Strangelets on the BBC’s mind and ours as date nears for Large Hadron Collider (LHC); first beams scheduled for August

Have you been following the development of the Large Hadron Collider whose purpose is to collide proton beams at levels of energy never before produced in a particle accelerator? That’s a complex way to ask you if you’ve been following the news about the LHC and the fears some have that black holes might be created and/or strangelets might take matter over, transforming that matter into some really strange matter. The physicists are at it again, and I can see why they’re so excited. No one’s ever done this before—created a process something like the Big Bang scientific types attribute the origins of Earth to. The European Center for Nuclear Research is in charge, but scientists from a number of countries are participating including the U.S. The video below gives an idea of the worst-case scenario.

A former radiation expert and a writer have teamed up, suing in a Honolulu District Court to stop the collider from going forward until CERN proves it’s safe. The collider is located in Switzerland. The lawsuit rests on the plaintiffs’ beliefs there’s a possibility the LHC will create tiny black holes which would then suck us all up or perhaps create strangelets. In the latter case we literally might not recognize ourselves. There’s also the matter of monopoles. You might want to read the safety report yourself. This will be an epic accomplishment, but is epic destruction possible as well?

The thought of this experiment makes my skin crawl—the idea of that sort of force, but one scientist reassured Science Daily. He said, “…nature is continuously creating LHC-like collisions when much higher-energy cosmic rays collide with the Earth's atmosphere, with the Sun, and with other objects such as white dwarfs and neutron stars.” There are a number of media stories reassuring us about the safety of the LHC (See references below). Echoing throughout the recesses of my Western-educated mind is the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel for some reason.

The clip below from the BBC Docudrama End Day, doesn’t reassure us very much—check out the 24 style and the detachment in the script because all the audio occurs third-party, by way of TV screens which the viewer sees along with the characters. We see but don’t engage with the scientist heading to turn the key on the fictional collider. The scientist is basically god of all forward motion in the drama, yet he never says a word to us. This is fictional. I kept telling myself that.

What needles me is what can go wrong with this experiment and what will happen if the worst occurs? Are we at least capable of truly establishing those scenarios?  What’s really going to happen when those protons collide at a history-making level of energy, and am I guaranteed strangelets are either fictional or  at the least non-threatening? Even worse, will this process ever be used for a weapon, or for other negative purposes rather than for good?

The experts tell me not to worry, but anytime an expert tells me that, well, to be honest, I worry. Just a bit.