Comments on: The LHC shakes things up — the nuts, that is

By: Nuts

Nuts — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:23:01 +0000

The LHC’s Magnetic force can rip apart a city bus. That is per CERN’s website and that is before considerations of being an electromagnet which can multiply its magnetic force up to 75x depending on the electrical current that runs through this massive halo. Its magnetic force is 10,000 times the gravitational force of the planet and once again that is per CERN. How much of a magnetic force could manipulate or initiate seismic activity that would cause an earthquake? Is that a fair question?

By: skullsinthestars

skullsinthestars — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:39:58 +0000

David: Actually, that's a fair question. I'm sure that the LHC planners would have had an earthquake risk assessment done for the project. You might try contacting directly some of the bloggers who are more 'plugged in' to the LHC research, like the folks over at Cosmic Variance. If they don't know the answer, they could probably contact someone who would. I hope you read my P.P.S. above, incidentally, about the "nuts"!

By: David Carroll

David Carroll — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:35:00 +0000

Actually I was one of those “nuts” who Googled “LHC + Earthquakes”, and ran into this site. It never occurred to me that the the boys and girls at CERN would cause quakes. I wanted to know about the odds of any seismic activity damaging the LHC.

Due to the enormous amount of “noise” created by all of these nut-bars worrying about the bosons wreaking the planet, I can’t seem to find the answer to my question.

Reminds me of all of the idle speculation of wide-spread catastrophe surrounding the breaking of the sound barrier, not to mention “Teller’s Super” creating black holes!

By: skullsinthestars

skullsinthestars — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:22:04 +0000

PD: Thanks. These sort of refutations are important, not only because baseless fear-mongering hurts science in general but, as Blake pointed out, sometimes this fear-mongering can kill.

By: Personal Demon

Personal Demon — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:16:40 +0000

Very nice smack-down!

By: LHC Powers On, 4 Earthquakes Hit | Bwana.org

LHC Powers On, 4 Earthquakes Hit | Bwana.org — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:18:58 +0000

[...] would say yes, but I haven’t come to that conclusion. It’s official, I’m being called a nut for even bringing this up. That’s quite alright, I’ve been called [...]

By: skullsinthestars

skullsinthestars — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:56:54 +0000

Blake wrote: “So, I pulled some data from the Advanced National Seismic System catalog and ran it through a Python script.”

Nicely done! You’ve made me want to go learn Python again, a task that I’ve started numerous times but never quite followed through with.

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:16:09 +0000

Er, that should read, “more days have 4 quakes than any other number of quakes”.

By: Blake Stacey

Blake Stacey — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:15:07 +0000

So, I pulled some data from the Advanced National Seismic System catalog and ran it through a Python script. As it happens, if you count the number of quakes-above-5.0 per day, more days have 4 quakes than any other. Picking a day at random, the probability is about 55% that it will have four or more quakes of category 5+. (My dataset started at 1 January 2002 and ends at 8 September 2008, safely before the LHC turned on.)