of frozen peas. Higgs Bosons are peas.

  121. BOBSta
    FAIL

    Cost

    So the LHC cost how many hundreds of millions of euros?

    "[...]such that each stream has as much energy in it as a normal car going at 1000mph. Secondly, the beams are arranged in such fashion that the two streams swerve through one another occasionally, which naturally results in huge numbers of incredibly violent head-on collisions.[...]"

    Why not just buy a couple of Citroen C4's and accelerate them towards each other? Must be cheaper and easier than LHC. If nothing else, we'd be rid of two more piles of subsidised Franco-autocrap!

    And ignoring the opening a dimensional portal concerns, what about the possibility of creating our own big-bang and suddenly being on the outside of a rapidly expanding universe of our own making?

    Questions that need answers, methinks!

  122. phix8
    Alien

    CHTHULHU RETURNS

    it is HE who will come through the gateway ... when the stars are right.

  123. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Accident or what?

    "Do any of your really think our universe was formed as an accident?"

    Yes.

    Because the other option is that somebody made it and that somebody is, by definition, a god.

    When you have

    a) improbable option and

    b) fantasy option,

    I choose a). It at least has some contact into reality.

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