It's easy to be afraid of those things that we don't understand at first. But it is also an err in judgement on our part not to search for the reality of any given situation.

I always find it a bit laughable when I hear things like, 'Ir'll kill us all'. The ones who say these types of things usually have a very narrow view of the actual topic in question.

I highly doubt that if it was a danger, the top physicists in the world would be saying otherwise, much less even be able to get the funding for such an experiment.

Very well said DamienMocata, I'm not on top of physics like I'd like to be, but this post was much like reading 'A Brief History of Time'. Very understandable to the laymen.

Actually it was very nicely put. And like I said I'm no expert, so thanks for putting it all into a perspective I can understand.

I am intrigued by the Higgs field, as a framework for the standard model (although I admit that I'm personally rather quite lost in the somewhat metaphysical speculations about superstrings and M-theory).

The LHC is, in my eyes, as was probably indicated by the tone of the OP, a sex-machine par excellance and although they have had some setbacks with the project (which is what you'd expect with this level of technology) I think it will produce some interesting results in the years to come.

OK, I'll throw this one in as well, as it is a pretty good description of how the standard particle model, through the Higgs field, unites with the standard cosmological model in order to produce a coherent physical image of the entire known (or knowable) universe:

Part 2:

I personally think it's ridiculous to consider that humans could ever create a legitimate full size black hole. (I do however believe that we can create micro black holes that only lasts fractions of a second.) When our sun dies, an object that is fueled by nuclear fusion at its core, that has been going on for roughly 5 BILLION years and will go strong for roughly another 5 BILLION years, even it isn't powerful enough to create a black hole, much less mere mortals. It takes a star at least 20 times the mass of our sun to create a black hole when it dies in a supernova explosion. In a few days of this type of explosion the dying star puts out more energy then the sun will put out in its entire approximate 10 BILLION year lifetime.

To read more on this subject feel free to go here

I'm kind of a huge space nerd

See now, that's what I find fascinating. The LHC is like the most ultimate, upgraded version that exists of the old boys' game of picking things apart to find out how they work. The nerd in me finds it exciting to think that minuscle black holes can possibly be created and the processes that led up to that point may be extrapolated to space-at-large. I recently had an interesting exchange of words with somebody about this issue - and we agreed (after much bruhaha) on the notion that the sum total of energy and mass in all of the known universe equals zero.