Well, maybe.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN’s facility in Switzerland/France is to be switched on next week. The job of the LHC is to basically fire two beams of particles (protons, if you care), at speeds approaching the speed of light; the particles will circle the whole 27Km route 11,000 times per second.
These two beams, which are operating in opposite directions, will be brought into alignment, so that their paths cross. At the intersection, the two streams of particles will collide, the ultimate result being to recreate the first few moments of the existence of the universe, right after the Big Bang.
Particle Accelerators, of which the LHC is one, are nothing new. FERMILAB in the US have been running one for years, and there are others dotted about the world. They’ve been successfully colliding particles, and have led to significant discoveries in the world of physics. They’ve proven (and disproven) various theories, and resulted in what’s now known as the Standard Model in physics. This is a set of basic building blocks on which the universe is based. Unfortunately, there’s gaps in the system, and it doesn’t match up with other theories which have been proven.
There is a missing link in what’s known as the Higgs boson, a particle which has been dubbed the ‘God Particle’ as it links many things up. The Higgs boson has so far eluded detection, as it appears and disappears so quickly (in theory anyway) that it hasn’t yet been seen, assuming it even existed in the first place!
So, to try and find it, large sums of money have been poured into the new LHC facility. Based underground, it represents the very cutting edge of scientific instrumentation and experimentation. The startup of the LHC has been attracting a great deal of attention though. A great deal of people are concerned the LHC could actually end up causing some quite catastrophic events. One theory is it will produce black holes, which will grow and devour the earth. Another is that it will produce Strangelets, which will turn the earth into some other substance, and basically mean the end of us all.
The scientists at CERN have said it’s very unlikely to happen either way. They do seem to think there’s a chance black holes could form, but the chance is so remote as to not even be a concern to them. Not only that, they say that if they do form, they’d die instantly anyway, so not pose a risk.
One thing has been mentioned a few times though. Along the course of the LHC tunnels is a detector unit called ATLAS. This is the core part of the detection for the Higgs boson particle. It’s been said by a few scientists that this facility will become mildly radioactive. They’ve also said that the energy stored in the handful of protons whizzing around the track will be roughly the same as a fully-loaded aircraft carrier going at full steam.
Personally, I can’t help but feel the most likely ‘disaster’ is that the ATLAS detector somehow fails (a magnet failed a while ago in another part of the LHC), and all that pent up energy destroys the ATLAS detector. The end result being mildly radioactive material thrown out of the entrance ways, or causing some other localised environmental disaster. It could very easily end up being a modern-day Chernobyl-like disaster.
I’m both excited by the prospects of the LHC, and a bit scared, as it could all go horribly, horribly wrong.
Here’s hoping it goes well. Either way, we’ll all know in a few weeks.
Endnote: I’m no scientist or physicist, so my understanding of this is probably a bit iffy, but I’ve tried to check facts.
Of course we are all going to die, eventually, everyone does, but not this Wednesday.
Collisions are weeks or months away and it may take years to determine if dangerous particles were created.
The safety opposition argues that CERN is minimizing the danger and misrepresenting the facts.
Several papers recent papers all conclude that Hawking Radiation is fundamentally flawed conjecture, micro black holes will not evaporate!
A common argument is that cosmic rays prove safety, they do not. If cosmic rays create stable neutral micro black holes, all will travel through Earth.
If micro black holes are created by head-on collisions in particle colliders some percentage will travel too slowly to escape Earth’s gravity.
The safety opposition includes senior Physics PHD Dr. Rainer Plaga who refutes CERNs conclusions of safety.
The opposition includes visiting professor of Physics Dr. Otto Rossler who is famous for inventing Chaos Theory’s Rossler attractor and founder of Endophysics. Dr Rossler theorizes that Hawking Radiation is not possible, micro black holes would grow exponentially over decades or centuries and CERN’s cosmic ray arguments are flawed including failure to account for super fluidity of neutron stars.
Former cosmic ray researcher, California math champion and Nuclear Safety Officer Walter L. Wagner discovered flaws with CERN’s safety arguments and prompted CERN to write a new safety report.
The opposition argues that the Large Hadron Collider may be safe, it may be disastrous. Like launching shuttles in freezing weather, we should not launch until the safety or danger can be accurately calculated. Currently it can not.
Got LHCFacts.org?