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Best of the forums this week: Why Earth hasn't imploded

Amongst other discussions in the forums this week, we've had a Master of Science explain why everyone's stupid for thinking the LHC will kill us all. Ignore the Daily Mail -- our forums are far more fun.

Nate Lanxon Special to CNET News
2 min read

As if all the iTunes news this week wasn't enough, our forums have been burning with musical discussion with the fury of a thousand suns. And we've been discussing suns, too, but we'll come to that later.

Downloading music
Pokeh offers up his reasons for still buying CDs in this downloading age. "I usually don't download music, I just buy the CD. No DRM and I can play the music wherever I want. I don't need to worry about backing-up my data because it's all on the CD. I'll probably start buying DRM-free music some time soon though. My real problem is I don't have a credit or debit card."

Our own particle physics-loving Gordon Freeman, David Gilson, agrees with Pokeh. "You're right about CD's, and you can sell them on if/when you don't want them any more too. My reason for using downloads is that I'm quite obsessed with getting rid of as many physical items as I can. So if I can make five shelf loads of CD's disappear into my laptop, or a thumb-drive, then that makes me really happy."

On the topic, redmozzy reminded us of Tesco Digital's plans to open a DRM-free music store. "The Tesco Value tracks will be encoded at 128Kbps :p".

The world isn't about to end (ignore the Daily Mail)
Like the rest of the world, we've been discussing the Large Hadron Collider both on The Crave Podcast and in the forum. To allay fears, here's a statistic from Buzz Out Loud. "There is a 10 to the 19th power (that's a 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000) chance of the LHC destroying the universe. To put that in context, you have a roughly 10 to the 11th power (1 in 100,000,000,000) chance of evaporating while shaving."

David '100-per-cent-more-Master-of-Science-qualifications-than-us' Gilson, offered his educated opinion. "We are all taught in school that only the most massive stars collapse into black holes, and that when our sun dies it will become a red giant, NOT a black hole. That being the case, and that the sun is overwhelmingly more massive than the earth, where do all these people think that the LHC is going to generate enough mass/energy (E=mc^2 remember!) to actually create a black hole!?"

Forum newbie ScrappyDoo took a more simplistic approach. "I tend to favour simple answers to complicated physics questions: http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com.

Get involved, stupid
If you're not debating why the world is or isn't about to end, whether Muslim Massacre should be allowed to exist, or whether Apple is doomed ("dooooooomed!") without Steve Jobs in the future, you're a loser. Get in the forums. -Nate Lanxon