Atom-Smasher Could Open Black Hole, Reveal Secrets Of Science

The LA Times reports on the hair-raising concerns raised by some about the Large Hadron Collider, Europe's giant atom-smasher:

Michelangelo L. Mangano, a respected particle physicist who helped discover the top quark in 1995, now spends most days trying to convince people that his new machine won't destroy the world...

...What the critics are in such a lather about is the $8-billion Large Hadron Collider, a massive assemblage of iron, steel and superconducting wire 300 feet underground in a 17-mile-long circular tunnel on the Franco-Swiss border...

...Scientists like Mangano believe that this instrument, when it begins operating as early as this summer, will peer into a looking-glass world that could contain entrances to extra dimensions and super-massive partners of the familiar particles that make up our world. One creature that must be hiding there, the scientists say, is the Higgs particle, one of the most exotic undiscovered objects since the yeti.

Critics think the collider could also spawn a black hole that will swallow Earth.

Keep reading here.

The Large Hadron Collider is searching for the so-called God particle, which some scientists believe could unlock the secrets of the universe. Read more here.

Scroll down for pictures of the Large Hadron Collider:

Comments

[wndrwrthg]

Exactly how big is a giant atom?

[americandiaspora]

i could not tell you an answer but this may be where size does matter

[peachfuzz]

I'm dying to know if the critics are worried about our planet or themselves
in other ways: pollution for instance. It's just that i always see contradictions
in people; like staunch environmentalists who smoke.
Save a tree, but to hell with my lungs! Just a curious thought.

[BarnE]

I'm betting my bottom dollar on the black hole outcome!

[americandiaspora]

hey E you got it all wrong!!
i bet $1oo,ooo that all will go without a black hole: think about it you cannot loose that bet

[loki]

The way things are going in the world these days, A black hole might be an improvement.

[wmbear]

DEPENDS ON WHOM IT SWALLOWS, dun it?

[Paul]

Looks like this thing has already created a black hole that swallows money...

[themodernleader]

You bloggers are a weird, sometimes brilliant bunch.
Doing the experiments may introduce us to understand the substance and operation of gravity. Then we will begin to understand the nature of everything, except, of course ourselves. However, unlocking the operating mechanicisms of the Universe will transform us into gods. We will be the only beings in the universe that are able to explain and record it. For we are all alone. We are the greatest anomaly in nature. Nothing like us ever was or ever will be. The chances of our existence are a ratio of one in trillions.
The chances of our successfully surviving for a million years are as infinitisimal. The universe was not originated for intelligent enquiry nor any other form of life.

[shockmagog]

"We will be the only beings in the universe that are able to explain and record it. For we are all alone."

Thanks for the speculation.

[ShawnMichel]

Thank you, shockmagog. themodernleader's little exposition there is complete speculation--and horse hockey.

[moderationsmuse]

themodernleader,
As to beginning to understand everything, I don't think even the most fervert supporters of the CERN project are making THAT claim. As to "except ourselves," we really ought to take a little more trouble about THAT, don't you think?
"For we are all alone." Forgive me, but could you provide some proof of that? Seems a little over-reaching to me. The odds of their being "others" is quite good.
As to the meanings of the everything, as in your comment "The universe was not originated for intelligent enquiry ...." Do you know something the rest of us don't? For what was it originated?
We're really getting ahead of ourselves here.

[Earl]

If the chances of our existence are one in trillions, then that means there certainly must be others like us, as "trillions" is such a small number in our universe. Science always teaches us that we are not unique.

[moderationsmuse]

How quickly this interesting topic degenerates into political drivel. That would define the half-life of real information at Huff Po.

[edpell]

On the black hole question. Yes much higher energy particles (cosmic rays) hit the earth daily. But in that case it is a high energy particle hitting a stationary particle. The resulting black hole and other stuff is moving at almost the speed of light with respect to the earth and so has little time to pickup more matter (say about 0.05 seconds). But in the case of CERN it is two high energy particles coming from opposite directions. The resulting black hole can be stationary with respect to the earth and can drift around picking up matter for an unlimited amount of time.

It all comes down to the evaporation rate of small black holes. Which we have ZERO experimental information on. So let us hope the theorists are correct we are betting our lives on it.

[UncleJimbo]

There already is a Black Hole devouring the Earth it's called The Bush Administration!

[Boboday555]

Not an apt analogy.
Some black holes, like the super massive ones at the center of most galaxies, are a catalsyst for star creation.
The Bush administration only destroys.

[moderationsmuse]

Not an apt analogy. According to the prevailing view, black holes would appear to be necessary components of a galaxy without which a galaxy could not be! I voted for Bush, but I'm quite sure the US could have managed even if dreadful Gore had got hold of the office (still covered in chads). :-)

[drkazmd65]

Hmm,... you voted for Bush ehh?

Thanks for helping out with the 7+ years of economic and anti-constitutional hell. Not.

Al Gore is no great shakes, but at least he would have a bit less terrible than Bush has been for the long term state of our Nation.

[shockmagog]

"I voted for Bush"

And you admit it? Holy crap. Let's stick to what has actually happened, rather than speculating on what an "dreadful" job Gore would have done. Apparently, you still don't realize the person you voted for has run our country into the ground more thoroughly than any collider could ever do. I say again, holy crap.

