This thing is due to be activated in 4 days, and apparently some people believe it could destroy the world.
I don’t really know much about it. Anyone here who does?
Yes, I read a short article about it in this month’s Discover magazine. A lawsuit has been filed in Honolulu to stop the opening of the accelerator, claiming that microscopic black holes produced in the collider could merge and consume the earth. 
According to one physicist who is involved in experiments at the LHC, there isn’t anything to worry about. He stated that either black holes won’t form at all, or if they do, they’ll decay almost immediately due to Hawking radiation, the energy radiated out of a black hole. The smaller a black hole is, the more radiation emitted - these black holes would evaporate almost immediately.
The big breakthrough would be this: if black holes are formed at LHC, it could help explain the quantum theory of gravity - the only force that hasn’t really been explained by quantum mechanics.
And that’s pretty much the extent of my knowledge of it. 
it’s not really that ground breaking anymore. basically they are going to observe particles which result from the collision.
I’m no particle physicist but they say it will help to , as anita said, explain various theories.
I have come to see it as a step toward unified field theory (which is another story).
but as i said, i’m no particle phycisist. i just like watching it’s progress.
(im not worried as much as i am excited) (the end of the world would be damn exciting)
I think it’s incredibly exciting, too - not the end of the world possibility 
- but the possibility of actually creating black holes, gaining new insights on dark energy, detection of the Higgs field, possible extra dimensions of space…it’s all pretty amazing. Advocates of M theory may gain some ground if particles are gained or lost in the collisions.
11-dimensional space?
Mind-blowing. 
If they get no more than a better picture of hadron groups it would take us much closer to a unified field theory. So far, we’ve not found the primodial “particle”, and everything so far suggests there is none. All we have for sure, is 4th dimension relationships. Eleven dimensions? That is the stuff of serious migraines… :-&
Try this for an explanation…
Very nice.
http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam/Welcome.html
10…9…8…7…6…5…etc.
but apparently the actual collision is not due till next month…
It is dangerous, we don’t know anything, it could create a black hole and confuse space and time, the particles wouldn’t know where to be anymore, dimensions could get confused and everything disappears.
Science is matter self manipulating itself through relationships it creates with itself. So an item of mass-energy that manipulates another item according to regularities that are constant in that given configuration is arbitrary and invented and can change the entire configuration. If we where made differently and could manipulate the universe and reality only by manipulating macroscopic items much larger than us, then it would become a “particle” physics that manipulates macroscopic items and not microscopic. The relationship is the same, there is no physics or science, only information and logic ultimately guided by arbitrary pain/pleasure circuits.
