Physics

March 21, 2005

I'm very pro-research and I can't wait to hear all the new findings coming out of the big, new machines.  But to be fair, scientists have to explain this stuff to average people when there's any whiff of danger.  The situation is a little like the one in the 1950s when we were performing bigger and bigger hydrogen bomb tests.  Some were concerned that the atmosphere might ignite, or that a worldwide nuclear chain reaction would occur.  It's pretty important to settle such issues before you run the test.  

Here's a link to Brookhaven National Laboratory's website addressing the concern over creating black holes in their Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC):

http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/black_holes.htm

Additional discussion about the same:

http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/black_holes_kharzeev.htm

Discussion about other disaster scenarios:

http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/disaster.htm

Below is a link to the best one.  It covers each proposed apocalyptic scenario.  I'm glad someone is at least addressing these concerns.  We're not talking about an ordinary ecological disaster.  They avoid alarming us by using language like this:

The exposed nucleus would then be absorbed by the ever growing strangelet. This process would continue until all available material had been converted to strange matter. We know of no barrier to the rapid growth of a dangerous strangelet. It is indeed fortunate that they will not be produced at RHIC.

In other words, the worst-case scenario is the annihilation of Earth and even the entire universe.  It makes me wonder if any other technological civilizations elsewhere in the universe crossed this line and vanished.  Whoa.

http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/docs/rhicreport.pdf