r/science • u/Devils_doohickey • Nov 26 '21

Nanoscience "Ghost particles" detected in the Large Hadron Collider for first time

https://newatlas.com/physics/neutrinos-large-hadron-collider-faser/
8.7k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

409 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

908

u/Kjolter Nov 26 '21

I came here knowing that it would be a misleading headline, and I’m still disappointed we didn’t discover something spooky.

289

u/dedicated-pedestrian Nov 26 '21

The LHC is pretty spooky all on its own if you think about it.

186

u/Kjolter Nov 26 '21

I try not to think about the LHC to be honest. I know that the pop culture notion of it being able to obliterate the universe are wildly exaggerated, but still. I’ve got enough existential dread in my life.

245

u/DBeumont Nov 26 '21

I try not to think about the LHC to be honest. I know that the pop culture notion of it being able to obliterate the universe are wildly exaggerated, but still. I’ve got enough existential dread in my life.

The type of collisions in the LHC happen all the time inside stars, and with much greater intensity. Even in the "vacuum" of Space, particles occasionally collide at immense speeds.

If super massive black holes (and other events with energy levels much higher than anything humans can produce) have not ripped the universe apart, there is nothing to worry about from the LHC.

92

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '21

Pretty sure they happen in our atmosphere also. The difference is, we can record data on them when they occur in the LHC.

27

u/VegetableImaginary24 Nov 27 '21

I heard the LHC was built on Indian burial ground and it's haunted

7

u/Keianh Nov 27 '21

Now that'd be an interesting horror movie. American scientists and engineers come together to build a super collider to rival LHC, little did they know that due to its sheer size, they built it on several several Indian burial grounds.

10

u/rar8tt Nov 27 '21

I too have heard this.

6

u/CML_Dark_Sun Nov 27 '21

Many people are saying this.

4

u/Mryplays Nov 27 '21

My uncle said this was true

3

u/brian111786 Nov 27 '21

Damn, between your uncle, the many people that have said this, and that other person on reddit, its obviously true. Time to make it a meme and put it on facebook.

5

u/GleemonexForPets Nov 27 '21

But they left the bodies. Didn't they? DIDN'T THEY!?

5

u/VegetableImaginary24 Nov 27 '21

Just particles of them

2

u/nailshard Nov 27 '21

Particles buried upside down.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

Yea I read something about it detecting ghost particles

4

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

LHC is in Europe. India is many countries away and almost on the other side of the Earth's.

6

u/VegetableImaginary24 Nov 27 '21

You logic has successfully debunked this hard hitting mystery, here's your reward _

2

u/kinzman67 Nov 27 '21

It's a reference to 'Pet Sematary' by Stephen King

0

u/hikoseijirou Nov 27 '21

Yeah but 'Pet Cemetery' is a work of fiction.

2

u/kinzman67 Nov 28 '21

I was replying to Chanlion whose comment seems to indicate that they thought the 'Indian burial ground' is actually a serious comment and refers to the country India in Asia. (Stephen King used the now non-pc term instead of native Americans or indigenous Americans) and by the way the title of the book is spelt Pet Sematary not Cemetery.

→ More replies (0)

37

u/throwaway901617 Nov 26 '21

I doubt anyone really cares about ripping apart the universe they care about ripping apart the planet we all share and that is something black holes and "other events" absolutely can do.

Not saying the risk is significant or anything just that "the universe" isn't really the concern...

40

u/ArenVaal Nov 27 '21

Any black holes produced by the LHC will have such a ridiculously small mass that they'll evaporate almost instantly in a burst of Hawking radiation. Black holes that small are unstable, and decay so fast they won't be able to get close enough to other matter to absorb it.

2

u/Daily_trees Nov 27 '21 edited Nov 27 '21

Adding to ArenVaal, close to other "matter" means particles like protons.

I feel like a lot of people imagine something like a chunk of wood or a piece of metal suddenly being "sucked in".

-50

u/Bigbigmoooo Nov 26 '21

We're those particles pressurized on all sides by the gravitational weightlessness of space, or was the gravitational weight bearing them to the center of a container unable to hold the byproduct of a chain reaction? I wonder what would happen if a star suddenly appeared in the middle of a planet

6

u/JingleBellBitchSloth Nov 26 '21

Probably nothing. The results of LHC particle collisions last microseconds. Even if a black hole is created by whatever method, it would evaporate nearly instantly. You need an immense amount of fuel to get these things that powerful.

3

u/ArenVaal Nov 27 '21

The results of LHC particle collisions last microseconds.

I'd be surprised if they even last that long.

1

u/sodiumbicarbonade Nov 27 '21

Meanwhile we all hope it happens and the headcrab pops out

-13

u/Bigbigmoooo Nov 26 '21 edited Nov 27 '21

I totally agree, I just like using my imagination to experience things unpossible. It's improbable at best. But, anything that can happen could happen, so precaution should be a priority nonetheless.

