A US District Court in Hawaii has been petitioned to stop the operation of
the
Cern
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) over fears that it might cause the end of the
world.
Walter Wagner, a former nuclear safety officer, has filed the suit as he
fears that the LHC could create a mini black hole that could swallow the planet.
He also expressed concerns that transmuting matter into so-called
strangelets
could change all other matter into a similar form.
The claims have been dismissed by physicists at Cern. "Some physicists
suggest that microscopic black holes could be produced in the collisions at the
LHC," said the organisation in a statement.
"However, these would only be created with the energies of the colliding
particles, which is equivalent to the energies of mosquitoes."
Cern insisted that no microscopic black holes produced inside the LHC could
generate a strong enough gravitational force to pull in surrounding matter.
Since the Earth is still here, there is no reason to believe that collisions inside the LHC are harmful
Cern statement
"If the LHC can produce microscopic black holes, cosmic rays of much higher
energies would already have produced many more," the statement added.
"Since the Earth is still here, there is no reason to believe that collisions
inside the LHC are harmful."
This is not the first time that the safety of the LHC has been called into
question. Russian scientists suggested last month that
time
travel may occur when the LHC fires up later this year.
It is unclear why Wagner's lawsuit has been filed in Hawaii, since the LHC is
located under the Swiss/French border and has no links with the US.
The LHC forms a 27km circle and is the world's largest piece of laboratory
equipment.
Once active it will fire a stream of protons into each other at near light
speed. The resulting collisions will generate examples of material found in the
first seconds of the universe.
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