CERN - Amazing stuff!

[Haqa]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Heh heh! Pessimist.

I find I live longer that way...

H.

[Sweetpea]

I used to tell my Mum, the eternal optimist, that I, the eternal pessimist, would never be disappointed.

[Sweetpea]

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?

NILES LESH REVELATION: C E R N - THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE ???



Botanist sues to stop CERN hurling Earth into parallel universe
As for his worries regarding the LHC, it all seems fair enough to us. The LHC is to be run by CERN, the Euro nuclear-physics outfit famous for letting its boffins meddle with things best left alone. Tim Berners-Lee, for instance, invented the web while he was supposed to be playing particle pool at CERN. God knows what other horrors could be unleashed now that those crazy boffins have an even more powerful proton-bothering rig at their disposal.
The boffinry community, however, pooh-pooh Wagner's fears. They say that teeny black holes might be created but would vanish right away. They also say that the strangelet-custard conversion and monopole transmutation threats, if they were viable, should have occurred already due to cosmic-ray impacts in the upper atmosphere.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/lhc_cern_hawaiian_botanist_lawsuit/page2.html


Don't want to worry you or anything.....

[Haqa]

Well, if the LHC does create a black whole, what are we likely to loose? France, Switzerland... Who'd notice?

'Cept with the french gone the planet would become, on average, slightly more polite

H.

[Sweetpea]

All those mountains suddenly gone, wouldn't that send us into one holy spin, I mean more than we do already??

[Haqa]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

All those mountains suddenly gone, wouldn't that send us into one holy spin, I mean more than we do already??

Unlikely, mountains don't actually add much to the diameter of the Earth. I would be like a spinning ice skater with her arms out just closing her hands into fists... no significant difference. (In fact it would be less than that, but you get the idea).

H.

[Sweetpea]

Yeah, thanks. That's a relief.

[Haqa]

The only real down side would be we'd have to go to skiing resorts where the locals were pleasant...

H.