Scientists get death threats over Large Hadron Collider

[n2doc]

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 05/09/2008


Scientists working on the world's biggest machine are being besieged by phone calls and emails from people who fear the world will end next Wednesday, when the gigantic atom smasher starts up.

The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, where particles will begin to circulate around its 17 mile circumference tunnel next week, will recreate energies not seen since the universe was very young, when particles smash together at near the speed of light.



Hadron Collider: The final pieces slot into place



Such is the angst that the American Nobel prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has even had death threats, said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, adding: "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

The head of public relations, James Gillies, says he gets tearful phone calls, pleading for the £4.5 billion machine to stop.

"They phone me and say: "I am seriously worried. Please tell me that my children are safe," said Gillies.

Emails also arrive every day that beg for reassurance that the world will not end, he explained.

Others are more aggressive. "There are a number who say: "You are evil and dangerous and you are going to destroy the world."

more:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml

[Kutjara]

1. Best quote ever:

"Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, says everything that needs to be said.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ZombieHorde]

10. says everything that needs to be said.

I disagree. Since we complain that many people are ignorant of science, we should take opportunities to educate the public. This is one of those opportunities.

Congratulations, you have found the hidden text!

[quiet.american]

2. I've been reading about this and it's so sci-fi, I haven't quite been able to take it seriously.

All I can think of is, just don't mess around and beam us into some time warp before my president, Barack Obama, is elected!

[AzNick]

6. Or sends you to a different dimension where you're a republican

Imagine the horror haha lol

[kurth_]

3. Simple explanation:

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060919_black_holes.html

...The chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.

Stephen Hawking calculated all black holes should emit radiation, and that tiny black holes should lose more mass than they absorb, evaporating within a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, "before they could gobble up any significant amount of matter," Landsberg said.

CERN spokesman and former research physicist James Gillies also pointed out that Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn't been destroyed yet.

"Still, let's assume that even if Hawking is a genius, he's wrong, and that such black holes are more stable," Landsberg said. Nearly all of the black holes will be traveling fast enough from the accelerator to escape Earth's gravity. "Even if you produced 10 million black holes a year, only 10 would basically get trapped, orbiting around its center," Landsberg said.

However, such trapped black holes are so tiny, they could pass through a block of iron the distance from the Earth to the Moon and not hit anything....

[TlalocW]

4. Seriously

These people need to start wearing white lab coats, large rubber gloves, goggles, and get frizzy hairdos for like the first couple of weeks they start experiments. At least wear it in the parking lot while you walk from their cars into the labs while laughing maniacally and promising that those who have wronged them in the past will rue... RUE the day they did so, the fools.

TlalocW

[UndertheOcean]

7. Twats!

[TreasonousBastard]

8. IT CAN! IT CAN! I saw it on Eureka when someone made...

a black hole and it almost swallowed the planet, so it must be true.

(Ya just don't wanna mess with black holes, you twat!)

[no_hypocrisy]

9. Maybe the fundamentalists are up in arms b/c the Bible didn't frame Armageddon

in the form of a super-collider but armies and explosions and fire and stuff.