The Hadron Collider aka The Atom Smasher?

Favorite Answer

They should really focus all that research funding and brainpower on perfecting the Anti-Matter Spaceship that NASA proposed. Two heads are better than one.

The flooding on Earth will continue unabated, and now with "dry lightning" that generates 8,000 bolts of lightning over a 24 hour period, causing 800+ fires, we're headed for misery, big time....Show more

(This looks like an overly long post but read through...at the end is a story of a guy who was hit in the head with a proton beam from an atom smasher)

As noted the issues of catastrophe from the LHC have been closely scrutinized and there is no issue there.

The main worries were production of a stranglet (pronounced strange-let) being formed which would turn the rest of the world into strange matter (see link below).

This has been debunked because the earth is routinely hit by cosmic rays of equivalent or greater energy than the LHC will produce. So, if the earth could be turned into strange matter in this fashion then it almost certainly would have been long ago.

The other main issue was production of a micro black hole. This black hole would then gobble up the earth.

The worries over this come from most people not understanding how a black hole works.

First of all the black hole would be so small it would barely interact with anything. Even another atom would be too big for it to "eat" and grow. It'd need to munch on sub-atomic particles. The rate at which it could do this would be exceptionally slow and its growth would be off the charts slow.

Second, because it is so small and weakly interacting it would most likely be shot off into space. Remember the LHC will be hitting particles together at near light speed. The micro black hole, even if formed, would go whizzing off into deep space (even if its trajectory was through the earth it would just pass straight through).

Third, black holes are thought to "evaporate" via a mechanism called Hawking Radiation (see second link below). Large black holes would dwindle via this mechanic exceptionally slowly. However, the smaller the black hole the faster this would occur. A micro black hole would evaporate out of existence in a fraction of a second (remember it has almost no way of growing in that time). Basically it would just disappear.

So, much ado about nothing.

EDIT: Earthquakes and water are not an issue. Even if there was an earthquake or flood there all that would happen is the machine breaks. Even it is in operation and someone cut the pipe in two you'd just get a very short stream of particles moving very fast popping out of the end of the tube. I'm not sure someone standing there would even notice anything. No big explosion, no earth ending event...nothing. While the machine is huge and impressive looking there is pretty much nothing to see even when it is running. Which is why they need massive and ultra sensitive detectors to make sense of it.

EDIT2: A friend of mine found the following bit where a Russian scientist actually put his head in the path of a particle beam from a particle accelerator. Granted the LHC is far more powerful than what he experienced but it should show worries over global catastrophe are unfounded when it did not even manage to zap a single person standing directly in its path (quote below is from third link below)

"Bugorski was leaning over the piece of equipment when he stuck his head in the part through which the proton beam was running. Reportedly, he saw a flash "brighter than a thousand suns", but did not feel any pain. The beam measured about 2000 gray when it entered Bugorski's skull, and about 3000 gray when it exited after colliding with the inside of his head.

The left half of Bugorski's face swelled up beyond recognition, and over the next several days started peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam (moving near the speed of light) had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath. As it was believed that about 5 to 6 grays is enough to kill a person, Bugorski was taken to a clinic in Moscow where the doctors could observe his expected demise. However, Bugorski survived and even completed his Ph.D. There was virtually no damage to his intellectual capacity, but the fatigue of mental work increased markedly. Bugorski completely lost hearing in the left ear and only a constant, unpleasant internal noise remained. The left half of his face was frozen, due to the destruction of nerves, and has not aged. He is able to function perfectly well, save the fact that he has occasional petit mal seizures and very occasional grand mal seizures."...Show more

The earth has been constantly bombarded with ultra-high-energy cosmic rays for billions of years, which have many orders of magnitude more energy than anything we will be able to produce in the near or far future. So why don't we study those instead? They occur randomly, uncontrolled, and use up most of their energy colliding with atoms in the upper atmosphere.

BTW if an atom-sized black hole were to be created in a laboratory, it would evaporate almost instantly due to Hawking radiation....Show more

The Harden Collider is one of humanities next big steps. If you want to know if we as in humans be bombarded with particles, and will earth go ibto meltdown mod. The awnser is not. There many safety protacols that insure this theroy.

You should be more concerned with the other experiment the government is working on such as Anti-Matter...:)...Show more

166 moon I can assure you though I'm no scientist just a very loose understanding of this science (an observer if you like).
That there's nothing to worry about this science as it's in its relative infancy and anything that happens in the lhc would have to be repeated over and over gain to get substantial and definite results as it's probably unlikely that each time the lhc is fired up you would get exactly the same results each time.
As for the doom mongers them stories just make good copy and feeds on mass hysteria.
The only time there could be any problems if the scientist could "contain" with some kind of force field. (gravity field?)
Any of the said phenomenons indefinitely (or for a few minutes) this could have consequences.
The risks are definitely worth taking as the leap to future energy sources which has come to the fore recently could result from these experiments....Show more