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

[situationcritical]

Too late.

Black Hole - Bush be thy name!

*BTW, the answers to the Universe lie in Fusion, not in Fission. Only the monkey mind thinks the answer is to blow things up.

[rixhex56]

Sometimes you have to take things apart to know how they are put together.

[Politiking]

LOL. If scientists are able to open a blackhole that could swallow us, then who'll say it's successful?

[transendentilist]

Where's Robert Heinlein when you need him. Or Lazarus Long.

[Lindy222]

I kinda favor the black hole idea. Then I wouldn't have to worry about retirement.

[saram]

Or universal health care.

Or the Iraq War.

Or the economy.

....hmmmmm­mm

[TimN]

Good thing we'll never know what hit us.

[Richard729]

TimN, yeah, if it happens that we get sucked into that black hole maybe on the way through it we will see exactly where all the tens of billions of taxpayer money went to for companies like Halliburton, KBR, EXXON and Bechtel.

[MACinCHI]

We might even see into Bush's mind. Now there's a frightening concept.

[Synoia]

That money went into a black hole with right handed spin. This black hle, being fore europe would have left handed spin.

The money would be in a different part of the multiverse, so you'd not see it. Sorry.