I’ve long been of the opinion that should some human being cause the destruction of the Earth, that person will probably utter the word “Oops.” Right before we all die.
Part of the Large Hadron Collider.
So it’s with no small amount of interest that I’ve been following stories about the concerns of some people the the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is due to begin operation soon, might cause the destruction of the planet (or even the universe) if it’s switched on. Now, most people in the physics world seem to be fairly comfortable with the risk. (Which makes sense, really, or else they probably won’t switch it on later this month). But I decided to go ahead and, armed with vague recollections of college physics and lots of Discover magazine reading on airplanes, determine the risks for myself.
The first step in trying to ascertain the risk of the Large Hadron Collider should probably be figuring out exactly what it is and what it does. So here we go.
The Large Hadron Collider is a giant particle accelerator located about 100 meters underground near Geneva, Switzerland. The basic idea behind a particle accelerator is exactly what it sounds like. Using electric fields, the accelerator speeds particles through vacuum tubes over and over again while the particles pick up speed. (Magnets are used to control the direction the particles go.)
Once the particles are going as fast as they need to be, the physicists in charge crash the particles into other particles or into fixed targets to see what happens. At this point, the particles are moving so fast and with so much energy that they collide with enormous force, generating very high temperatures and energy releases. The collisions cause other particles to be created, and in so doing help physicists to get a better grip on what exactly happens in high-energy environments, such as those that existed closer to the beginning of the universe. Also, by having experimental behavior of particles in extreme conditions, physicists get the chance to see if they did their math right, or if they have to discreetly erase incriminating portions of their doctoral theses.
So far, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of worry here. After all, there’s lots of particle accelerators in operation right now, and as of the time of this writing, the Earth remains undestroyed. So what’s the concern about the LHC?
The primary concern seems to be with the fact that, well, the LHC is the biggest particle accelerator that’s ever been built. Meaning that it will be accelerating particles to extremely high energy states and then blowing them up. Such collisions could possibly lead to the formation of microscopic black holes, and the fear of some critics is that those black holes could be caught by the Earth’s gravitational pull before they can escape. The consequence, then, could be that such a black hole or holes could begin to attract the matter of the Earth into it, leading to Earth’s eventual collapse into the black hole’s event horizon.
This would be bad.
Fortunately, the odds of this happening appear to be quite small. First off, most of the standard models of physics appear to predict that the energy is probably insufficient to create a black hole in the first place–it’s just on the edge of possibility, but not very likely. Even if one is created, according to a paper written by Stephen Hawking way back in 1974, such a black hole would basically evaporate the instant it was created. I’m inclined to trust Stephen Hawking’s math abilities, so that’s good enough for me.
The author’s poorly photoshopped conception of the destruction of the Earth by a black hole.
But in case it isn’t for you, here’s another comforting piece of evidence. Microscopic black holes are, in fact, a naturally occurring phenomenon. They’re produced by collisions of particles with high energy cosmic rays. Indeed, such cosmic rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere at higher energies than the LHC on a fairly regular basis. If such collisions produced microscopic black holes that could consume the Earth, we probably would have noticed by now. Additionally, there are lots of objects in the universe, such as neutron stars, which are much, much denser than the Earth. So dense that their gravity would easily capture any microscopic black holes near it. If such black holes posed a danger, we should be seeing evidence of those black holes destroying neutron stars and other large, dense objects. However, no such evidence exists.
Alright, so we can safely rule out the possibility of a microscopic black hole destroying the Earth. Are there any other safety concerns about the LHC?
Well, yeah. But the problem with most of the arguments about the LHC’s safety is that most of the concerns can easily be dismissed by the fact that cosmic rays, which hit the Earth with higher energies than will be produced by the LHC, haven’t caused any of them to happen. The only other argument worth mentioning is that some of expressed concerns that the LHC could produce strangelets.
Strangelets are hypothetical pieces of matter which are composed of equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. (Quarks, for those of you stretching your memories back to when Daryl Hannah was talking about them in Roxanne, are the building blocks of protons and neutrons.) Under normal circumstances, protons and neutrons are composed of just up and down quarks. Some physicists hypothesize that if strangelets could be created and came into contact with regular matter, they would cause that matter to turn into “strange matter” (kind of like how contact with ice-9 in Cat’s Cradle turned regular water into ice-9). Such a conversion would pretty much wipe out all life on Earth.
Fortunately, if this were much of a concern with particle accelerators, we should have seen it happen already, and so far, so good. Additionally, as it turns out, strangelets are less likely to appear the higher the energy of the collision. Given that the LHC will produce much higher energies than other particle accelerators, we can safely rule this problem out, too.
The bottom line here appears to be that the odds of the LHC doing anything to destroy the Earth are pretty small. Maybe not zero, but pretty small. As physicist Princeton physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed joked, the nature of quantum mechanics is such that there’s an infinitestimally small chance of just about anything happening. So he supposes that it’s possible that when it’s switched on “[t]he Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
I’m pretty sure we can handle dragons.
I read your article accurately repeats what a few seasoned scientists leading the LHC project want you to believe.
