The Potential for Danger in Particle Collider Experiments | The News is NowPublic.com — Ok, let me summarize. With no real math or proof or anything much more than sketchy guesses and the application of the ubiquitous “better be safe than sorry” rule, some folks predict the end of times because of the Hadron Collider at CERN.

Here’s what they predict. When this thing cranks up it will accidentally produce one mini-black hole (MBH) per minute. These will quickly gravitate directly to the earth’s core where they will join up to form a bigger black hole that will suck the entire earth into itself. Since a real black hole is a phenomenon stemming from the collapse of massive stars with hard-to-fathom cosmic forces it would be amazing to duplicate the process with a machine in Switzerland. Meanwhile, all of mankind cannot find a cure for the common cold. OK, right.

The CERN study [Ref. 1] is a remake of a similar study for the earlier Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven (RHIC) [Ref. 6] adapted to the LHC.

It is important to notice that: The study for the RHIC had concluded that no black holes will be created. For the LHC the conclusion is very different: “Black holes could be created!” !

The main danger could be now just behind our door with the possible death in blood of 6.500.000.000 (US notation 6,500,000,000) people and complete destruction of our beautiful planet. Such a danger shows the need of a far larger study before any experiment ! The CERN study presents risk as a choice between a 100% risk or a 0% risk. This is not a good evaluation of a risk percentage!

If we add all the risks for the LHC we could estimate an overall risk between 11% and 25%!.

We are far from the Adrian Kent’s admonition that global risks that should not exceed 0.000001% a year to have a chance to be acceptable. [Ref. 3] .Even testing the LHC could be dangerous. Even an increase in the luminosity of the RHIC could be dangerous! It would be wise to consider that the more powerful the accelerator will be, the more unpredicted and dangerous the events that may occur! We cannot build accelerators always more powerful with interactions different from natural interactions, without risk. This is not a scientific problem. This is a wisdom problem!

Our desire of knowledge is important but our desire of wisdom is more important and must take precedence. The precautionary principle indicates not to experiment. The politicians must understand this evidence and stop these experiments before it is too late!

As an aside I have to show this brain-dead video about the collider done by the Times. You could take this footage and overlay just about any commentary you wanted since it looks to be a dopey series of stock footage from this and that. There are guys writing formulas on a blackboard. People are pointing. Buildings are shown. A guy is walking. It’s laughable. The British voice-over makes it even more ludicrous. All that is missing is a train going into a tunnel.

Found by Mad Dog Mike.