Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho have literally filed to save the world in a federal court in Hawaii. The men claim that a giant particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider (located outside of Geneva) will produce a little black hole or even a “stranglet” that will destroy not just the Earth but possibly the universe. While some details have to be worked out, the benefit of such a claim is that it guarantees standing and offers a pretty wide jurisdictional footprint. There is still some question of what the contingency fee would be in such a case.
The Large Hadron Collider has been 14 years and $8 billion in the making to allow scientists to recreate conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. According to some, it could also destroy the Earth by producing a tiny black hole or alternatively a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of “strange matter.”
There have been some past debates over this danger, but they have been rejected. Moreover, Wagner has previously demanded such relief. In 1999 and 2000, he tried unsuccessfully to stop the Brookhaven National Laboratory from operating the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.
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The debate about the hadron collider misses the point. No one should have a veto on anothers life. No one should be able to threaten innocent people with mass destruction or scare them with terror. This is what this hadron collider does.
Big business is pushing this and pointing a gun. playing Russian roulette with all of us. They have no right to threaten 6 billion people with oblivion and death. People who are not interested in their science and are/were happy enough without it.
The scientists have no right to threaten this prescious blue planet and its myriad amazing lifeforms with horrible death and extinction. It is our only planet for all time. No potential discovery is worth risking it.
I can only think these scientists can’t see the wood for the trees. The meaning of life is survival. Its purpose is reproduction. Just have look at every living thing. Have a walk, look at the birds, trees, flowers. Thats were you will see the meaning of life.
Thanks for the update jtankers. There was a good discussion of this issue on Science Friday (NPR) as well.
Jill
A Harvard Crimson article called the lawsuit “not frivolous”.
Some scientists such as Professor Dr. Otto Rossler theorize that there may be a non-trivial risk that the world could be destroyed by micro black holes that might be created by the Large Hadron collider, but most scientists do not appear to be very concerned.
In order for Earth to be in danger, the following might need to be true:
1. Micro black holes would need to be created
— Unknown, predicted by some physicists
2. Hawking Radiation would need to fail
— Unknown, challenged by some studies and polls
3. Micro black holes would need to grow quickly
— Unknown, predicted by some theories
There is an interesting article about possible censorship at Wikipedia by CERN employees and supporters blocking references from science professors who challenge safety assumptions: http://www.lhcfacts.org/?cat=124
LHCFacts.org
LHCDefense.org