Image from The Big Picture.
I’m going to grab tons of beer tonight and drink them while I pawn noobs in DOTA. Why? Because the end of the world is near. Maybe.
From the New York Times:
In the lawsuit, filed in March in Honolulu district court, Walter Wagner, a retired radiation safety expert who lives in Hawaii, and Luis Sancho, a Spanish science writer, contended that the Large Hadron Collider could create microscopic black holes that could wind up eating the Earth, or other dangerous particles known as strangelets — a sort of contagious dead matter — or so-called magnetic monopoles, which could catalyze the destruction of ordinary matter.
Pictures of the Large Hadron Collider here.
Wikipedia entry here.
An interesting question that has been asked - how much power should we give scientists to do the things they want to do if they themselves may not fully understand the consequences even though their theoretical calculations seem to indicate everything is safe.
Think the shit that happened in Spiderman 2. I also vaguely remember there was a similar storyline in the Marvel universe where a scientist tried to build a window into the beginning of time and actually caused the destruction of the universe.
Oh well … Only in the movies, comics and books. Right?
Right?
JTankers | 09-Sep-08 at 10:08 pm | Permalink
Safety of the Large Hadron Collider is unknown, the experiment is unprecedented in nature and planetary risk has not been conclusively excluded.
The safety opposition alleges CERN is misrepresenting the certainty of safety and did not properly address[9] compelling opposition arguments by credible senior scientists including visiting professor of Physics Dr. Otto Rössler[1][2] and Physics PHD Dr. Rainer Plaga[3].
Planetary safety arguments include disputed cosmic ray arguments[1][2][3] and refuted Hawking Radiation[4][5].
Earlier in 2008 CERN acknowledged that if micro black holes were created[6] by head-on collissions in particle colliders some would travel too slowly to escape Earth while cosmic ray created stable micro black holes would not be stopped by Earth.[7] This safety argument flaw was as discovered by former Cosmic Ray Researcher, California Math Champion and Nuclear Safety Officer Walter L. Wagner.[8]
[1] wissensnavigator.com/documnets/OTTOROESSLERMINIBLACKHOLE.pdf Abraham-Solution to Schwarzschild Metric Implies That CERN Miniblack Holes Pose a Planetary Risk, Prof. Dr. Otto Rossler (2008)
[2] wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf A Rational and Moral and Spiritual Dilemma - Otto E. Rössler Safety Counter Arguments (2008)
[3] arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v1.pdf On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders - Rainer Plaga Rebuttal (2008)
[4] xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0304042 Do black holes radiate?. Dr. Adam Helfer (2003)
[5] arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0607137, On the existence of black hole evaporationyet again, Prof. VA Belinski (2006)
[6] cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29199 The case for mini black holes, CERN Courier (2004)
[7] http://www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10 LHC Safety Assessment Group, LHC Safety Procedures, 16 Mar 2008
[8] lhcdefense.org/lhc_legal.php US Federal Lawsuit Filings - Walter L. Wagner (2008)
[9] ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/risk/2006/00000026/00000001/art00006 Scientific Peer Review to Inform Regulatory Decision Making: A European Perspective (2006)