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Well, it’s been fun, but there’s a miniscule possibility that this will be the last post on Living: tomorrow, the world’s largest particle accelerator - built into the rock near Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border - is switched on.
If all goes well, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will help CERN physicists begin to extend their understanding of the basic building blocks of matter and mass. If things get out of shape, though, there’s a very tiny chance that they’ll create a micro black hole and finish us all off.
A sobering thought, but should we be worried?
The short answer is no, at least not yet: Wednesday sees the first full proton beam firing, but the high-energy collisions that carry any risk of a black hole won’t start until after the LHC’s official opening on 21 October.
What then, though? Based on scientists’ current understanding of matter - the so-called Standard Model - the energy needed to create a micro black hole is far more than we could possibly unleash in a particle accelerator. As Wikipedia reassuringly explains:
To collide two aggregates of fermions to within a distance of a Planck length with the currently achievable magnetic field strength would require a ring accelerator [of] about 1000 light years in diameter.
Er, quite.
But the main reason they’ve built the LHC is to improve on the Standard Model. Some scientists wonder if a ‘higher-dimensional component to gravity’ could result in the formation of micro black holes at LHC that, unlike any naturally-occurring micro black holes, might be travelling slowly enough to hang around on the earth. If they were stable enough to start pulling bits of the earth into them, that would be Very Bad News.
Something that should be reassuring, but somehow isn’t, is CERN’s blithe assertion (according to the BBC) that “any black holes will evaporate quickly and harmlessly”. Its page on the safety of the LHC does a much better job.
Don’t panic!
There are also concerns about strangelets. They might sound like a bad housing experience, but they’re stranger. The worst-case scenario, should a strangelet be created, is that it could cause a chain reaction; changing the centre of every atom on the planet from good old protons and neutrons into newfangled strangelets.
The good news is that nobody even knows whether strangelets exist, let alone what it would feel like to suddenly become a strangelet in a strange land. Even if they do exist, there’s another good reason not to be worried about strangelets - they’re less likely to be created in a high-energy particle accelerator like LHC than in any of the other, lower-energy accelerators that have been failing to create them for decades.
In fact the overwhelming scientific consensus is that there’s no possible way the LHC could bring about something apocalyptic.
So the good news is that it’s not the end of the world, but there’s bad news: you do still need to do your Christmas shopping.
IMAGE by Flickr user gamsiz & net_efekt
Safety of the Large Hadron Collider is unknown, the experiment is unprecedented in nature and planetary risk has not been conclusively excluded.
The safety opposition alleges CERN is misrepresenting the certainty of safety and did not properly address[9] compelling opposition arguments by credible senior scientists including visiting professor of Physics Dr. Otto Rössler[1][2] and Physics PHD Dr. Rainer Plaga[3].
Planetary safety arguments include disputed cosmic ray arguments[1][2][3] and refuted Hawking Radiation[4][5].
Earlier in 2008 CERN acknowledged that if micro black holes were created[6] by head-on collissions in particle colliders some would travel too slowly to escape Earth while cosmic ray created stable micro black holes would not be stopped by Earth.[7] This safety argument flaw was as discovered by former Cosmic Ray Researcher, California Math Champion and Nuclear Safety Officer Walter L. Wagner.[8]
[1] wissensnavigator.com/documnets/OTTOROESSLERMINIBLACKHOLE.pdf Abraham-Solution to Schwarzschild Metric Implies That CERN Miniblack Holes Pose a Planetary Risk, Prof. Dr. Otto Rossler (2008)
[2] wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf A Rational and Moral and Spiritual Dilemma - Otto E. Rössler Safety Counter Arguments (2008)
[3] arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v1.pdf On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders - Rainer Plaga Rebuttal (2008)
[4] xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0304042 Do black holes radiate?. Dr. Adam Helfer (2003)
[5] arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0607137, On the existence of black hole evaporationyet again, Prof. VA Belinski (2006)
[6] cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29199 The case for mini black holes, CERN Courier (2004)
[7] http://www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10 LHC Safety Assessment Group, LHC Safety Procedures, 16 Mar 2008
[8] lhcdefense.org/lhc_legal.php US Federal Lawsuit Filings - Walter L. Wagner (2008)
[9] ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/risk/2006/00000026/00000001/art00006 Scientific Peer Review to Inform Regulatory Decision Making: A European Perspective (2006)
Thanks for the comment JTankers - you’re quite right that the experiment is unprecedented and that we can’t rule out a risk to the earth. I didn’t go into the details of the opposition, which is significant, but the overwhelming weight of opinion does seem to be that LHC will be safe.
Anyone who’s interested can get an introduction to the arguments and actions against the project in Wikipedia’s safety of the Large Hadron Collider article.
There are plenty of articles around, most of which mention (or focus on) the potential risk. There’s this on MSNBC, and some extensive background on the BBC.
This explains everything:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM
I’m being really geeky and pointing out something really small but it’s annoying me….I’m pretty sure your picture is of the Tevatron accelerator in the US not the the LHC in Europe. - It even says Fermilab in the picture…sorry for being such a loser