Two scientists have filed suit to stop the Large Hadron Collider from coming online, citing fears that it could start a cascade event.
The doomsday scenarios raised by Sancho and Wagner include:
* Runaway black holes: Some physicists say the LHC could create microscopic black holes that would hang around for just a tiny fraction of a second and then decay. Sancho and Wagner worry that millions of black holes might somehow persist and coalesce into a compact gravitational mass that would draw in other matter and grow bigger. That's pure science fiction, said Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York. "These black holes don't live very long, and they have microscopic energy, and so they are harmless," he told me.
* Strangelets: Smashing protons together at high enough energies could create new combinations of quarks, the particles that protons are made of. Sancho and Wagner worry that a nasty combination known as a stable, negatively charged strangelet could theoretically turn everything it touches into strangelets as well. Kaku compared this to the ancient myth of the Midas touch. "We see no evidence of this bizarre theory," he said. "Once in a while, we trot it out to scare the pants off people. But it's not serious."
* Magnetic monopoles: One theory suggests that high-energy particle collisions might give rise to massive particles that have only one magnetic pole - only north, or only south, but not the north-south magnetism that dominates nature. Sancho and Wagner worry that such particles could be created in the LHC and start a runaway reaction that converts atoms into other forms of matter. But physicists have seen no evidence of such reactions, which should have occurred already as the result of more energetic cosmic-ray collisions in Earth's upper atmosphere.
Interesting as conjecture, but I wouldn't cancel any long-term plans just yet: these kinds of concerns have been raised before, and we're still here.
peeplj wrote:Interesting as conjecture, but I wouldn't cancel any long-term plans just yet: these kinds of concerns have been raised before, and we're still here.
--James
Speak for yourself.
Charlie Gravel
“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde
djm wrote:I don't know about all the snide answers coming back. What if they opened a door to another dimension? I just watched The Mist and ....
djm
I just finished watching The Mist last night. I think it would've been better had they not tried to explain the origin of The Mist though. Talk about far-fetched in a movie with serious subject matter.
Some people will be afraid of anything if it will get their names in the papers. Why don't they just sue to have the Sun shut off? A couple of extra black holes and some singularities could make this place fun. I'm surprised they didn't complain about caffeine while they were at it. Chicken Little lives again.
djm wrote:I don't know about all the snide answers coming back. What if they opened a door to another dimension? I just watched The Mist and ....
djm
I just finished watching The Mist last night. I think it would've been better had they not tried to explain the origin of The Mist though. Talk about far-fetched in a movie with serious subject matter.
Wasn't that a takeoff on a Steven King story? Even he doesn't try to explain where it came from. It is tough enough to transform a King story into a movie, because most of the action in his stories takes place in the minds of the characters. Trying to explain the source of the mist was just plain crazy. The book wasn't so hot either.
peeplj wrote:Interesting as conjecture, but I wouldn't cancel any long-term plans just yet: these kinds of concerns have been raised before, and we're still here.
Scientists on the Manhattan Project (Oppenheimer included, I believe) were worried that the first atomic blast would trigger a chain reaction that would set Earth's atmosphere ablaze, and exterminate all life on the planet.
I'd be more worried about that one.
fyffer wrote:Scientists on the Manhattan Project (Oppenheimer included, I believe) were worried that the first atomic blast would trigger a chain reaction that would set Earth's atmosphere ablaze, and exterminate all life on the planet.
I'd be more worried about that one.
Fortunately, mistakes like that only get made once.
Charlie Gravel
“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde
Colliders, past mass extinctions, and the thetans could explain much. (Gotta run, scientologists are after me.)
http://tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/newspage.htm Officially, the government uses the term “flap,” describing it as “a condition, a situation or a state of being, of a group of persons, characterized by an advanced degree of confusion that has not quite reached panic proportions.”
Some people will be afraid of anything if it will get their names in the papers. Why don't they just sue to have the Sun shut off? A couple of extra black holes and some singularities could make this place fun. I'm surprised they didn't complain about caffeine while they were at it. Chicken Little lives again.
Yeah, I remember seeing something in a reputable newspaper about some scientists, possibly the same two who are suing now, who thought the AGS at Brookhaven was going to create a black hole. Funny thing was, that wasn't by any means the most powerful accelerator around, nothing compared to Fermilab or CERN.
Charlie Whorfin Woods
"Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs -- as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water." -- Prof Ali Miserez.
