Apocalypse just a few days away?

Submitted by admin on Thu, 09/04/2008 - 18:54.

By Calvin Palmer

Forget who is going to be the next President of the United States. Forget which two teams are going to get to Super Bowl XLIII. In fact, forget about everything.

Why? Next Wednesday, a $9 billion atom smasher called the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be switched on In Geneva by scientists belonging to CERN, the European nuclear research organization, in an attempt to discover the origins of the universe.

Critics argue that switching on the machine, the largest ever constructed by Mankind, will not only destroy planet Earth but also the entire cosmos. Their fears have resulted in a lawsuit, lodged with the European Court of Human Rights, in an attempt to stop the machine from being turned on.

Led by German chemist Otto Rossler, this group of scientists believes there is a small chance that when the LHC is switched on, it will create a mini black hole that will swallow the Earth from within and possibly trigger a chain reaction that could rip apart the universe.

Professor Rossler, of Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen, said: "CERN itself had admitted that mini black holes could be created when the particles collide, but they don't consider this a risk.

"My won calculations have shown that it is quite plausible that these little black holes survive and will grow exponentially and eat the planet from the inside. I have been calling CERN to hold a safety conference to prove my conclusions wrong but they have not been willing.

"We have submitted this application to the European Court of Human Rights as we do not believe the scientists at CERN are talking all the precautions they should be in order to protect human life."

James Gillies, spokesman for CERN, insists the LHC poses no risk to the safety of the planet, despite the large amounts of energy it will produce.

He said: "The case before the European Court of Human Rights contains the same arguments that we have seen before and we have answered these in extensive safety reports.

"The Large Hadron Collider will not be producing anything that does not already happen routinely in nature due to cosmic rays. If they were dangerous we would know about it already."

A spokesperson for the European Court of Human rights said the petition to obtain an emergency injunction against CERN was rejected. She added: "There will therefore be no bar to CERN carrying out these experiments but the applicants can continue with their case."

Not surprisingly, when fears are aroused, the Americans join in. Environmentalists, retired nuclear safety officer Walter Wagner and science writer Luis Sancho, also filed a suit, in a federal court in Hawaii, in attempt to delay LHC being switched on.

My surprise is that it is environmentalists rather than creationists bringing this suit. An experiment such as this one will surely have the religious right clutching their Bibles and shouting, "Blasphemy! Blasphemy!"

The LHC seeks to recreate, for a split second, the conditions that existed in the moments immediately after the birth of the universe, the Big Bang. In a space a billion times smaller than a speck of dust, the collisions will create temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun.

It is hoped the experiment, by means of the powerful collisions evenutally produced, will confirm the Higgs bosun, a theoretical new particle proposed by British physicist Peter Higgs in the 1960s. This hypothetical entity gives mass to every other particle in the universe and has been dubbed the "God Particle."

On Tuesday, in a Honolulu courtroom, District Judge Helen Gillmor presided over a 55-minute hearing. She agreed with the federal government's claim that it is immune from any legal action based on European legal documents. A temporary injunction to stop the CERN project was not granted.

If you suddenly start to get a sinking feeling on September 10 and the Earth does indeed collapse in on itself, our belated apologies will have to go to Professor Rossler in the afterlife. My money is on business as usual.