Large Hadron Collider - End Of The World?

[FlippyD]

You may be correct on the advances this new technology will bring, but it will have to be a "Let's wait and see what happens," issue.  And, while I do agree that public transportation will help, there are quite a few people who aren't in a major city where this kind of technology could be implemented.  It would help in places like New York City, but where I'm from, public transportation is at a minimum as it is and these new technologies wouldn't help us in any way.  Also, where do they plan on putting the rail for that thing?  I guess they could put it in the air, which has been done in a few airports I've been to, but it doesn't seem practical...or safe in a city.

Well, as it stands currently we've already invented the electric car. It's only a matter of time until the peak oil madness finally hits the car manufacturers and politics hard enough to shake it loose from their claws. An electric car could be implemented in areas outside of cities, with better public transportation in more urban areas. Furthermore, said electric cars could be charged in the electric railway stations (or switch from a conventional engine to a magnetic car similar to the vehicles seen in Minority Report.)

Moving on, the LHC has a circumference of approximately 17 miles. Playing on the safe side, if a hypothetical new form of transportation formed around the technology of the LHC, I'm going to say we could make 20 mile long railways. Chicago, my home town, uses elevated electrical trains (the L and Metra accordingly.) Chicago is about 220 square miles, with about 10+ different railways. 220/10= 22, so each electrical railway already covers about as much distance as the LHC already. Now make that technology more cost effective (and free of homeless people on the South-shore Red line) and you'll see a decrease in the number of motorists clogging up Lake Shore Drive (LSD) on the way to work. This railway would, hypothetically (and optimistically) be easier/cheaper to implement in many areas as well.

And let's not even talk about the magnetic railways that cut through Japan. (Because now I'm horribly off-topic.)

As for the "let's wait and see" approach, while it is true you don't know what you'll get, at the end of the day you will get something. And that something is usually a big step in terms of technology. Besides, I can't see something on the calibur of silly putty being invented because of research at the LHC.