On hadron colliders, dark matter and black holes

[töff]

We are restricted to moving in the 2D world of the earth's surface.

A good example of the closed-in-on-itself dimension. The surface of a globe is finite but boundless! That's mathematically awesome.

[torstan]

It certainly is

[töff]

... but somewhat of a pain in the ass for cartographers.

Maybe we should all upgrade to cosmography.

[Karro]

... but somewhat of a pain in the ass for cartographers.

Maybe we should all upgrade to cosmography.

What software program do you use for multi-dimensional, non-perceivable cosmography?

[RPMiller]

This has been an extremely interesting conversation especially for me because of the fact that I have been studying quite a lot of philosophy this year through my degree program. I am currently in a social ethics class where we have been going through the history of philosophy and discussing each of the great philosophers and their philosophies in fairly good detail.

Interestingly enough, just last night we were discussing the "removal" of God from Philosophy starting around Machiavelli's time and moving into the modern philosophers. One of the big points we discussed was exactly what Torstan stated above--Science really doesn't care about God in the sense of trying to prove/disprove a supreme beings existence, nor should it. It is simply looking for understanding of the universe in a new way, which is really no different than the ancient philosophers. Thanks to the Method that Descartes brought to the forefront of modern thought, science has grown by leaps and bounds. I won't go into the extremely long discussion of philosophy as that is for an entirely different thread, and would take me days to type.

I do want to comment on this quote from Torstan that really gave me pause:

I cannot be both a Buddhist and a Christian.

This is actually something of a logical fallacy in the minds of philosophers. It makes a lot of sense to a Western mindset, but becomes a problem from Eastern perspective. The best and greatest example that I can give is Gandhi. He worshiped and believed equally in Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. This is due in large part to Hinduism itself. Hindus see all the religions as just ways for Vishnu to communicate to us; therefore, they have an innate tolerance for other religions from a purely spiritual context. Politically, not so much. My point here is that there is quite a bit of overlap between all the religions and one could accept them all, and even practice them all if they were so inclined. The real issue becomes one of dogma. Those that are purely of one faith are very likely to declare a multi-religious observer as having no faith, or being wishy washy especially if that individual comes from a more fundamentalist perspective of their particular religion.

So now back to the subject of this thread... torstan, what is the latest news on the collider or on your research?

[töff]

What software program do you use for multi-dimensional, non-perceivable cosmography?

nDSmax ...

[torstan]

@Toff: That made me laugh
@RPMiller: That's an interesting point, and one I had not appreciated. I guess I'd assumed that all religions were against pan-religious beliefs. I'm pretty sure Christianity would be against someone saying they were both Christian and Hindu, but I'm certainly not a theologian.

I'll update the work stuff shortly (sorry, just flown back to the UK for a visa run and to give a talk at CERN so all a little hectic).

[Karro]

@RPMiller: That's an interesting point, and one I had not appreciated. I guess I'd assumed that all religions were against pan-religious beliefs. I'm pretty sure Christianity would be against someone saying they were both Christian and Hindu, but I'm certainly not a theologian.

From a purely dogmatic, institutional perspective, most (though not all) religions are against pan-religiosity. That being said, many people are not overly dogmatic (just read an interesting stat on the changing face of religiosity in the U.S., and how people are increasingly less dogmatic), and some religions are not institutional, so there's a lot of potential for gray-area and overlap.

Also... just got Toff's joke. A bit slow, here...

[torstan]

First off, LHC news.

So it seems that the LHC will be turning on with a lot less fanfare in November at the lower energy of 10TeV (tera-electron volts or 1 million, million eV or a a thousand billion eV). That will give the experimentalists enough particles and interactions to do proper calibration of the ring and the detectors. It's an open question as to when it will get up to the design energy. Could be a while as it seems that a lot of work would have to be done to replaced some elements. However this should produce enough data to properly run in the full infrastructure including the data grid that was created to handle the output. So we wait for November and hope that no further delays occur.

[Ascension]

I'm just waiting for the data to get crunched so that we know those results. At least I know when it's going to get fired back up. Good luck, bro.