Thursday, April 3, 2008

Black hole devours Earth, maybe...


Most tales of apocalypse speak of grand nuclear wars, far-reaching global epidemics and the good old 2012 pole flipping, freeze-the-whole-world-over worry. Well, add one more doomsday scenario to that list: black holes.


Black holes sucking up the Earth seems far-fetched to say the least, but people in the scientific community take the possibility so seriously that two physicists took action.


That's what I'm talking about, get down on that gravity-sucking space anomaly! There's sure as hell nothing else of importance going on.


The issue revolves around a particle accelerator, a device used to smash atoms, outside Geneva due for completion this summer.


Physicists plan to use the $8 billion accelerator, called the Large Hadron Collider to “recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.”


The project alarmed two physicists who claim that the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) downplayed the risk of this accelerator creating a tiny black hole that could destroy the Earth, and maybe even the universe.


On March 21, physicists Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho filed a lawsuit in Honolulu to seek a temporary restraining order to stop CERN from proceeding with the project until it creates a safety and environmental assessment report.


No this is not a dream or sci-fi movie. The concern over accelerators creating black holes is nothing new in the physics world.


"The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots," said CERN theorist Michelangelo Mangano.


Legal obstacles aside with an American lawsuit against a European organization, there have been reports of these colliders producing what could be called black holes.


A New York-based particle accelerator produced a fireball whose core had “a striking similarity to a black hole.”


Other reports showed that, theoretically, a particle accelerator could be used to create a tiny black hole.


“An astronomical black hole forms when enough matter is squashed into a small enough space to reach a critical density. According to theory, the same critical density could be reached if two particles slam violently together, creating a tiny black hole.”


What the heck would us humans do with a black hole anyway? I guess we could research it. Harness it as an energy source. Go for a ride down the gravity hole. Back to this lawsuit.


Despite all of the war and tragedy in the world, these two physicists chose to fight the black hole battle. It will be interesting to see where the lawsuit goes, and whether this particle accelerator goes online.


And you can't blast someone for doing what they love, no matter how crazy it is. Let this be an inspiration to all those peoples out there who are wary of taking action. If you're that passionate about a cause, go for it, especially before a black hole eats you up.


Photo illustration by yours truly.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember reading about this in National geographic. Awesome work John. Keep it up!

Stephanie said...

Well shit.

That seems pretty scary.

You should write more science articles. This one was good.

Anonymous said...

Nice work. Congrats on graduating and the new job!

Valerie