Posted on 02/12/2009 9:06:52 AM PST by iThinkBig
For anyone not initially aware, The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a particle accelerator located along the French/Swiss Border, being the Largest Man-made machine ever (also the most expensive), it's biggest item for debate has been it's potential risk (even with a low liklihood for such events, catastrophic risk is still there).
The risk to Put it mildly ranges anywhere from Miniature Black Hole creation(which broken down comes down to the verity of Hawking Radiation, and estimated accretion rates, both based purely from theory), The creation of matter destroying strange matter with a positive charge, or a myriad of other postulated, or potential unknowns.
Although media tends to skew one way or the other, a safety movement has risen out of this, Two lawsuits, one by American citizen Walter L. Wagner (an old friend of Frank Wilczek), and other is the EU by Ottoe Roessler, as well as papers done by Plaga, Helfer, et al.
The site source is actually a site that has been debating the issue for some time now, and amassed quite a bit of information, however the one thing I have taken out of all of this, and the crux of this post, and it's debate is this:
Who should have the final say in issues on a global scale such as this? Who even has Jurisdiction if something could be proven within reasonable doubt that this, or some other future experiments with larger margins of potential danger.
For those unaware, the current idea is to place the burden of proof on the company, or group in charge of said experiment, but is that enough?
The real concern is that these are the same men whom have created a business model of excess debt and the business cycle ALWAYS end result is depressions, provide little true value for manufacturing money at will for governments and have in the centuries past, funded each other's host nations adversaries for massive debt/war profiteering. The Central Bank of France for example creates money for the Bank of England in the Napolean Wars while the English Central Bank funded Napolean himself. The consolidation of this horrible model has reached a head. These Central Banks now more or less control this globe and are responsible for the current depression. Unfortunately, the last two global crisis' (1907 and 1929) spawned the last two global wars. What would such men do with the ability to weaponize this technology and create mini-black holes? Interesting parallels to the Manhatten Project.
The mini black hole speculation is just that, speculation. The energies reached in the search for the theoretical Higgs boson ,for instance, have already been surpassed in places like Fermilab (US). Testing the ‘top end’ so to speak and narrow down the search parameters. No one really knows what happens if they find it. As of right now the weaponization of such particles, which aren’t even known to exist, is science fiction.
You have heard on NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) well this is NOYOP (Not On Your Own Planet). Were are all the envirowacko’s when we need them.
The Chicken Littles still worrying about this?
Possible ping for your list.
We’re looking at weapons the wrong way these days. What is indicated are things like the S (Slammnation) bomb which would consist of flash-dried pork ground 100 times finer than the flash powder used for flintlock rifles and compressed air...
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Any concerns about weaponizing such science?
I wouldn’t object to a bacon bomb. :)
It really can’t be built on the moon due to the cost. It would be better to isolate these things of course, but a lot of this really sounds like sci-fi based fear mongering to me.
Hawking once said we will blow ourselves up. I think this is HIS plan....to prove how stupid WE can be...
I have to confess that I’m a bit nervous about the Large Hadron Collider. Although I’m not a physicist, even the physicists themselves are not entirely sure what happens at the higher energy levels...if they knew that, then they wouldn’t need to run the experiments. If a non-evaporating black hole ever did get created, I’m thinking that it would be very self-reinforcing, and would quickly propagate so that the entire earth, almost instantaneously, would be compressed into a near-singularity.
If we “blow ourselves up” it’s going to be the result of nuclear weapons, and still people would survive. However, were it to be resulting from our somehow creating a black hole, what a spectacular way to go! My only question is: would all the air be sucked in before the rest of the world, resulting in a mass asphyxiation first?
They should fire-up this baby on Dec.21st,2012!
Launching a rocket into space could pierce the atmosphere, causing all our air to leak out and destroy the planet...
What is this, 1920s redux?
Could be. Not my article but was curious of more of the facts. The consensus thus far it is virtually mathmatically impossible.
Don’t worry, we’ll all drown in global-warming-created flooding long before this becomes a problem.
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