Large Hadron Collider: The Controversial Search for the God Particle
Source: SPIEGEL ONLINE
Talk about a public relations problem. Imagine spending years sinking vast quantities of money, time and ambition into an intricately complex project only to face accusations just before the project’s debut that you might accidentally bring about the end of the world.
This, essentially, is the PR issue facing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as scientists on Wednesday plan to send the first beam of protons around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) long loop buried deep below ground not far from Geneva, Switzerland. Physicists say that the €6.4 billion ($9.2 billion) project — the lion’s share of which came from European countries — may provide unique new insights into how our universe was formed, the existence of “dark matter” and even the possible reality of a number of new dimensions.
Critics, though, many of whom have found a powerful platform on the Internet, fear that by smashing protons against each other at 99.9999991 percent of the speed of light, scientists could create tiny black holes which could eventually grow to the point that they swallow up the Earth.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research — known by its French acronym CERN — has spent considerable energy discounting such fears. An international team of scientists published yet another assessment of the particle accelerator’s safety over the weekend in the Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics — to go with a number of other safety evaluations conducted by the project.
“The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction,” said Robert Aymar, who heads CERN.
Still, the project has been swamped by e-mails from those concerned that scientists may be biting off more than they can chew. Videos on YouTube show what it might look like were a black hole, starting below the ground outside of Geneva, to swallow up the Earth. Skeptics in the United States filed suit in a US District Court in Hawaii in an attempt to block the project. A similar effort was mounted by a German scientist who brought suit at the European Court of Human Rights — though the case was tossed out at the very end of August.
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