Thread: Fight to save Earth from tiny black hole

Fight to save Earth from tiny black hole

April 2, 2008

A GIANT particle accelerator that mimics the effects of the Big Bang could destroy all life on Earth by sucking it into a black hole, a lawsuit claims.

Walter Wagner, who runs a botanical garden on Hawaii's Big Island, and Luis Sancho of Spain have asked for an injunction to prevent the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) starting up its Large Hadron Collider.

The accelerator, which will be the world's most powerful particle smasher, is due to begin hurling protons at each other at its base outside Geneva this northern summer.

Physicists hope the device, which has taken 14 years and $8.7 billion to build, will provide clues to the universe's origins by mimicking its condition one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

Although CERN scientists have already ruled out the possibility in a safety review, Mr Wagner and Mr Sancho say there is at least a small chance of annihilation of the planet and perhaps the universe.

They claim CERN has under-played the chances the collider could produce a tiny black hole or a particle called a "killer strangelet" that would turn the Earth into a shrunken lump of "strange matter".

Their lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Honolulu, seeks a temporary restraining order banning CERN from finishing the accelerator until it has produced a safety report and an environmental assessment.

A spokesman for the research centre said the claims were "nonsense". "Much higher energy collisions than those at the [collider] occur in nature, because cosmic ray particles zip around our galaxy at close to the speed of light," he said.

"The moon has undergone such collisions for 5 billion years without being devoured by a ravenous black hole."

Telegraph, London

http://www.smh.com.au/news/science/figh ... 10851.html

I would have to look up these concerns because it would be a shame to stand in the way of such phenomenal scientific progress. This kind of research could lead to "transporter beams" and other amazing technology. However, having done research for the Superconducting Supercollider, I can say it is true we have never worked at such a scale and the thought of a miscalculation leading to unthinkable disaster is valid.
Jeez - didn't these scientists learn a lesson from Dr. Octopus?