[John Q]

"Dreadful Gore"????
Let's see: he warned us years ago about threat of global warming; saw that a network limited to gov't and academia could be expanded ffor everyone, and put things in motion so we can be posting here today (no, he didn't "invent" the internet - never claimed to - but did see to it that it would be available for everyone. That's why he got that Webby Award); was heavily involved in anti bin Laden steps while in White House, and if he'd been prez in 2001, would have taken the steps that would probably have averted 9/11 (can't say with certainty that 9/11 wouldn't have happened - but the probability is it wouldn't have - I'm guessing 80% probability, if you want a figure on it).
Gosh, if that's your idea of "dreadful", one would think your standards are a lot higher than mine. But the you 'fess up to having voted for the dreadful Bush......

[VoteLibertarian]

does everything have to be a poiltical jab at someone? there is more to life than continually ridiculing a failed president. get over it..

[NormM]

The same guys tried to stop a previous collider project. I'll paraphrase the best argument I saw then: This experiment has already been done safely for billions of years. Very high energy cosmic rays strike the moon all the time, including ones much more energetic than anything that this collider will produce. The persistence of the moon provides good evidence that we shouldn't be worried.

[Boboday555]

I'm waiting for the Linnear Collider.
Now, don't get me wrong, the LHC is great and I can't wait until its COLD but, since hadrons are made up of three quarks, there is inherent uncertainty involving the exact energies involved at impact.

The linnear collider will use highly energized elementary particles, not particles comprised of other particles, so their energies are known with much greater accuracy allowing the resulting experimental data to help scientists formulate equations that will explain such things as why particles have the mass they have!

The LHC is to the Big Hollywood Blockbuster...the Linnear Collider's is the Smart Independent movie.

[JGatsby]

When I read this article I expected to come down on the side of the physicists promoting the collider. I have an amateur interest in string theory and I've heard about this before and have been looking forward to their results. However, I found the reply by the main guy leading the effort to be completely condescending. The stuff about shaving blowing up the earth was just disingenuous nonsense. There is a very real empirical question here: can a micro-black hole that could be created by this machine start swallowing other matter and grow into a macro-black hole that could destroy the earth? The defenders say no but some critics who are physicists say its never happened and we don't know for sure and we sure don't want to find out the hard way. If there is even a one in a thousand chance the critics are right I think people would agree its not worth the risk.

[sstoeffler]

I really hate it when scientific ignoramuses try to report on science and make it sound cool. This is not a freaking "atom smasher" for pity's sake. If you don't know how to describe it properly, then shut up and let somebody else do it. And could we please stop referring to the Higgs boson as "The God Particle"? Yeah, I know a Nobel physicist called it that, but his rationale for doing it was incredibly lame, and had no real purpose but to make his book more marketable.

[hopeforchange]

The elites trying to play god again-chilling.

[Boboday555]

I'd rather these 'elites', as you call them, work on adding to the sum of human knowledge rather than trying to get another WARTIME TAX CUTS from this anti-science administration.

Loyal Bushy Definition of ELITE: "Any of them 'dern' Yankess what read them 'sissified' book things."

[moderationsmuse]

Tsk, tsk. The ignoramuses are the ones paying for it, darling. Mind your manners.

[imusintheevening]

In this case the Critics = idiots

[wadenelson1]

You have to give these guys credit: This is the best possible PR spin anyone could ever come up with. I predict this worlds-end story is gonna get traction for months, if not years.

Every nutjob in the world is going to be worrying about a black hole getting spawned and swallowing the universe whole. Forget global warming, forget the war in Iraq, this is REALLY something scary.

The press, with their lack of math and physics background will repeat this story up faster than the black hole could swallow the universe.

Any PR firm in the world would be beaming over a story like this. Champagne all around!

Now it turns out, there was some small, 1% chance when scientists lit off the first fusion bomb that it would ignite all the nitrogen in the atmosphere and it would be "lights out, Earth." Richard Feynman, I believe, was assigned to calculate the risk; and Teller and crew decided it was "acceptable." Fire in the hole! To me it sounded a lot like some verbage in Revelation about the "heavens being parted." Suddenly, no atmosphere, a billion stars suddenly visible, and we're all suffocating. If Jesus was to stage a return, that would indeed have been an opportune moment. Fortunately, it didn't happen.

But this one is even better. Like high-velocity explosives, suddenly we're all dead but don't even know it.
No gasping one's last breath all the while humming "Starry Starry Night"

[Titonwan]

You could write horror science fiction! We bipedal carbon units have come a long way in a short time, with the development of splitting atoms. Our sun's energy is fueled by this system. We are unreliable to the point of being simian. Yet we get mad when called monkeys. This is our dual dilemma, to have a brain; and not take it out and play with it.
It is indeed a brave new world, to where we must take big steps to counter the giant missteps already in play. One part of me goes " Oh shit, the crazy people have their fingers on the button (pick your own government, there's plenty to choose from)" and the other says "We've come to far to quit now".
In summary, I say "bring on the laser gun from hell!" Kinda like holding an elephant rifle. Big and foreboding. But, you gotta wonder the good, something like that, could do too!? Energy!