Doomsday fears spark lawsuit

[IDemo]

MSNBC -- Posted: Thursday, March 27, 2008 11:00 AM by Alan Boyle
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx

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?

[IDemo]

1. I hate it when globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter destroy the planet

[Hugabear]

2. Truth be told, they don't REALLY know

Saying there's "no chance" of a catastrophe occurring is flat out false - the chances might be remote, but they do exist. The fact of the matter is that stuff like this has never been attempted before - we've never even observed a microscopic black hole, let alone attempted to create one before, so any statements made about their safety are based solely on scientific theory.

On the plus side, if this microscopic black hole really does spiral out of control and gobble us all up, chances are we'll be gone before we even knew what happened.

Then again, we could be hurled into another dimension. Who knows...

[IDemo]

7. At least it will put a merciful end to the primary campaign season

that, or extend it eternally...

[Kutjara]

3. So a few credulous readers of apocalyptic sci-fi...

...have trouble separating fantasy from reality, and it's off to court for a big time-wasting trial.

If I remember correctly, a similar thing happened when they built the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven, NY, a few years back. Every Chicken-Little and doomsayer on the Eastern seaboard was whining to the courts about the end of the world, when the black holes gobble us all up. And yet here we still are.

[Hugabear]

5. In all fairness, one of the goals IS to create miniature black holes

I read up on this sort of stuff fairly regularly. One of the things they want to do is to create microscopic sized black holes and study their properties. The theory is that these black holes would only exist for a few millionths of a second, and not pose any real threat.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020323/bob9.asp

<snip>
Undaunted by the long-shot status of their ideas, some researchers are now gearing up to record signs of tiny black holes, initially by searching for the distinctive particle showers that they presume any miniature black holes in the atmosphere would trigger.

If those searches fail, however, physicists at a powerful new collider expected to begin operating in 2007 would be next in line to claim the prize for being first to observe a black hole. In this case, tiny black holes would form as an aftermath of superhigh-energy, head-on collisions between protons. Some theorists think that black holes might even show up on the first day of operation of the so-called Large Hadron Collider now under construction near Geneva. But if the exotic objects don't appear then or later, even their absence may teach scientists important lessons about the nature of the universe.
<snip>

[Kutjara]

6. There's a big difference, however, between "mini black holes"...

...and the planet-gobbling variety. The mini ones are created by enormous transitory pressures that compress tiny volumes of space into even tinier volumes. Once the pressures are removed, the black holes dissipate. The whole process is over in a few nanoseconds. Stable black holes, on the other hand, require the presense of a mass large enough to undergo gravitational collapse to less than the Schwarzchild Radius. I doubt if any manmade particle accelerator will be able to conjure up a star in the near future.

For a mini black hole to "run away" and eat the world, there would have to be some way for the black hole to accrete colossal amounts of energy to itself, even when the collider that created it is switched off. Quite where such energy is meant to magically come from will be difficult for the plaintiffs to prove in court.

[Hugabear]

8. The biggest problem is that this is all based on theory

We've been wrong before.

I agree, the chances of anything happening are very remote.

[Kutjara]

9. I think the thing the layman needs to keep in mind...

...is that it's very likely such mini black holes are all around us, billions of them being born and dying every second in every cubic meter of space, a natural byproduct of the quantum processes that underpin reality. All the CERN people will be doing is creating a few mini black holes intentionally, in a way that makes them easier to study.

[DCKit]

11. "And yet here we still are." But are we? Really?

Where is Samantha Carter when you need her to 'splain this shit?

[Kutjara]

12. In the Pegasus Galaxy, under about five miles...

...of water, last I heard.

[lapfog_1]

4. Lawsuits???

"Stop whining about it, the plans have been on file over at Alpha Centauri for the last few hundred years!"

[gulfcoastliberal]

10. Considering that black holes have never been observed anywhere, I wouldn't worry.

Doubtful they exist at all, really.

[Ordr]

13. It is well-worth the infinitesimal risk.

And, if something did go wrong, we'd never even know. :)

[Dead_Parrot]

14. I do worry about these places, slightly

Those who know me will know I have a background in astrophysics: the chances of making a "permanent" black hole are almost infinitesimal, but given we're betting the whole biosphere - people included - on it, I'd rather we at least did it on the moon.

The coldest place in the entire universe was in in Helsinki. Call me a Luddite, but that worries me.