EIROforum / CERN - The “Large Hadron Collider”

The world’s largest particle collider, “The Large Hadron Collider” was developed to research a variety of tough science questions, from what existed during the universe’s first moments to what extra dimensions of space exist that we can’t detect. But the builders of the device are in a little trouble now, as they are being sued in federal court “over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.” Oh snap!

The collider is at the CERN headquarters on the French-Swiss border, and the defendants of the case are confident that the device will cause no cosmic catastrophes. The lawsuit was made in Hawaii’s US District Court, intended to slow the development of the project and force the scientists behind it to reassess the risks of the device.

What are the doomsday scenarios that the litigants fear might occur?

Runaway black holes: The microscopic black holes that the LHC could create might persist and conglomerate into a growing gravitational mass that would soon envelope the world.

Stranglets: Strangelets are particles composed of strange combinations of quarks (which protons are made of), and they worry that the legendary “stable, negatively charged strangelet” could potentially turn everything it touches into strangelets as well.

Magnetic monopolies: Supposedly, the high-energy particle collisions could completely screw up physics by producing massive particles with only one magnetic pole (only north, or only south), which might start a runaway chain reaction.

Sleep well ladies and gentlemen, as doomsday may be upon us! Most physicists have scoffed at these doomsday scenarios, but we suppose scientists warning about doomsday and turn out to be right will have a brief window to say “I told you so,” and maybe laugh a few moments, before the entire world is obliterated in a giant cosmic catastrophe.

The story was from MSNBC’s “Cosmic Log,” which features “Quantum fluctuations in space, science, exploration and other cosmic fields…” which is the long way of saying it’s for nerds and scientists.

[MSNBC]

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