Posted by Michael83 on September 6, 2007, at 19:03:22
***possible triggers for the paranoid***
---Avoid if fearful the world may end---My two majors fears this year have been a large science experiment in Switzerland and the disappearance of the bees. I've been obsessing over them, consumed with fear. Now two new breakthroughs.
1. This article came out for the bees today.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/06/bee.disorder/index.htmlThey said they found part of the reason why they're dying. ANd more importantly, bees in Australia are NOT dying and are immune to this disease. (This gives scientists something to study to find a way to immunize our bees.)
2. Large Hadron Collider, Switzerland. Scientists are taking atoms, accelerating them at the 99.5% the speed of light in opposite directions and crashing them together with literally the force of a freight train, with that force confined the size of an atom (mind boggling, I know). It's been done before, many times, but they keep doing it bigger and bigger.
But I read an article on MSNBC that explained in detail more of why this experiment is safe. An MIT physics professor said, “There is a series of unlikelihoods that you’d have to string together like a Rube Goldberg invention,”
This is Rube Goldberg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg
He is basically saying you'd have to be very very creative in order to string together such a scenario. Taking and picking unrelated/unlikely/impossible events to form a disaster situation.
He also said that if something strange popped out of this machine, it would be safe. IN short, without going into detail, there seems to be safe guard after safe guard with what already is very very unlikely to happen. Risk has been described as "infinitely small."
I'm still slightly worried, but the burden of constant worry has been slowly lifting. I've been feeling much much better. I think everything is going to be ok.
poster:Michael83
thread:781229
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20070827/msgs/781229.html