Campaigners in the US are attempting to delay the start-up of the world鈥檚 most powerful particle smasher with a lawsuit claiming it could spawn dangerous particles or mini black holes that will destroy the entire Earth.
The (LHC) is nearing completion at CERN, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland. 快猫短视频s hope it will begin operations in mid-July.
On 21 March, Luis Sancho, from Spain, and Hawaii resident Walter Wagner filed a lawsuit in Hawaii鈥檚 US District Court against CERN and US contributors to the project demanding that they do not operate the LHC until they prove it is safe. The US contributors named are the Department of Energy (DoE), the National Science Foundation and Fermilab, an accelerator laboratory near Chicago.
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The DoE and Fermilab will not comment on the case, insisting it is a legal matter to be dealt with by the Department of Justice.
The lawsuit鈥檚 claims are 鈥渃omplete nonsense鈥�, James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, told 快猫短视频. 鈥淭he LHC will start up this year, and it will produce all sorts of exciting new physics and knowledge about the universe,鈥� he said, adding: 鈥淎 year from now, the world will still be here.鈥�
Killer strangelets
The collider will simulate conditions less than a billionth of a second after the big bang, by smashing protons together at enormous energies. Physicists hope to resolve long-standing questions, such as why particles have mass and whether space has hidden extra dimensions.
But Wagner and Sancho鈥檚 court papers raise theoretical scenarios in which the LHC could create particles that gobble up the Earth, such as 鈥�killer strangelets鈥�. Strangelets are hypothetical blobs of matter containing 鈥渟trange鈥� quarks, as well as the usual 鈥渦p鈥� and 鈥渄own鈥� types that make up ordinary matter.
If a strangelet were stable and negatively charged, it might begin eating the nuclei of ordinary matter, converting them into strange matter. Eventually the menacing chain reaction could assimilate our entire planet and everyone on it.
A 2003 safety review for the LHC found 鈥渘o basis for any conceivable threat鈥�. It acknowledged that there鈥檚 a small chance the accelerator could create short-lived, mini black holes or exotic 鈥渕agnetic monopoles鈥� that destroy protons in ordinary atoms. But it concluded that neither scenario could lead to disaster.
That report and lay summaries of its findings are . An updated version of the safety assessment will soon be released, and physicists plan to discuss safety during a CERN open house on 6 April.
鈥楧angerous matter鈥�
Wagner raised similar concerns to those in the new court papers during development of the (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York State. 鈥淩HIC started running in 2000 and we鈥檙e still here,鈥� says Gillies.
Besides, he adds, much higher energy collisions that those at the LHC frequently occur in nature, because cosmic ray particles zip around our galaxy at close to the speed of light. The moon has undergone such collisions for 5 billion years without being devoured by a ravenous black hole or killer strangelet, he adds.
However, Wagner and Sancho describe CERN鈥檚 safety reviews as 鈥減erfunctory鈥� and say the cosmic ray argument may be misleading.
鈥淭here is no question that should [the] defendants inadvertently create a dangerous form of matter such as a micro black hole or a strangelet, or otherwise create unsafe conditions of physics, then the environmental impact would be both local and national in scope, and quite deadly to everyone,鈥� their lawsuit claims. A website to support their case.
Unconfirmed reports say that a magistrate judge has been assigned to the case for an initial conference on 16 June, and that Wagner intends to serve court papers to the federal government.
鈥淲hat we want to do is get this machine up and running,鈥� Gillies says. 鈥淲e鈥檒l show people that the world is not going to disappear.鈥�
