Philip Ball: When physicists dismiss as a myth the charge that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will trigger a process that might destroy the world, they are closer to the truth than they realize. In common parlance, a myth has come to denote a story that isn't true, but in fact it is a story that is 'psychologically true'. A myth is not a false story but an archetypal one. And the archetype for this current bout of scare stories is obvious: the Faust myth, in which an hubristic individual unleashes forces he or she cannot control. The LHC is due to be switched on this summer at CERN, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva. But some fear that the energies released by colliding subatomic particles will produce miniature black holes that will engulf the world. Walter Wagner, a resident of Hawaii, has even filed a lawsuit to prevent the experiments. As high-energy physicist Joseph Kapusta from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis points out1, such dire forebodings have accompanied the advent of other particle accelerators, including the Bevalac in California and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York. In the latter case, newspapers seized on the notion of an apocalyptic event" just as the facility went into operation, Britain's Sunday Times ran a story under the headline The Final Experiment? Swallowing Earth: The Bevalac, an amalgamation of two existing accelerators at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was created in the 1970s to investigate extremely dense states of nuclear matter" stuff made from the compact nuclei of atoms.

In 1974, two physicists proposed that there might be a hitherto unseen and ultra-dense form of nuclear matter more stable than ordinary nuclei, which they rather alarmingly dubbed 'abnormal'. If so, there was a small chance that even the tiniest lump of it could keep growing indefinitely by engulfing ordinary matter. Calculations implied that a speck of this pathological form of abnormal nuclear matter made in the Bevalac would sink to the centre of Earth and then expand to swallow the planet, all in a matter of seconds.

View: Full Article | Source: Nature.com

I'm up for the adventure. Hell, return to the Cosmos earlier than expected. Comme ci, comme ca. Ca m'est egal. Whatever! It's all the same to me...

The Big Bang Theory last night stated it perfectly while discussing this... "No guts, no glory!" - Rajnesh

Seems like the lawsuit supporters are the ones that are afraid of everything that might happen no matter what the chances of it are. It's not like these guys just built this huge machine and flip on a switch then grab a beer to sit back on a lawn chair to watch.

just as Kratos have said, these physicist would be on there toes watching and recording. It's quite dangerous working with these type of machines.

yeah yeah yeah turn it on, no guts no glory, an all that, lets be gods for the day

That would really put a stint in those pesky 2012 theories



I say crank it on! Sounds like a more pleasant fate than most others... although the "how would you like to die" thread's got some good ideas too

Many tip-top scientists had the very same worry before they tested the first atomic bomb. They thought the chain reaction of splitting the atom, once started, would keep going and explode the entire planet. Even Robert Oppenheimer was worried about this -- but it never happened.

(Unless it did happen, and our entire existence now is a death illusion).

Oh crap, if this is heaven, I want a refund. I say let er rip!

Im with silver thong on this one 50 months of life left here and Im going to start a world wide party to end all!. Thats the way man thinks right! If you cant @#$# it blow it up! what a world ,what a world. Wheres the chezk`s and balances? the a-bomb did destroy a few hundred thousand folks remember. We are now going to pull the plug on our great little space ship earth and return to star stuff! 49 years 31 days and 24 hours ,counting! Get me a seat at milliways front row so I get a great view of the final Kapoww! Remember space is really ,really big no telling where we may end up DONTEATUS

Good News Every Body, those pesky scientists are wrong and it will not destroy the earth. Also I will have my black hole generator done tomorrow and ready for the first test, see there is no way there silly machine can destroy the earth before mine does.

Just kidding. Every time there is the unknown there will be people that fear it. Flip the switch every thing I have read on this it seems rather unlikely that it will destroy the earth. At most maybe the building it is in but even that is slim.

Did you considered this being HELL?

Well if we go with John Titor's claims that CERN would discover the basis for time travel some time around 2001. This event did not occur. An article about miniature black holes being created by CERN (a recurring theme, also ascribed to Fermilab and Brookhaven at various times) was taken by some to be evidence of this claim, but these events did not occur either.

This new Hadron Collider could be what he was reffering to.

Let's split the difference (no pun intended) -- this is Purgatory.

Im looking forowrd to reading about the interesting discoveries this thing will make. Will they realease all the details to the public?

What could they do with big bang matter anyway? Maybe they will find a new energy source.

Despite never actually coming across doubts and fears untill now about the out come of the experiment my friend and I would joke about how there would be a massive implosion of some sort and there would be a big chunk missing in europe. Also coincidently enough a hole puncture that which would result with the earth sucking itself into nothing.

I think it's pretty dangerous crack. The game Half-Life comes to mind. Of course things would be much weirder if something like Half-Life did happen, well of course there's nothing weirder than the story line for that game.

I think the biggest issue is that the same Theory/Law that makes it possible they will create a black hole is the one that says it will dematerialize to fast to have any effect on anything.

Yes but what if?

I don't think it's right for any egg heads to decide my life and fate any more than some crazy religious/superstitious person.

I don't want to lose my life for someone's curiosity anymore than someones religious fanaticism . neither has the right.

Im with you Lt Ripley,its going to be a BIG BANG I bet.even the little black hole they talk about could swallow up the earth in just 50 months .So we better start planning our UNEXPLAINED party now

Yeah. The initial mathematics suggested a small probability - (much) less than 0.0000001% that the atmosphere would "ignite" in the chain reaction... But Oppenheimer and the others accepted the risk as sufficiently "improbable." But every time a nuke goes off, the probability is still there.

1st Edit: In fact, Los Alamos scientists actually waged bets on what would happen...

Logic dictates, that if you live long enough, something will kill you.
I say fire that Big Boy up, just for the hell of it!

I wonder what Mid, and Hazzard thinks of the big bang that could happen? DONTEATUS

Not too much, from MID's end, D...



Imbeharry said...




The mathematics did suggest it, as he indicated.

But we must realize what that particular probability means...

That's a one in a billion probability. Essentially, no probability at all.
For every billion times you do it...one time we might have a catastrophic chain reaction.


Think of it this way: what's your probability of dying?

It's 100%, no (and that's 100 billion times greater than some catastrophe happening from detonating a nuclear bomb)?

Let's try it!

Fortunately, nature produces particles of 10^20 ev, many orders of magnitude than mankind will ever be able to produce. These are known as GRBs, Gamma Ray Bursts, possibly more energy output than the rest of the universe, but probably not. We are probably just in the beam of a "jet" formed by some processes of creation and destruction. GRBs last only a few seconds in full gamma ray glory. Needless to say, GRBs do not damage the universe.

~~~Cebrakon, amateur physicist (like my hero, Prince Louis de Broglie)