Not sure who has been keeping up with the news or current events. The world's greatest scientific experiment is nearing completion and is due to begin on sept 10, 2008. I'm talking about CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This can mean leaps and bounds for the development of science, there is just one problem. There is a small chance it can destroy the planet.
The LHC is, in a nutshell, a 6 billion euro machine collaboration by more than 80 countries and many tens of thousands of scientists. If you dont know what a collider is, you basically inject particles into it, accelerate them to the speed of light, and collide them into each other. The LHC's circular track has a 27 kilometre circumference... It crosses the border between Switzerland and France 4 times throughout that circumference. Upon this huge collision the particles will of course release ridiculous amounts of energy.
"Several CERN-commissioned reports and subsequently published research papers have corroborated the safety of the LHC particle collisions. One research paper published on August 10, 2008 reaches the opposite conclusion, stating that "at the present stage of knowledge there is a definite risk from
mBHs production at colliders."
whats a mBH? a micro black hole. We are of course assured that this cant possibly end the world by the scientists and that even if it does form it will basically self-destruct from the high amounts of energy anyway so there should be nothing to worry about.
"Particle accelerators are there to break new ground -- to explore new physics. And the physics science is about to explore, is really new and exotic. Nobody has ever seen a mini black hole. In fact, no one has even the faintest idea how gravity works on very small objects."
After all this whole experiment is to delve into unknown regions of science. Supposedly a mBH will not form however, if the mBH DOES form and it happens to form in a stable manner... well there is very little we can do to prevent the end of life on earth. The mBH is so small that it will seep between all molecules and get pulled by gravity down to the center of the earth. in typical Black Hole fashion, each particle that the mBH runs into will be absorbed into it, and it will slowly grow until one day consuming the earth's core, mantle, and crust. That or I read somewhere that the earth can be consumed in less than a second.
"If you were to play back the tape of what went wrong very slowly, you would see something very peculiar. Suddenly, you would see the Earth deform. Obviously, not a very good sign. Our planet is flattened out to become a disk. Beams of radiation shoot up from where the poles used to be. And then, zzzp, the planet?s gone. Just like that. Within a split second, it would simply vanish, right before your eyes. "
graphical rendering of our planet being consumed by a black hole in its core
So yeah despite all the research going into the safety, there was a paper released 18 days ago that pretty much stated there is a definite risk of creating a black hole on earth. There have already been TONS of legal action against CERN as well as many demonstrations outside the facility to protest the LHC.
Lets hope we're all here on the 11th
sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lhc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programm...erse/vote/ <--watch video
http://www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/
http://www.exitmundi.nl/blackholes_lab.htm
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/