that CERN scientists will restart the powerful Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in March, 2015 for another three-year long run of high-energy collision experiments have reignited longstanding fears that the experiments could destroy the Earth and even the entire universe.
Fears that high energy collision experiments with the LHC, the world’s largest particle accelerator located in the Jura mountains near the Franco-Swiss border, could trigger an Earth-wide or even universe-wide catastrophe have been increased by news that the newly upgraded LHC will generate particle collisions at nearly double the energy level previously achieved.
In a typical doomsday blog post titled, “‘Big Bang’ Begins March 2015 – Will Gates Of Hell Soon Open To The Destruction Of All Creation?,” the conspiracy theory website All News Pipeline raised the alarm of impending doom with the report that two prominent and respected scientists, Stephen Hawking and Neil de Grasse Tyson, “have recently issued independent warnings” that the experiments could lead to doomsday.
When the LHC is switched on once again, it will accelerate fundamental particles to even higher kinetic energies or velocities than in previous experiments. The higher kinetic energies effectively bring scientists closer to the “Big Bang” moment of creation of the universe.
Data collected from the collision events would help scientists to test their theories about the structure of the universe and determine which of their competing theories about the universe fit the experimental observations best.
Scientists are particularly interested in confirming earlier results that indicated discovery of the Higgs boson (“God Particle”) predicted by the Standard Model and believed to explain how matter acquires mass.
Large Hadron Collider
But the news that the LHC will restart in March is generating fears in doomsday circles, with many believing that experiments which create conditions similar to those that existed at the time of the Big Bang could wipe out the Earth and even the entire universe.
Among concerns being expressed are that high energy collisions could generate microscopic black holes or other exotic particles called strangelets that could cause catastrophic destruction of our world.
While scientists argue that Einstein’s relativity theory rules out the possibility that black holes could be produced in the LHC, they admit that there are other “speculative” theories which predict that black holes could be generated. Thus, while it is “unlikely,” scientists are unable to rule out the possibility that black holes will be generated at the LHC.
But scientists assure that even if a microscopic black hole is generated at the LHC, it would disintegrate immediately before it has time to begin sucking up matter around it.
Linked to the fear that the LHC could generate a black hole is the fear that because the universe exists in an unstable state, collisions at the LHC could generate perturbations that cause the physical environment to move into a stable state called a “vacuum bubble” that could destroy the entire universe.
The famous physicist Stephen Hawking helped to raise fears among doomsday theorists when he talked about the risk of the “vacuum bubble” last year. He said that discovery of the Higgs boson could cause space and time to collapse catastrophically through a “vacuum decay.”
But while doomsday theorists gave attention to the alarming first part of his statement, they ignored the second part in which he said that current CERN particle accelerators are not powerful enough to generate high energy states that can destroy the universe.
via CERN’s Move To Restart Large Hadron Collider At Double Power Reignites Doomsday Fears.
