Today, the New York Times runs a hilarious article on a lawsuit filed to stop the activation of the particle accelerator. Among other things, the lawsuit alleges that:
[The] collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Yes, clearly NEPA violations are what we most need to be worried about here. If you're playing along at home, query: what jurisdiction is proper, remembering that the organization is based in Switzerland, and given that the structure is in France and Switzerland, are they really required to file an EIS? Sure, we make and maintain the magnets for the structure. But, admitting that I don't know all the ins and outs of NEPA, I still whiles hae ma doots about those choices. Tracy thinks it's just a publicity stunt; I think they may just have a lawyer who's a little out of practice:
Mr. Wagner, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, studied physics and did cosmic ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a doctorate in law from what is now known as the University of Northern California in Sacramento.
Yeah, I have no right to be elitist, but I do think it's worth pointing out when your law school has to put a disclaimer section on its webpage.
To be fair about the relative assessment of danger, the plaintiffs' previous track record isn't that hot:
This is not the first time around for Mr. Wagner. He filed similar suits in 1999 and 2000 to prevent the Brookhaven National Laboratory from operating the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. That suit was dismissed in 2001. The collider, which smashes together gold ions in the hopes of creating what is called a “quark-gluon plasma,” has been operating without incident since 2000.
Whew! But any feeling of calm I may have felt was more than dispelled by the last paragraph:
Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
Oh, okay.
Wait, what?
There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
NOT REASSURING
2 comments:
My boyfriend, who is more of an expert in this sort of engineering conundrum, explained to me that it's important to bear in mind that it's only a possibility that it might create dragons that would eat us. He says it's just as possible that it will create friendly dragons, which would obviously justify the risk.
Well, okay. In that case I say roll the dice.
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