Hypercube

True, but even if you eliminate 99.9% of all stars from the equation, the result will still be a massive number.

Why is it that some people are still skeptical that extraterrestrial life is more than science fiction? I mean in a sense, it is impossible that it doesn't exist. To prove my point, let's assume (even though this is not always the case) that each of the universes 100 billion galaxies has 200 billion stars. Now, there are two possibilities for each of these stars; either they have planets with life or they don't. That means that the odds of every star in the universe besides the Sun having no planets with life on them is; 2 ^ (200 000 000 000 stars X 100 000 000 000 galaxies) : 1 There is no calculator that can even do that calculation. In my opinion that basically proves the existance of life beyond the earth.

Don't worry, string theory is not wrong.

That may be true, but it still can't be denied that the common analogy is misunderstood at best, since as I said, a 3D object cannot "sit" on a 3D surface, or a 4D surface for that matter. Shouldn't that mean that a stars gravity would warp all the space around it evenly in a kind of sphere?

How can gravity itself be affected by gravity? The other three fundamental forces are not affected by themselves, or if they are it is news to me. The fact of the matter is that a graviton is gravity, to say that gravity affects gravity would be counter-intuitive at best.

That's why I said; "assuming it exists"

You're right, I shouldn't have said that is was wrong, just incomplete, as you say.

It occured to me that the common view that nothing can escape from beyond a black hole's event horizon is actually not entirely true, or at least is not necessarily true. The first thing that can obviously escape from a black hole (assuming they exist) are gravitons, I don't think an explanation is needed for that one. The second thing that would have no problem escaping from a black hole (again, assuming they exist) is negative matter, since negative matter is repelled by gravity, it would actually be impossible for it to even reach the event horizon of a black hole; is it just me or would what we think of as a black hole seem indistinguishable from a white hole to anything with a negative mass? And vice-versa.

I was reading a book about General Relativity the other day, and something occured to me; there may be a serious flaw in Einstein's reasonings. What jumped out at me is that although the common analogy of a bowling ball making a dent in a trampoline is a convienient way of grasping the concept of General Relativity, the flaw lyes in the fact that that analogy deals with a 3D ball (the sun) and a 2D surface (spacetime?) but this view is not applicable in the real world because spacetime is not two dimensional, it is three dimensional. This obviously means that there is a flaw in the common understanding of General Relativity, because that would mean that a 3D object would be sitting on a 3D surface, and this is a mathematical and physical impossibility. The only way for an object to "sit" on a surface is for that surface to be one less dimension that the object. So how can General Relativity be correct?

Yeah, he did try to stop particle accelerators before, and lost. Notice how Graviphoton dodged my question about why they are worried at all if his figures or 33 TeV are correct.

If that is the case then why the hell are they going to court!?!? If the Tevatron really did produce particle collisions with that kind of energy than why are we worried about the Large Hadron Collider whose energy is only 14 Tev? Why is the LHC hailed as the most powerful particle accelerator ever made? I'll tell you why, because this whole thing you are citing about the Tevatron is a load of crap. P.S. I'm on bad astronomy right now looking at the letter you copied, nice try though.

He got that from BadAstronomy.com What a reliable source, take my advice Graviphoton, stop making yourself look like a fool, and just admit that you are wrong.

Graviphoton, the Tevatron is nowhere near large enough to produce 33 TeV on each beam, not even the Large Hadron Collider is that powerful. I don't know where you are getting these figures, but I looked for this page you cited, and it doesn't exist. Or if it does it certainly doesn't claim that the Tevatron can produce energies of 33 TeV, but if that is the case then we know for sure that the LHC is safe don't we? since it only produces 14 TeV. Again Graviphoton, you are pulling things out of the aether.

That's where Graviphoton is pulling all of this crap, anyone who would actually think that particle accelerators could produce anything dangerous but cosmic rays couldn't should seriously think about choosing a different branch of science to study.

Graviphoton, what the hell are you talking about? 10^33 TeV at Fermilab? Not even the most powerful cosmic rays known to science have that much energy, and anyone who suggests otherwise seriously needs to go back to school. As for your white hole argument, there is not one single shred of evidence be it direct or indirect that they exist. Give up Graviphoton, you're just making yourself sound like an idiot.

Thank you Klaynos and Fanghur. Sorry Graviphoton, you can't win them all. Then again, I guess quantum theory says there is a measurable probability that any event will occur, so who knows, and in the case of this probability, who cares?

Look Graviphoton, I don't care what Wagner says. The fact of the matter is that if the LHC can produce micro black holes, then cosmic rays, whose energy makes the LHC look like nothing more than a hand held flashlight, certainly can make them as well. Saying that this is not true would be like saying that a flashlight battery has enough power to turn a light on, but a nuclear fusion reactor doesn't. World-renowned physicists such as Michio Kaku all say that these "killer black hole" scenarios are science fiction at best. But physics aside, do you honestly think that if the scientists working on the LHC thought that there was even a small possibility of destroying the Earth that they would turn the machine on? Of course they wouldn't, who cares about wasted money when the alternative is the death of everyone on Earth. Someone please back me up on this.

