Large Hadron Collider Switch-on Fears Are Completely Unfounded, ...

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The LHC Safety Assessment Group have reviewed and updated a studyfirst completed in 2003, which dispels fears of universe-gobblingblack holes and of other possibly dangerous new forms of matter,and confirms that the switch-on will be completely safe.
The report explains that if particle collisions at the LHC had thepower to destroy the Earth, we would never have been given thechance to exist, because regular interactions with more energeticcosmic rays would already have destroyed the Earth or otherastronomical bodies.
The Safety Assessment Group writes, “Nature has alreadyconducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHCexperimental programmes on Earth – and the planet stillexists.”
The Safety Assessment Group compares the rates of cosmic rays thatbombard Earth, other planets in our solar system, the Sun and allthe other stars in our universe itself to show that hypotheticalblack holes or strangelets, that have raised fears in some, will infact pose no threat.
The report also concludes that, since cosmic-ray collisions aremore energetic than those in the LHC, but are incapable ofproducing vacuum bubbles or dangerous magnetic monopoles, we shouldnot fear their creation by the LHC.
LHC collisions will differ from cosmic-ray collisions in that anyexotic particles created will have lower velocities, but the SafetyAssessment Group shows that even fast-moving black holes producedby cosmic rays would have stopped inside the Earth or otherastronomical bodies. Their existence proves that any such blackholes could not gobble matter at a risky rate.
As the Safety Assessment Group writes, “Each collision of apair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energycomparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black holeproduced would be much smaller than those known toastrophysicists.” They conclude that such microscopic blackholes could not grow dangerously.
As for the equally hypothetical strangelets, the review uses recentexperimental measurements at the Brookhaven NationalLaboratory’s Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider, New York, toprove that they will not be produced during collisions in the LHC.
Journal reference : . Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions . Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics , September 5, 2008