Rou

No, not really.

So, in May 08, scientists are hoping to start up the Large Hadron Collider in France. Basically, it's a particle accelerator. A really BIG one. It's going to be used to investigate things like dark matter, the god particle, antimatter, and such things. Nifty things that all would help up understand how the universe works. Because you know, we're kinda curious.

Anyway, that's the short version. It's a big new toy for scientists to play with. Is that the end of the story? Course not. That would be a crappy rant, wouldn't it? The rant comes next.

So, if you were going to guess, how do you think the nutcases would portray this type of thing? If you guess Doomsday machine, congratulations. Let me tell you, they didn't skimp out on the crazy here either.

They feel that colliding particles like this has a number of major risks not only to the entire planet, but potentially the entire universe. Oh yeah baby. The whole fucking universe. Really incredible that we can do that with just a couple miles of magnets lined up properly. You see, they think we're going to do one of a couple things. First, we could create a black hole. Obviously the black whole would consume the entire earth and solar system. Second, we could tear a hole in the fabric of space and time. Finally, they give a nod to other conspiracy groups. This machine could be used to create anti-matter, which could then be used by Al Qaeda to create massive anti-matter explosions.

I mean, just... wow. I don't care how bad you are at physics, that's some crazy shit right there.

First off, we're talking about particle collisions, not stellar ones. If, by some highly unlikely chance, we created a black hole, it's only the sum of it's parts. It would be a super condensed, micro black hole with a mass of... well.. a few particles. It's gravitational force would be... exactly the same as those few particles normally have. Just really condensed. the diameter for that colossal gravitational force would be about the same as an electron's orbit around a helium atom. So long as you stay outside that event horizon, you should be ok. Seriously, it would take a lot of luck for it to attack nearby air particles. Especially inside of a magnetized accelerator. Oh, and black holes evaporate. It's slowly based on their mass, but with so little, it would be nearly instantaneous in this case. Color me not scared.

As for ripping space time, that's so crazy you can't even quantify it. The statement doesn't even make sense outside of a star trek episode. The worse part is that we're trying to study cosmic radiation with this thing. Stuff that hits the earth hundreds of times a day with FAR more energy than we can generate. But since we can't predict when/where such rays will hit, we wanted this little toy in order to do so reliably.

And then we have the concept of anti-matter explosive devices. These are good. I'm sure we'd like that. But we're not talking about significant amounts of anti-matter. And it only exists for a few fractions of a second inside the chamber. It's not like we have portable containment units. If anti-matter touches matter, they collide and destroy each other. So... lets just say, this is not really possible and leave it at that.

So why do people (read as: nutters) think this? Because scientists tend to be truthful when they're asked questions. Even if the question is... shall we say... leading. So, when a reporter asks something like "what is the worst case scenario?" or "could this conceivably create a black hole?" a truthful person going on record might say "theoretically it could create a black hole, but that's unlikely." Then some dirt bag reporter could just trim the last 3 words off and he's got himself a headline!

People at the facility who have to talk to the press are now told to be more careful in choosing their words. Take a few crappy articles citing the same source and add a few hyper-phobic people that are bad at science.. and you've got a recipe for crazy.