Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded.
The document addresses fears that the Large Hadron Collider is so energetic, it could have unforeseen consequences.
Critics are worried that mini-black holes made at the soon-to-open facility on the French-Swiss border might threaten the Earth's very existence.
But the report, issued the European Organization for Nuclear Research, says there is "no conceivable danger".
The organization - known better by its French acronym, Cern - will operate the collider underground in a 27km-long tunnel near Geneva.
This Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a powerful and complicated machine, which will smash together protons at super-fast speeds in a bid to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
Six "detectors" - individual experiments - will count, trace and analyse the particles that emerge from the collisions.
Most physicists believe the risk of a cataclysm lies in the realms of science fiction. But there have been fears about the possibility of a mini-black hole - produced in the collider - swelling so that it gobbles up the Earth.
Critics have previously raised concerns that the production of weird hypothetical particles called strangelets in the LHC could trigger the mass conversion of nuclei in ordinary atoms into more strange matter - transforming the Earth into a hot, dead lump.
New particles
The lay language summary of the report, which has been written by Cern's top theorists, states: "Over the past billions of years, nature has already generated on Earth as many collisions as about a million LHC experiments - and the planet still exists."
The report added: "There is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the LHC."
The new document is an update of the analysis carried out in 2003 into the safety of the collider by an independent team of scientists.
The authors of the latest report, including theoretical physicist John Ellis, confirmed that black holes could be made by the collider. But they said: "If microscopic black holes were to be singly produced by colliding the quarks and gluons inside protons, they would also be able to decay into the same types of particles that produced them."
The report added: "The expected lifetime [of a mini-black hole] would be very short."
On the strangelet issue, the report says that these particles are even less likely to be produced at the LHC than in the lower-energy Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, which has been operating since 2000.
A previous battle over particle accelerator safety was fought over the US machine.
'Fundamental question'
The scientific consensus appears to be on the side of Cern's theorists.
But in 2003, Dr Adrian Kent, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge, wrote a paper in which he argued that scientists had not adequately calculated the risks of a "killer strangelet" catastrophe scenario.
He also expressed concern that a fundamental question (how improbable does a cataclysm have to be to warrant proceeding with an experiment?) had never been seriously inspected.
The LHC was due to switch on in 26 November 2007. The start-up has been postponed several times, however, and is currently scheduled for later this summer.
The first delay was precipitated by an accident in March 2007 during stress testing of one of the LHC's "quadrupole" magnets.
A statement carried on the Cern website from the US laboratory that provided the magnet stated that the equipment had experienced a "failure" when supporting structures "broke".
It later emerged that the magnet had exploded in the tunnel, close to one of the LHC's most important detectors, prompting the the facility to be evacuated.
In March, a complaint requesting an injunction against the LHC's switch-on was filed before the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii by seven plaintiffs.
One of the plaintiffs had previously attempted to bring a similar injunction against the RHIC over safety concerns.
That aside, I thought it was always known that the LHC couldn't destroy Earth, and that people who said it could were just dumbasses?
"I don't believe in man made global warming because God promised to never again destroy the earth with water. He sent the rainbow as a sign."
- Sean Hannity Forums user Avi
"And BTW the concept of carbon based life is only a hypothesis based on the abiogensis theory, and there is no clear evidence for it."
-Mazen707 informing me about the facts on carbon-based life.
Darth Ruinus wrote:That aside, I thought it was always known that the LHC couldn't destroy Earth, and that people who said it could were just dumbasses?
Yes.
That said, I don't object to spending (a little) money confirming the predictions of common sense. It's a genuine existential risk and you should never treat those lightly.
I love the morons who think that these experiments would result in the creation of dangerous "black holes".
Apparently it's beyond their grasp that stars with the volume of our entire solar system exist in stable form, and dangerous black holes need to be much more massive than those.
Such is the idiocy of people with delusions of our grandeur and their inability to comprehend just how fucking tiny our planet is.
I read somewhere that the Earth was regularly impacted by particles containing hundreds of billions times more energy than anything the LHC could create.
Bubble Boy wrote:Apparently it's beyond their grasp that stars with the volume of our entire solar system exist in stable form, and dangerous black holes need to be much more massive than those.
Such is the idiocy of people with delusions of our grandeur and their inability to comprehend just how fucking tiny our planet is.
Huh? I get a practically stable black hole (1e45 year evaporation time) with just the mass of the moon. (Note tinyurl is a preview. These haven't been outlawed have they?).
Anyway, I think the loonies are worried that it won't create the black holes we all know and love, but some kind of unknown black hole. After all, these experiments are being done because nobody really knows how tiny black holes work.
So...when is it being fired up? I wonder if any end-of-the-world parties are going to happen the day before
JULY 20TH 1969 - The day the entire world was looking up
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. - NEIL ARMSTRONG, MISSION COMMANDER, APOLLO 11
Signature dedicated to the greatest achievement of mankind.
MILDLY DERANGED PHYSICIST does not mind BREAKING the SOUND BARRIER, because it is INSURED. - Simon_Jester considering the problems of hypersonic flight for Team L.A.M.E.
Kanastrous wrote:Science, pure science, and damned be he who first cries 'hold, too much!'
Who said that?
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society - Karl Marx Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Nova Mundi, my laughable attempt at an original worldbuilding/gameplay project
I wonder if this kind of thing will shut people like Michael Crichton up?
...nah.
"I spit on metaphysics, sir."
"I pity the woman you marry." -Liberty
This is the guy they want to use to win over "young people?" Are they completely daft? I'd rather vote for a pile of shit than a Jesus freak social regressive.
Here's hoping that his political career goes down in flames and, hopefully, a hilarious gay sex scandal. -Tanasinn
You can't expect sodomy to ruin every conservative politician in this country. -Battlehymn Republic
Nothing we have ever done has kicked Nature's ass. Nothing. The WAP means that, given the obvious fact that we are still here, if strangelets exist, they are far too heavy to be created by the LHC — cosmic rays are powerful shit.
Darth Wong on Strollers vs. Assholes: "There were days when I wished that my stroller had weapons on it." wilfulton on Bible genetics: "If two screaming lunatics copulate in front of another screaming lunatic, the result will be yet another screaming lunatic. " SirNitram: "The nation of France is a theory, not a fact. It should therefore be approached with an open mind, and critically debated and considered."
Cornivore! | BAN-WATCH CANE: XVII | WWJDFAKB? - What Would Jesus Do... For a Klondike Bar? | Evil Bayesian Conspiracy
Honestly, if they world was going to be destroyed, I would want it to be destroyed by the badass boffins at CERN and their impossibly awesome Large Hadron Collider.
Read MacBeth, it's a modification of the line "Lay on, MacDuff, and damned be he who first cries 'Hold enough!'" (at which point MacBeth is promptly killed in that fight).
"Show me an angel and I will paint you one." - Gustav Courbet
"Quetzalcoatl, plumed serpent of the Aztecs... you are a pussy." - Stephen Colbert
"Really, I'm jealous of how much smarter than me he is. I'm not an expert on anything and he's an expert on things he knows nothing about." - Me, concerning a bullshitter
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