Large Hadron Colliders switch-on wont end the world

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A new report has provided the most comprehensive evidence availableto confirm that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)s switch-on, due onSeptember 10, poses no threat to mankind.
Washington, September 6 : A new report has provided the mostcomprehensive evidence available to confirm that the Large HadronCollider (LHC)'s switch-on, due on September 10, poses no threat tomankind.
Located on the border of France and Switzerland, the LHC is theworld's largest particle accelerator complex.
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, titled 'Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions',published in IOP Publishing's Journal of Physics G: Nuclear andParticle Physics, proves that if particle collisions at the LHC hadthe power 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.
According to the Safety Assessment Group, "Nature has alreadyconducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHCexperimental programmes on Earth - and the planet still exists."
The Safety Assessment Group has compared the rates of cosmic raysthat bombard Earth, other planets in our solar system, the Sun andall the other stars in our universe itself to show thathypothetical black holes or strangelets, that have raised fears insome, will in fact pose no threat.
The report concludes that, since cosmic-ray collisions are moreenergetic than those in the LHC, but are incapable of producingvacuum bubbles or dangerous magnetic monopoles, we should not feartheir creation by the LHC.
Though LHC collisions will differ from cosmic-ray collisions inthat any exotic particles created will have lower velocities, theSafety Assessment Group shows that even fast-moving black holesproduced by cosmic rays would have stopped inside the Earth orother astronomical bodies.
Their existence proves that any such black holes could not gobblematter at a risky rate.
As the Safety Assessment Group puts it, "Each collision of a pairof protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparableto that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole producedwould be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists."
They conclude that such microscopic black holes could not growdangerously.
ANI


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