British scientists building a super laser to tear apart the fabric of space

harpsichoid

harpsichoid

Telegraph
Daily Mail (Who seem suprisingly enthusiastic)

A good idea or a bad one? I would certainly like to know what space is made of, and it can't be any more dangerous than the LHC, surely.

It does make me think of this though:

death%20star.jpg
 
That scientific experiment is FULLY OPERATIONAL!!! Seriously, a laser of this size and power could take care of that pesky "moon" thing once and for all ;-)

Interesting articles. Looking forward to reading more, and from a more technical standpoint. Either way, BIG HONKING LASER!!! The local power companys will love this project! Is it wrong that I really want to see someone melt the ice on Europa with this?

Oh, and the LHC? Not actually all that dangerous. Though that didn't annoy me nearly as much as the "einstein was wrong!!!" nonsense that cropped up after the FTL neutron results. Speaking of, the next set of data should be available at the end of the month!
 
Okay, this is really, really bad. I mean, you know what happens whenever these God-playing SOB scientists tear a hole in the fabric of the universe and open a portal into He--

Well, Sam can better explain what we're in for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAchA32z2zM


But seriously. Cool news, harpsy. Is it reason for optimism that the powers-that-be are actually and still willing to spend on pure science these days? On the other hand, maybe they could use that doe to bail out Greece. :P
 
Sounds cool, but can they attach it to a shark's head?

From one of the articles:

Contrary to popular belief, a vacuum is not devoid of material but in fact fizzles with tiny mysterious particles that pop in and out of existence, but at speeds so fast that no one has been able to prove they exist.
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If no one has been able to prove that they exist, why are we treating it like fact that they exist? Sometime, physicists completely toss out the Scientific Method and rely almost entirely on the type of conjecture that belongs in a Philosophy class. Ridiculous.
 
richy said:
On the other hand, maybe they could use that doe to bail out Greece. :P
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I saw a brilliant news report on the BBC the other day that said 'I'm not sure if anyone really cares about the situation in Greece, but at least we have the money to stop it spreading to the countries around them.'
 
Cracker Funk said:
If no one has been able to prove that they exist, why are we treating it like fact that they exist? Sometime, physicists completely toss out the Scientific Method and rely almost entirely on the type of conjecture that belongs in a Philosophy class. Ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Better question, why do think cooking them with their Big Honking Laser (which they really, really ought to name it!) is going to make them stick around long enough to measure? There's some science in there, but the articles didn't really get into it. I'm actually really surprised The Register hasn't done an article on it. They usually do a good job of keeping it techy enough, but casual enough that you don't have to be an actual astrophysicist to understand (and they're based in the UK; usually they're right on top of this kind of stuff).

I do know there is measurable friction in space; it's not a pure vaccuum. You'd also have to get RATHER far away from any star to be unaffected by gravity. There's some cool stuff being done to measure and understand gravity these days, including some practial applications of quantam theory (observing the HELL out of interference particles to compensate for the Heisenburg Principle).

Either way, until we can read some more of the science behind this, it boils down to one thing:

BIG HONKING LASER!!!!!
 
Cracker Funk said:
If no one has been able to prove that they exist, why are we treating it like fact that they exist? Sometime, physicists completely toss out the Scientific Method and rely almost entirely on the type of conjecture that belongs in a Philosophy class. Ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Actually work in optics does prove photos do pop in and out out of existence. This can be seen by sending photons through a vacuum and measuring the interference from the photons that appear and disappear.

The article is most likely alluding to more exotic particles that have not yet been tested for in a vacuum. The articles seem like they were written by people trying to dumb down an already dumbed down press release.

If you watched/participated in the online Q&A with Brian Green, Leonard Susskind, and Saul Perlmutter last week at worldsciencefestival the experiment was mentioned and they gave a better description. Basically the theory that the higgs field imparts mass as particles pass trough it also theorizes if you hit a point in space with enough energy you can essentially knock off a chunk of space, and measure the remnants as they decay much like when you smash together atoms and record the various bits of debris.

Now if the experiment will actually result in such a thing i don't know, but either way it will be interesting. If current testing at CERN and then this new experiment keep supporting the standard model, then alot of physics has to go back to the drawing board.
 
jmoschner said:
Actually work in optics does prove photos do pop in and out out of existence. This can be seen by sending photons through a vacuum and measuring the interference from the photons that appear and disappear.

The article is most likely alluding to more exotic particles that have not yet been tested for in a vacuum. The articles seem like they were written by people trying to dumb down an already dumbed down press release.
Click to expand...

That sounds reasonable enough. :)
 
jmoschner said:
The articles seem like they were written by people trying to dumb down an already dumbed down press release.
Click to expand...

Science journalism is in a really sad state these days. I've seen articles that were so badly mangled they actually reported the opposite of what the actual research discovered. No wonder people are so skeptical about scientific discoveries...
 
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