Jodo Kast Jan 11, 2009
As part of my research, I'm reading a book about the LHC. One part of the book has made me pause - "The LHC dipoles comprise 7600 Km superconducting cable that weights 1200 tons. Each cable is made up of 36 strands of superconducting wire while each strand houses 6300 superconducting filaments of Niobium-titanium (NbTi) - the total length of the filaments is astronomical, more than 10 AU."
10 AU of anything is staggering. This means there are around 1,000,000,000 miles of wire in the LHC. Not quite enough to lasso Pluto, but you could probably catch one of the moons of Saturn. (An AU is the Sun-Earth distance, which is averages at 93,000,000 miles.)
An interesting thing about the LHC is the fear it invokes in the general public. Not one person I work with knows what the LHC is, but they are worried about that thing that makes black holes. People gladly use the devices that exist because of scientists (cell phones, computers, TVs) but fear the work they do at the same time. I would argue that you have a greater chance of swallowing your cell phone than a black hole swallowing you.
Most think black holes just suck everything in, which is not true at all. For instance, ask someone if the Sun turned into a black hole, how long would it take the Earth to fall in? Tell them that it takes light about 8 minutes to reach the Earth... see if they can figure it out!