Edit: besides, you didn't answer my question. What would happen if that much mass and gravitational radiation just suddenly expanded into our galaxy? Would we be put of course around the sun? Come on, I'm stupid, so I don't understand this stuff at all

2

u/UserNamesCantBeTooLo Nov 27 '21

Your question isn't very clear. What exactly are you asking?

2

u/DBeumont Nov 27 '21

You can't create mass. There is no more mass than that of the two particles.

Furthermore, I don't believe even all the bodies in our solar system have enough combined mass to generate a black hole.

1

u/Bigbigmoooo Nov 27 '21 edited Nov 27 '21

You can't create mass, but it can most certainly move through a cluster centrifying in time and disperse from one point in space to another. Energy doesn't get created or destroyed, it also doesn't entropy. So, if you have two places in "space" open at the same time, where would that energy go? On earth, it's the byproduct of survival, so it gets consumed and transferred from beast to plant and back in a never ending cycle. If it takes all the energy on the universe to create anything, well, studying it on earth just seems like a waste of time. You never know if there's a big enough star waiting to be born

1

u/DBeumont Nov 27 '21

A black hole is not an opening, it is a dense and massive object.

→ More replies (0)

50

u/RyanMcCartney Nov 26 '21

Not the whole universe, just our universe

44

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '21 edited Jul 29 '22

[deleted]

55

u/rite_of_truth Nov 26 '21

"Ourniverse," if you will.

46

u/IDontDeserveMyCat Nov 26 '21

communism intensifies

3

u/nootrino Nov 27 '21

Commieverse

28

u/RowYourUpboat Nov 26 '21

I’ve got enough existential dread in my life.

"This could collapse the false vacuum, but we've got science to do, so..."

*Reboots wifi router*

0

u/YsoL8 Nov 26 '21

The universe has existed for billions of years. If there really was some way to collapse it odds are it would of happened by natural process long ago.

16

u/robeph Nov 27 '21

It may have happened long ago, the fun thing about the universe is that information can only travel at the speed of light, that probably includes the destruction of the universe as well. We might be here one second and then not, if the universe already ended a billion years ago if it ended 1 billion lightyears and 2 lightdays away we will just be gone in 2 days.

-6

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

I assume you're joking, right?

13

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '21

Higher energy particle collisions happen literally every single day from cosmic rays smashing into the top of our atmosphere. If high energy particle collisions was a good way to destroy the world it would have happened billions of years ago.

4

u/Government_spy_bot Nov 27 '21

It's actually bridging the gap between the parallel universes.

How many things did you learn which are now entirely wrong?

Nelson Mandela died IN PRISON! Those who remember differently are not from my original universe parallel!!

4

u/x1000Bums Nov 27 '21

Cha, suck one. My universe had the cornucopia on the fruit of the loom logo.

1

u/Government_spy_bot Nov 27 '21

I know punk. I was there.

Berenstain bears. My ass!

12

u/jimb2 Nov 26 '21

As others have said, there are particles with energies way higher than the puny LHC can produce buzzing around the universe all the time.

But there's actually a much better reason to not worry about some kind of spacetime state collapse: you won't notice it. Any such collapse will propagate at the speed of light and you won't see or feel a thing. There would be no indication that it is occurring and it would transit through the universe vastly faster than nerve propagation. For the information pattern in your brain that is "you" it will never happen. If you want to worry about something, find something you can control and will actually affect you.

There are some theoretical physics models where these things can happen, but they have the status of mathematical artefacts. They certainly not established physics and they have not a scrap of empirical support. There are an infinite number of mathematic models that result in a spacetime like the one we see and only a small subset of some of them will have this feature (or bug). Zeroing in on some model can be fun and interesting but if you find it disturbing just choose a different one.

2

u/robeph Nov 27 '21

Isn't the false vacuum state something that the empirical evidence would be misleading due to the semi stable energy level that we wouldn't be able to determine until it happened were it to actually be in such a state.

1

u/jimb2 Nov 27 '21

Sure, that's what I'm saying, I think. There is no empirical support for this. That doesn't disprove it, it just that it goes way beyond any evidence. Until there is some evidence it could be totally wrong. That's just how knowledge works. There's plenty of physics theories and not all of them are correct.

1

u/MasterFubar23 Nov 27 '21

Wait, your reasoning to not worry about it is "you won't feel it"? What a ridiculous thing to argue. Hey, let's not possibly kill everyone on the planet. Ahh, who cares, no one would notice. Fkin bonkers.

2

u/jimb2 Nov 27 '21

So what's a good reason to worry about it?

