Some scientists are having tightened sphincters over a supercollider that’s about to go active:
Still worried that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth when it’s finally switched on this summer?
Um, well, you may have a point.
Three physicists have reexamined the math surrounding the creation of microscopic black holes in the Switzerland-based LHC, the world’s largest particle collider, and determined that they won’t simply evaporate in a millisecond as had previously been predicted.
Which threat to mankind is the most grave? Let’s see, black holes that might make the earth implode in seconds or global warming that might kill us all in, oh, a thousand years? One is as theoretical as the other, but one has the potential of messing us up real bad real quick.
If you recall, northern Durham County was on the list as a site for a superconducting supercollider some years back. That one was going to be much bigger and more powerful than the one in Switzerland, but it was never built. Maybe that’s a good thing. I’d hate for Durham County to have been responsible for destroying the world.
Waxahachie, Tex., eventually won the SSC sweepstakes. It was never built there, either. If it had been, and it destroyed the world as we know it, I’m sure George Bush would have been blamed. After all, Crawford is only 90 miles from Waxahachie.