That's how I picture the time dilation effect too, but I don't think that they are linearly inversely proportional, that's just an easy way to think about it.

Exactly, I just don't understand why the courts even accepted this case, because as I said, there are only four possible scenarios. 1) The LHC does have the energy to produce micro black holes, but they evaporate before they can suck any matter in. 2) The LHC does not have the energy to produce micro black holes. 3) Hawking is wrong about black holes evaporating, and the universe is teeming with black holes due to cosmic ray collisions 4) Even cosmic rays do not have the energy needed to produce micro black holes. Since the Earth is still here, clearly scenario three is not correct, and the other three all prove that the LHC is perfectly safe.

Tankers, it doesn't matter how many protons are used, it's the amount of energy the particles have when they collide that matters. Most cosmic rays have about a thousand times more energy than the LHC's proton beams have, some even millions of times more energy. And the Earth is not what I was referring to when I talked about cosmic ray collisions, I was referring to cosmic rays colliding with each other, which no doubt happens quite frequently. If two particles slam into each other head on with energies of roughly 1000 000 000 TeV (10^20 eV) it will create conditions much more likely to produce things like strangelets than two beams of protons each with energies of only about 14 TeV each won't it? Using beams of particles only makes it much easier to detect the new particles produced, the same particles would be produced if they only accelerated one proton around the accelerator, it would just be virtually impossible to detect it.

These people who think that the LHC is gonna destroy the Earth are clearly not using any sort of common sense whatsoever. Every day, the Earth is impacted with countless cosmic rays which are thousands of times more powerful than anything we are going to create in the LHC, and even if they think that any black holes or strangelets which are created by cosmic rays have enough velocity to escape the Earth's gravity, so what? Let's for argument's sake assume that Stephen Hawking is wrong about black holes evaporating, and that any micro-black holes formed by cosmic rays are perfectly stable. If that were the case then the universe should be teeming with hundreds of trillions of black holes (or strangelets) zooming around growing in mass due to colliding cosmic rays, that is clearly not the case. Based on this fact, either Stephen Hawking is correct and black holes do indeed evaporate, or cosmic rays (and therefore the Large Hadron Collider) are not capable of producing anything dangerous. The Large Hadron Collider is perfectly safe folks. This next point I'm not so sure about, but let's say that a stable micro-black hole was produced. Based on its mass, I would think that its gravity would be so small that it would not be able to compete with the strengths of electromagnetism and the strong force, which it would have to do if it was going to suck in any matter. Is this assumption correct?

I was just wondering, let's say NASA were to install a large electromagnet inside the floor of the ISS, if the astronauts were to wear some kind of magnetic materials in their shoes and around their wrists and torso, wouldn't that theoretically be able to perfectly mimic gravity? Since the electromagnet would be under the floor not the floor itself, the astronauts would simply be pulled towards the floor, but not get stuck to it. This would obviously affect their lower bodies more than their upper bodies since their feet would be closer to the floor, but still; I can't think of a reason that this shouldn't be able to work, at least to some degree.

I recently learned in physics class that in an electromagnetic field, the magnetic field is always perpendicular to the electric field. But I don't under stand how that is possible, because the two fields are obviously both three dimensional. Geometry 101, it is not possible for two three dimensional entities to be truly perpendicular to each other unless there is a higher dimension involved. At best, the only way to position two 3D entities perpendicular is to have a gap in between. How then are electromagnetic fields perpendicular?

I recently thought of something; since photons travel at the speed of light they are moving 0% through time (very crudely put, I know). So what would happen if they came in contact with a powerful gravitational field? Since gravity causes time to slow down as well as velocity, wouldn't that mean that photons would travel back in time? Since they'd be moving through time slower than not at all.

I recently came up with an idea for a new type of particle accelerator that could potentially be twice as efficient as present accelerators are. Ordinary particle accelerators are circular and send two beams of particles in opposite directions around the accelerator and slam them into each other. I realized that there could potentially be a more efficient shape in which to build an accelerator than a circle; a figure eight, or at least something reminiscent of a figure eight. Even though a circle is the most efficient shape to accelerate particles in, a figure eight could be made to have two circles in them simply by drawing a half-circle on both sides of the intersection point. Now, if a particle accelerator was made like this, it would be possible to have two beams of particles travelling in opposite directions around both circles (in other words four particle beams in total) and them having all four of them collide at the same time in the intersection point of the figure-eight; twice the numbers of beams, twice the energy when they collide. The good thing about this is that if it worked, particle accelerators could be made two times smaller than they currently are while still producing the same results. There is a picture of the geneal shape of the new type of accelerator in the attachment.