Lawsuit: CERN particle accelerator could destroy Earth
Dan Fingerman
By Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 29 March 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html
The world's physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion
building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding
protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a
trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers
will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for
clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries
of nature.
But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that
scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or
CERN, have played down the chances 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.
--
DTM :<|
DanFingerman.com
Alan Kellogg
Nope, it's not going to destroy the Earth. What we have decided to do
is use it as a sort of restart button. Only this time we're clearing
out the cache.
You see, for the next simulation we've got a whole new technology,
which means entirely new hardware and software. No more Hitler or
Germany,and Egypt is toast. New nations, new histories, and even the
course of evolution is going to change a bit. (For example, expect at
least 2 species in the genus Homo, and possibly three.)
Probably the biggest change will be no more conodonts. You know,
lamprey's and hagfish. They just didn't make sense. And cephalopods
will be a bit more advanced. The biggest change for humans will be
psychological, you'll have more initiative. What it amounts to is,
when you find out about a mystery, you'll be driven to solve it until
it is solved.
But, this will not happen when the LHC first goes on-line. The
restart will be initiated in the Western year 2012. At which point
it's a new Big Bang, and most of you will be put into storage until
things are ready for you to be embodied. Though some of you will be
tasked with keeping an eye on things as they progress, and provide
guidance for Humanity etc.
But, don't change the way you live. It'll just confuse your friends
and neighbors, and if you told them why they'd think you're nuts.
Little over four years to go, I wish you luck.
(You knew there was something about me. :) )
Dan Fingerman
wrote:
> Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More
> By Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 29 March 2008
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html
A couple of jokes:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080330&mode=classic
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080401&mode=classic
--
DTM :<|
DanFingerman.com