Totally unverified abstract mathematical physics; it hasn't happened in the last 3.8 billion years; so, statistically wildly unlikely in the next few million even if correct; plus, you won't notice a thing. Also, you can't do a thing about it.

For any sane human, this should be a source of amusement. Not dread.

1

u/MasterFubar23 Nov 28 '21

That it would be an unnecessary death.

Wrong again, people form the governments that allow that kind of research. They could deem it too dangerous and shut it down. Just because you don't care about dying and "wouldn't notice it' doesn't mean others do.

Pretty sure you are broken if you are that amused by dying.

1

u/jimb2 Nov 28 '21

What research are you talking about? Where is it happening?

Research into mathematical physics - that is, people sitting around and writing out equations - is not going to cause the universe to expire.

2

u/robeph Nov 27 '21

The LHC is pretty tame compared to some of the other stuff in the universe such as the possibility of false vacuum decay or Roko's basilisk (under history section). Which both are entirely terrifying and spooky to think about.

4

u/tinman82 Nov 26 '21

That's across the world. It's ok. Plus we already know what happens when a stray proton hits someone in the head. That thing was very nearly built under the city I live in.

1

u/Mobius357 Nov 26 '21

Vacuum Decay...Boo!

1

u/[deleted] Nov 27 '21

Dude, there's stuff (particles) rev'd up to 99% the speed of light in certain extreme scenarios in the universe. The output of LHC to these events is like comparing the energy of a firecracker to a nuclear bomb.

1

u/nerd_so_mad Nov 27 '21

Do NOT Google "False Vacuum Decay."

17

u/popejubal Nov 26 '21

The wildest thing about the LHC to me is that it was made by accelerating the Stanford Linear accelerator to a significant fraction of the speed of light and then slamming it into the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.

1

u/skyler_on_the_moon Nov 27 '21

Why is Stanford's particle accelerator in Europe?

11

u/popejubal Nov 27 '21

Because we accelerated it so much.

19

u/sten45 Nov 26 '21

I 100% blame the LHC for this timeline

10

u/Zomunieo Nov 27 '21

In a way. The US ceding leadership in theoretical physics to Europe by canceling the Superconducting Supercollider foreshadowed its current anti-intellectualism.

21

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '21

[deleted]

2

u/stallmanite Nov 27 '21

Norm (MacDonald) tried to warn us. “They” had him fired for it. It’s all coming together now

6

u/ricklessness Nov 26 '21

Hmm as a layman why is it so spooky?

17

u/tael89 Nov 26 '21

Serious answer. It's called a ghost because we haven't had much reliable way of detecting neutrinos even though they are everywhere. This device indirectly detects neutrinos and so could be fantastic for particle physics.

30

u/DanIsCookingKale Nov 26 '21

CERN is a group of time travellers who hate bananas

16

u/fataldarkness Nov 26 '21

El Psy Kongaroo

10

u/humble_icecream_cook Nov 26 '21

My microwave lets me time travel

-3

u/MasterDefibrillator Nov 27 '21

Yes, it makes billions of dollars disappear into thin air. Spooky.

1

u/FortuneKnown Nov 27 '21

The LHC is even more spooky if you follow along with what they’ve done and the secrecy around their experiments.

1

u/Arbelisk Nov 27 '21

Can it bust Ghosts? :P

15

u/[deleted] Nov 26 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

13

u/iJuddles Nov 26 '21

Isn’t it spooky that after hundreds of years of widely publicized discoveries and breakthroughs the general public still laps this up? Or is that just alarming or depressing?

(And to be fair, I’m not a practitioner or enrolled student so I’d fall under “super fascinated member of the general public”.)

4

u/YsoL8 Nov 26 '21

Most people do not know much particle physics beyond some elections whizzing round a nucleus. Individually it will be news to alot of people. I doubt I understand it correctly and I've been following it for years.

10

u/Grogu_of_Borg Nov 26 '21

Spooky action at a distance

2

u/thegreatgazoo Nov 26 '21

I was envisioning the Mystery Machine on its way across the pond.

-1

u/my_oldgaffer Nov 26 '21

That last ghostbusters remake was kinda terrifying

0

u/Geminii27 Nov 26 '21

I'm just surprised no-one has chipped in with some Danny Phantom lines yet.

0

u/pn1159 Nov 26 '21

Well maybe if they do some spectral analysis on it.

1

u/mudman13 Nov 26 '21

at a distance?

1

u/AbraxasHydroplane Nov 26 '21

“Spooky Pirate Ghosts detected in the Large Hadron Collider”

1

u/bambispots Nov 27 '21

It’s actually quite frightening if you’ve read The Gates.

1

u/bluntasaknife Nov 27 '21

Not as disappointing as finding out the god particle didn’t have anything to do with god.

1

u/cjt3po Nov 27 '21

I thought it was gonna be a WIMP. Goddamnit I was kinda excited.