Large Hadron Collider
I’ve been on Yahoo! Answers recently, and noticed that almost every other question seems to be about the Large Hadron Collider, and “will it destroy the world”.
Well, as far as I can tell, there are four possible answers to that question:
- They find the Higgs boson
The Higgs boson is the magic “god particle”, which supposedly gives everything mass. You see, in traditional quantum physics there isn’t a way to explain how mass happens, so this is the particle that they need to find in order to verify that quantum physics as we understand it is actually close to right. So if they find the Higgs boson, quantum physics is verified, we don’t need to re-write every physics textbook in the world and it’s champagne all round. - They don’t find the Higgs boson
Now this is the scenario Stephen Hawking has put a bet on – and the one he says he’d prefer to happen because it would mean there’s so much more physics to do and discover and we’d have to rewrite all the text books again because everything we know is wrong. Lovely. So, they find something else, not the Higgs boson after all, and suddenly physics becomes new ground all over again and it’s champagne all round. - Lawsuit one: USA
Now I’m not 100% sure where I heard this, but I believe there is a lawsuit against the LHC which states that it will create a black hole too big for the LHC to control, one that instead of dispelling in seconds as it is supposed to do just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, eventually eating its way out of the LHC (in about three months, I believe), then goes on to eat Europe in about two years, following up with the Sun in about ten. Tasty. But unlikely. Might make a good sci-fi movie, though. (Actually I’m a little off, I believe, but close: the original story is here.) - Lawsuit two: European Court of Human Rights
This one is also somewhat improbable, but a little more scary because it posits that the LHC will create a “strangelet” – something we’ve not seen before and can’t measure. It will immediately head for the centre of the earth (as you do, of course) and form a mini quasar. The quasar will grow in size until in about four years time, the crust of the earth begins to break and a light starts shining out. Yes, it’s the quasar eating the earth. And once the strangelet is created, there’s no way of stopping it and we’re all doomed, Captain Mainwaring, we’re all doomed…
Well, personally I think only scenarios 1 and 2 are likely to happen, and to be honest, I’ll go with Stephen Hawking. After all, this is the man who probably knows more about black holes than anyone else, living or dead, so I think he’d be the one to trust on scenario 3. As for scenario 4, well it seems a little bit more plausible to me, but that’s only percentages. They won’t be using the LHC to collide hadrons until at least the end of the year anyway (as of today it’s all testing to make sure it works properly), so even at the worst case scenario we’ve got another couple of years… Not that I believe anything’s going to happen in any event.
Tags: armageddon, LHC, physics