By Travis Walters
Black holes existed only in space until now. Soon humanity may have one to call its very own. Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have spent the past 14 years and $8 billion on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which lies 328 feet underground near Geneva on the border between Switzerland and France. They have been constructing a 17-mile circular tube filled with enormous super-conduction magnets which, when activated, will hurl matter at 99.9999% the speed of light around the tube and crash into each other. Physicists hope the collision will re-create the particles present at one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
There was some concern that the resultant collision might create a black hole that would consume the earth and universe; or at the very least create a “killer strangelet” that would essentially eat the earth and leave a disfigured lump of “strange matter” in its wake. Many reports and papers have been written over the years scrutinizing the possible outcomes and side effects of the experiments of the collider, black holes among them. Black holes are a highly improbable result, but because of the nature of quantum physics, they cannot be ruled out. Dr. Arkani-Hamed, of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “The Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
The same matter that will be hurling around the LHC in May of this year already flies through our planet 100,000 times a day. The only difference here is that the matter will linger in the LHC — and that could pose a problem. Two men Walter Wagner, who studied physics and cosmic rays at the University of California, now a botanist living in Hawaii, and Luis Sancho, a theorist living in Barcelona, Spain have decided that the risk to the Earth is too high, so they are trying to sue CERN. They care for the Earth’s survival, just not enough to go where their suit might make a difference. CERN is a defendant in the case, but CERN is based in Switzerland and therefore not under the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court in Honolulu where the suit was filed on March 21. Other defendants are the US Department of Energy, which helped supply the large super-conduction magnets used in the collider; the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which constructed one of the magnets; and the National Science Foundation.
Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, wrote in a paper in 1974 that any created black hole would likely evaporate due to radiation and elementary particles. The two men who filed the suit know they cannot stop CERN directly, but believe that by stopping the Department of Energy from helping, they could put a hold on the project. Apparently they’re forgetting that there are 22 member states that make up CERN and that the United States actually only holds “Observer Status.”
The Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, faced similar concern over the destruction of the Earth when it began operating its largest collider in 2000. The collider has been smashing matter together since then without black holes or dragons being emitted. Incidentally Mr. Wagner sued them as well.
Over the years these institutions have brought humankind many important scientific advancements in the field of particle physics, that push the boundaries of human understanding. Projects like these are often attacked for being too expensive and not providing clear practicable results. The buildup of knowledge to the final result can yield practicable things, however. One of the most famous, and arguably the most widely used, is the World Wide Web. Tim Burners-Lee and Robert Cailliau created it in 1989 while working at CERN, and in 1993 it was given free of charge to the world.