Do you know who Dr. Otto E. Rossler is?
Professor Rossler is famous for his contributions to theoretical sciences as noted on Wikipedia and Scholarpedia http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/User:Rossler
Professor Rossler argues that a micro black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider would destroy the planet in 50 months to 50 years. He also explains why the current safety arguments are invalid. http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf
Read Professor Rossler’s work and determine for yourself if planetary destruction is conceivable, Dr. Rossler believes destruction may be inevitable.
I agree with Dr. Rossler and the many other PHD level theoretical scientists who believe that planetary destruction is highly conceivable and the LHC is an unknown gamble. Curiosity killed the cat who did not look before he leaped.
LHCFacts.org
I read Dr. Rossler’s work in preparation for this article, and I did not agree with his suppositions. He mathematically mischaracterizes Hawking radiation, does not address the fact that quantum mechanics also predicts the decay of microblackholes, and does not address the infinitestimally small chance of a microblackhole getting close enough to the first initial protons (while avoiding electrons) it would need to increase its mass in the unlikely event that an mbh remained stable. Note that in Rossler’s papers, this event is treated as a throwaway–it would just happen. But he doesn’t explain why it’s likely. That’s a big hole in his theory.
I might add, too, that his argument about the exponential growth of an mbh is based on (1) a reconception of relativity that has not been experimentally verified and to my knowledge has not been accepted by most physicists and (2) a theory of self-organization of black holes for which he does not provide any mathematic or observational justification.
Additionally, the exponential growth theory as described in his work does not provide, in my mind, a satisfactory explanation of why a black hole which grows as described would not be constrained in size and eventually repelled by larger groupings of electrons around atoms and orphaned electrons left as a result of the mbh’s absorption of positively charged quarks.
In short, Dr. Rossler is asking us to completely re-think our notions of physics without providing sufficient mathematic or experimental support. While Hawking radiation has not been directly observed, its math is generally agreed to comport with current theory, and experimental verification of other phenomona related to the Hawking effect provides stronger implication that it exists.
Man’s technology has exceeded his grasp. - ‘The World is not Enough’
Zealous Nobel Prize hungry Physicists are racing each other and stopping at nothing to try to find the supposed ‘Higgs Boson’(aka God) Particle, among others, and are risking nothing less than the annihilation of the Earth and all Life in endless experiments hoping to prove a theory when urgent tangible problems face the planet. The European Organization for Nuclear Research(CERN) new Large Hadron Collider(LHC) is the world’s most powerful atom smasher that will soon be firing subatomic particles at each other at nearly the speed of light to create Miniature Big Bangs producing Micro Black Holes, Strangelets and other potentially cataclysmic phenomena.
CERN physicist Alvaro De Rújula in the BBC LHC documentary, ‘The Six Billion Dollar Experiment’, incredibly admits quote, “Will we find the Higgs particle at the LHC? That, of course, is the question. And the answer is, science is what we do when we don’t know what we’re doing.” And CERN spokesmodel Brian Cox follows with this stunning quote, “the LHC is certainly, by far, the biggest jump into the unknown.”
The CERN-LHC website Mainpage itself states quote: “There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions,…” Again, this is because they truly don’t know what’s going to happen. They are experimenting with forces they don’t understand to obtain results they can’t comprehend. If you think like most people do that ‘They must know what they’re doing’ you could not be more wrong. Some people think the same thing about medical Dr.s but consider this by way of comparison and example from JAMA: “A recent Institute of Medicine report quoted rates estimating that medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people a year in US hospitals.” The second part of the quote reads “…but what’s for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator,…” A molecularly changed or Black Hole consumed Lifeless World? The end of the quote reads “…as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe.” These experiments to date have so far produced infinitely more questions than answers but there isn’t a particle physicist alive who wouldn’t gladly trade his life to glimpse the “God particle”, and sacrifice the rest of us with him.
This quote from National Geographic exactly sums this “science” up: “That’s the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out.”
Find out more about that “stuff” below;
http://www.SaneScience.org/
http://www.LHCFacts.org
http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/anon1.htm
http://www.lhcdefense.org/
http://www.lhcconcerns.com
Popular Mechanics - “World’s Biggest Science Project Aims to Unlock ‘God Particle’” - http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/extreme_machines/4216588.html“
Who cares if these scientists spend their time finding the god particle or any other particle for that matter.
(* No pun intended *)
We have far more pressing issues at hand, world food shortage, natural distasters, Global Warming, terrorism.
To spend so much money and time and resources into a project which has no bearing with the general populations lives is utter stupidity!
Why not put this money into the community making it a better place to live hmm?
im so scared
…if we die..i love everyone xxxxxxxxx
[...] reality, the odds of that happening are pretty infinitesimal and at least one well-known physicist is looking forward of seeing the LHC prove his theories [...]
I wonder what would happen if you put a large object in and turn it on, like a toaster or a person
Jesus H. Christ People get out of your house more if you think the end of time is approaching.
I think it would be more of an “O, SHIT!” moment, not an “oops” moment LOLZ