Blowin' up under the Alps
The end of the wait is near. The Large Hadron Collider will go through a new series of tests this week. With more, let's go to the Chicago Tribune:
"Sounds like the premise of a bad sci-fi movie: Big-time physics experiment accidentally destroys the Earth. Scientists really don't think that will happen when the Large Hadron Collider fires up at the Swiss-French border on Wednesday, but the fact it's being debated tells you how unprecedented the new device is.
"Seven times more powerful than Fermilab's main particle collider in Batavia, Ill., the new facility will smash together intense beams of subatomic protons, producing so much energy that some theories predict it could form tiny black holes. That has led to two lawsuits—one filed in Europe, one in Hawaii—seeking to halt the project and save the planet.
"The most far-out fear is that the device's little black holes could blossom into big ones, with gravity so strong that they swallow first the collider, then the Swiss-French countryside, then the Earth as a whole. Burp.
"Still, don't quit your job expecting a physics-aided apocalypse in a few days. Even if the European collider gives birth to black holes—and that's only a theory—each one would be smaller than a subatomic proton, says Fermilab theorist Joe Lykken.
"At that size, each black hole will evaporate almost as soon as it is created, in a shower of so-called Hawking radiation, named after famous black hole theorist Stephen Hawking. If a black hole somehow survives for longer than an instant in the pipe that carries the proton beam, the immensely powerful magnets that steer the beam would also hold the black hole in place.
"Experts also say that if powerful particle collisions really could spawn black holes, we probably would have seen one by now. Fermilab scientists have not found any black holes in 25 years of running the world's most powerful collider. And the Earth receives a constant rain of cosmic rays from deep space, some of which carry far more energy than the beam in the new collider."
"Sounds like the premise of a bad sci-fi movie: Big-time physics experiment accidentally destroys the Earth. Scientists really don't think that will happen when the Large Hadron Collider fires up at the Swiss-French border on Wednesday, but the fact it's being debated tells you how unprecedented the new device is.
"Seven times more powerful than Fermilab's main particle collider in Batavia, Ill., the new facility will smash together intense beams of subatomic protons, producing so much energy that some theories predict it could form tiny black holes. That has led to two lawsuits—one filed in Europe, one in Hawaii—seeking to halt the project and save the planet.
"The most far-out fear is that the device's little black holes could blossom into big ones, with gravity so strong that they swallow first the collider, then the Swiss-French countryside, then the Earth as a whole. Burp.
"Still, don't quit your job expecting a physics-aided apocalypse in a few days. Even if the European collider gives birth to black holes—and that's only a theory—each one would be smaller than a subatomic proton, says Fermilab theorist Joe Lykken.
"At that size, each black hole will evaporate almost as soon as it is created, in a shower of so-called Hawking radiation, named after famous black hole theorist Stephen Hawking. If a black hole somehow survives for longer than an instant in the pipe that carries the proton beam, the immensely powerful magnets that steer the beam would also hold the black hole in place.
"Experts also say that if powerful particle collisions really could spawn black holes, we probably would have seen one by now. Fermilab scientists have not found any black holes in 25 years of running the world's most powerful collider. And the Earth receives a constant rain of cosmic rays from deep space, some of which carry far more energy than the beam in the new collider."
Blowin' up under the Alps
mr damon, 08:26
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