Physicists Promise Their New Toy Won’t Destroy the World 0
Black Hole Worries: Physicists Allay Fears of the End of the World
There are some who think that the new particle accelerator built outside of Geneva in Switzerland might create tiny black holes — which could grow big enough to suck up the Earth. Balderdash, say physicists.
The video looks a bit like a scene from a low-budget sci-fi horror film. A tiny hole slowly begins sucking in bits of the Earth in Switzerland with mountains, lakes and cities quickly falling into the growing gap. And it just keeps on growing — and growing. By the end of the 38 second movie, the entire planet has been swallowed up — and all that’s left is a shimmering ring in the inky blackness of outer space.
Absurd, perhaps. But a brief look around Internet blogs, and especially YouTube, makes it clear that there are a number of people out there who believe it is a very real possibility. The gigantic particle accelerator just now being completed outside Geneva at the European Organization for Nuclear Research — known as CERN — is set to be switched on soon. And some are concerned that, once the research facility begins bashing subatomic particles together at 99.999991 percent of the speed of light, dangerous black holes could be created and spread out of control.
The fear has spread fast and far in cyberspace. In addition, a scientist at the University of Tübingen, Dr. Otto E. Rössler, has lent a certain amount of academic weight to the skepticism. So much so that a group of German physicists has now published an open letter carrying assurances that the particle accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is in fact safe.
“There is no way that the LHC will produce black holes capable of swallowing up the Earth,” reads the letter from the Committee for Elementary Particle Physics (KET), a group of leading quantum physicists in Germany. “This claim is based on extremely well tested theories of physics and on observations of the cosmos.”
The head of KET, Dr. Peter Mättig, a particle physicist with the University of Wuppertal, concedes that disaster theories have not made much headway in the general public. “I don’t think there are many who believe it,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “But it is notable how often we have been asked about the problem. And we especially want to refute those, like Dr. Rössler, who try to use science to back up their claims.”