Sorry to waste Y2K bandwidth on this, but if anyone here knows, I'd be grateful. Don't know how to begin searching for this. All I know is some folks on the east coast have built an underground lab to see if they can recreate how the universe came about, and that there's a minute chance that this could, in fact, DESTROY the universe. Would love to study these guys minds, but that's another story.

Thanks for any help.

-- astonished (bythedanger@of.ego), November 07, 1999

Answers

Astonished, Maybe you are talking about the Brookhaven Laboratories on Long Island, NY. They have (I think) a particle accelerator and were working on something else that might be what you are talking about. Hope this helps.

-- Debi (LongTimeLurker@shy.com), November 07, 1999.

astonished,

Relax, take a deep breath and put this in perspective:

It wouldn't "destroy the universe," it would only destroy the immediate neighborhood of this small galaxy. There are LOTS of black holes out there; this would be just one more. It's nothing the universe hasn't dealt with before, just a bump-in-the-road, really.

I swear, you pollies get so worked up about nothing...

-- Dr. Polymorph (Iknowmore@thanyoudo.com), November 07, 1999.

Dr. Polymorph,

WRONG!!

Astonished is referring to a mini re-creation of the Big Bang. They don't know how this thing expanded from nothing, and theoretically it could re-create the entire universe.

astonished... search for "Big-Bang laboratory" and you'll probably hit something. Good luck.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), November 07, 1999.

Debi is correct, it's Brookhaven:

mini big-bang

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), November 07, 1999.

sort of like a bunch of kids. they thought of it, so they have to try it--even though they know there may be some serious unexpected consequences. i just want to know--what is the official "intended" scientific purpose of the machine (we know the potential unintended consequences). i haven't seen it yet in the articles i have read.

-- tt (cuddluppy@yahoo.com), November 07, 1999.

So, what else is new? IIRC it was Teller (Edmund not the other half of Penn and) who when told of the H bomb formula (fusion not fission) said: "Of course we have to build it. It is so elegant."

-- drac (greenspanisgod@frb.giov), November 07, 1999.

For openers--

ORNL physicist works at re-creation of matter not seen since "Big Bang"

Relativisti c Heavy Ion Collider

Of all the programs under way at the laboratory, Kirk considers the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) program as the most important. Expected to be fully operational by 1999, RHIC will enable physicists to study heavy-ion collisions for ions as large as gold, and thus "investigate the physics of the Big Bang. We are hoping to re-create the quark-gluon plasma that existed one microsecond after the creation of the universe."

The Physics of PHENIX and RHIC

Among the major goals of PHENIX and the other RHIC experiments are: investigating the QCD prediction of a deconfined high-energy-density phase of matter, searching for the quark gluon plasma (QGP), exploring the physics of this new state of matter.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), November 07, 1999.

For the nth time,

BNL RHIC comment

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), November 07, 1999.

There were at least 4 threads about the RHIC project a few months ago. If memory serves, most of them had the word "Doomsday" in the thread title (due to the London Herald article calling this the Doomsday machine). Check the archives, possibly under the miscellaneous category, for hundreds of previous posts on this topic.

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), November 07, 1999.

I'm about the burst radius of a hand grenade from BNL, so at least I'll go quickly. My MREs will be sucking into a massive black hole, giving the entire universe gas as it collapses and forms a new universe.

-- Mr.Mike (mikeabn@aol.com), November 07, 1999.

Thank you all. This is exactly what I was looking for. I knew you kind folks would come through.

Happy trails, Lori

-- astonished (bythedanger@of.ego), November 08, 1999.