Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More

[dirtyp]

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can't afford their mortgages and in some places now they can't even afford rice.None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole that will spell the end of the Earth - and maybe the universe.Scientists say that is very unlikely - though they have done some checking just to make sure.The world's physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.
http://waronyou.blogspot.com/2008/04/asking-judge-to-save-world-and-maybe.html

[EvilNight]

This is sensationalist bunk.

The reactions that will happen inside this particle accelerator happen in Earth's upper atmosphere (and at FAR higher energy levels) all day, every day - every time high energy rays from space strike the Earth.

Nothing will happen inside that device that hasn't happened in nature (and on Earth) countless times before. This lawsuit and the media fear mongering around it is utter nonsense that only gains traction because of a grossly uneducated public. If mini-black holes didn't instantly evaporate, and if strangelets actually do exist and can form as a result of these reactions, we wouldn't be here now having this conversation.

I'd be more worried that they want to run the machine at full power without proper low power testing and slowly ramping it up first (due to being behind schedule). If something goes wrong we'll have a multi-billion dollar toaster on our hands instead of a working scientific instrument. That would be a real waste.

Save your energy and worry for our out-of-control government. That's a real threat.

[dirtyp]

Im worried that it will be used as a weapon. I dont know science as well as you do but I dont trust govt with untested technology. Someone at work today said we should bomb Iran. Imagine that person with their own mini black hole maker.