NewScientist wrote:The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is nearing completion at CERN, the European centre for particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists hope it will begin operations in mid-July.
The collider will simulate conditions less than a billionth of a second after the big bang, by smashing protons together at enormous energies. Physicists hope to resolve long-standing questions, such as why particles have mass and whether space has hidden extra dimensions.
But Wagner and Sancho's court papers raise theoretical scenarios in which the LHC could create particles that gobble up the Earth, such as "killer strangelets". Strangelets are hypothetical blobs of matter containing "strange" quarks, as well as the usual "up" and "down" types that make up ordinary matter.
If a strangelet were stable and negatively charged, it might begin eating the nuclei of ordinary matter, converting them into strange matter. Eventually the menacing chain reaction could assimilate our entire planet and everyone on it.
Не приведет ли неистовое любопытство человека к непредсказуемым результатам ? Точно сказать, что получится никто не может (для того и строился ускоритель). Может некоторые вещи лучше и не знать ?
James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN wrote:What we want to do is get this machine up and running. We'll show people that the world is not going to disappear.
Беспроигрышное заявление.
Если он не прав, претензии никто уже не предъявит. Что ж... поживем - посмотрим...(обратный отсчет до большого баха)
New Scientist
MSNBC CosmicLog
