Ok, maybe that's a bit melodramatic. But CERN scientists in Switzerland are getting ready to start using a newly built Large Hadron Collider (Hadron, not Hardon) to seek things like the Higgs particle, a god particle, quite possibly the unifying Star Wars like force, and create miniature Black Holes.
While this is interesting and you can probably find 100s of articles about both the Hadron Collider, and its porn counterpart the Hardon Collider, I am more interested in the safety message from CERN itself.
To summarize:
- The Large Hadron Collider can reach energies that no other particle accelerator has reached before.
- The cosmic collisions found in space are much more powerful than the ones being created in the accelerator.
- The total energy in the beam is that of a 400 ton train traveling at 150km/h like the French TGV.
- Supposedly, only a very small portion of this beam will actually be used in a single collision, less than that of a person swatting a swarm of mosquitos.
- In theory "microscopic" black holes could be created in this process. They will be so fleeting that only their decay will be detectable.
- Scientists may also create "strangelets" which repel normal matter and will decay on their own.
Okay, so for those of us that don't really understand physics, this seems like a fair safety message. The scientists say they know what "could" happen and it is so small in energy it is not a threat. But since they don't know for sure if Higg's particles exist, and some of these conclusions are theoretical/hypothetical, will that safety message really help you sleep at night?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Update: "So long, and thanks for all the fish."
(This is syndicated from my own site that nobody looks at)