that sucking sound you hear is a black hole forming in Switzerland
Some dudes are suing some physicists over a particle accelerator they say might destroy the world.
But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”
It's probably wrong that my first response was "Ahahahaha, awesome."
I actually wasn't perturbed at all until one of the scientists said physics would "really, really have to be weird" for black holes created by the accelerator not to disappear. Because half the news articles you see about physics are about things that make the physicists go, "wow, weird!"
Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
I make no apologies for finding that awesome.
Btw, it's coming up on the Earth Hour in the Eastern U.S., where various city governments etc. are turning off non-necessary lights for an hour.
But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”
It's probably wrong that my first response was "Ahahahaha, awesome."
I actually wasn't perturbed at all until one of the scientists said physics would "really, really have to be weird" for black holes created by the accelerator not to disappear. Because half the news articles you see about physics are about things that make the physicists go, "wow, weird!"
Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
I make no apologies for finding that awesome.
Btw, it's coming up on the Earth Hour in the Eastern U.S., where various city governments etc. are turning off non-necessary lights for an hour.