i hope someday we construct a collider that spans the entire circumference of the earth. But we’d probably have to build one that spans the circumference of the moon first, and then maybe mars, since the oceans are going to be a bit of a doozie to work around that we don’t have the technology for, whereas the interior of a collider is supposed to be evacuated, so, the moon almost kinda already handles that for us. heat might be an issue of course, but if we can figure out thermal radiator panels that can dump the heat straight into space, maybe we could pull it off…
mars would address the heat issues, but those dust storms are no joke and the dust itself is microscopic toxic/caustic razors and it’ll try to get in everywhere and ruin fine instruments it touches. Moon dust is also really bad but there’s no wind to kick it up on the moon obviously…
but damn. DAMN. imagine the fucking science we could get done with a LUNAR-SCALE PARTICLE COLLIDER!!!
Hear me out okay. hits blunt Dyson ring. Maybe we start building it out between earth and Mars. We dig a big ass hole into Mars core and use some kind of laser technology to focus radiation into it perhaps “jump starting” the core. Or maybe we use some kind of cable and gymbal system to run a hard wire into it. hits bluntThen meanwhile we’re crashing comets and shit into it to get us some oceans and atmosphere, badabing badaboom we got earth 2.0
Well check this out: if it’s big enough and can collect enough solar energy, it can be a self-powered gargantuan electromagnet and CREATE a magnetosphere for Mars itself. And the moon has a higher silver content than earth, which a) won’t tarnish in the vacuum of space and b) is more conductive than copper or gold!
Aluminum alloy structures, silver circuitry, we could build this thing without sending ANY of it’s raw materials from earth. It’s all already up there waiting for us… … Some assembly required :p
There’s probably opportunity to do some really large colliders in space, for much cheaper than on any celestial body.
But then, people are having a really hard time imagining the fucking science we could get done with a lunar-scale particle collider. That’s why the merely 100km one isn’t getting any money.
The Moon’s daytime is half a month long and can reach 120 C so we’d need some pretty powerful heat shielding. And there’s no ozone layer to protect the electronics from radiation, and I’m pretty sure the Moon orbits outside of Earth’s magnetosphere. And the shielding used for such a project could also be used to fix climate change here (and terraform Venus later) with orbital parasols. And whatever unimaginable technology we’d need for such an ambitious project may as well be used to run a grid of electromagnets and power lines across Mars to give it a magnetic field
Most proposals for moon colonies are either built underground or covered up with a thick layer of regolith for both of the reasons you mentioned. It’s very likely a collider would also be built underground for the same reasons. Digging a many-miles-long tunnel on the moon with the awful properties of moon regolith to deal with would have its own set of challenges though.
Yeah. I hear NASA and India are planning to send 3d-printer robots to lava caves to seal them off, cover/get rid of all moon dust and build permanent bases there (but as of now the priority seems to be researching the polar water-ice and using moon rocks to study what the early solar system’s geology was like)
Now I’m imagining placing a ring of gigantic dyson-sphere powered magnets in an intergalactic void to create the final and ultimate supercollider, the size of a galactic supercluster
that would legitimately be so fucking cool, but I think at those scales we’re actually encroaching on things that truly are physically impossible. If it takes light entire geological eras to move through such a system, any hope of maintaining physical integrity throughout its length is … exceedingly unlikely. Like, at ranges THAT vast, pretty sure the expansion of spacetime itself would rip it open…
Does it actually have to maintain physical integrity as a single structure? If it’s not got a vacuum chamber due to relying on the ambient vacuum, then each section of magnets need not physically touch, so the individual components need only use some of the energy from their power source to actively steer themselves into formation rather than rely on material strength to hold together.
At the energies involved, it’s akin to a bacteria interfering with a supersonic goods train. The only bit that needs shielding is the detector systems, and that’s not THAT hard to do in space. At least if you’re at the point of building a space based accelerator.
Sorry, are we talking about Chomsky suggesting that Ukrainians being left alive would be a good thing? Because that got him in some headlines but it’s still not remotely what he is best known for.
Put this outside a good number of pubs in the UK and you’ll make an absolute killing. It would have to offer a £1 toastie, of course, but the principle is the same.
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