Will new collider create black holes that destroy us all?:
Unfortunately, no.
So the Large Hadron Collider can not be used as a Doomsday Device...yet.
Switzerland is kind of like the North Pole isn't it?
Entries tagged as CERN
Saturday, March 29. 2008
Doomsday Lawsuit
Doomsday fears spark lawsuit:
Personally I plan on suing Fermilab and CERN for not picking up the pace. It'll make this whole Doomsday Device thing a whole lot easier.
The builders of the world's biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.
Representatives at Fermilab in Illinois and at Europe's CERN laboratory, two of the defendants in the case, say there's no chance that the Large Hadron Collider would cause such cosmic catastrophes. Nevertheless, they're bracing to defend themselves in the courtroom as well as the court of public opinion.
The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is due for startup later this year at CERN's headquarters on the French-Swiss border. It's expected to tackle some of the deepest questions in science: Is the foundation of modern physics right or wrong? What existed during the very first moment of the universe's existence? Why do some particles have mass while others don't? What is the nature of dark matter? Are there extra dimensions of space out there that we haven't yet detected?
Some folks outside the scientific mainstream have asked darker questions as well: Could the collider create mini-black holes that last long enough and get big enough to turn into a matter-sucking maelstrom? Could exotic particles known as magnetic monopoles throw atomic nuclei out of whack? Could quarks recombine into "strangelets" that would turn the whole Earth into one big lump of exotic matter?
Personally I plan on suing Fermilab and CERN for not picking up the pace. It'll make this whole Doomsday Device thing a whole lot easier.
