We’re all doomed!
Posted by Andrew Adams on September 9, 2008
Filed Under Media, Science |
Exciting times as scientists at CERN prepare to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Wednesday. Over the course of the next months and years some of the really big questions in science could be answered; will they prove the existence of the Higgs boson, the “god particle”? Will they discover the nature of dark matter? This is genuinely exciting stuff and the LHC is a tribute not only to the advances in human knowledge which enabled us to build the thing and the international co-operation which allowed it to happen but the notion that the pursuit of human knowledge is in itself a noble thing worthy of the billions of pounds which has been spent on building the LHC.
Not everyone sees it such a positive light though, and a small number of scientists have warned that the LHC could create a mini-black hole which could envelop the earth, and they have even resorted to using the ECHR to try and block the project. However, these are fairly marginal figures and the large majority of scientists are certain that although they cannot totally rule out any risk it is infintessimally small.
This has not however prevented a number of doom-laden articles appearing, where else, in the Daily Mail. Here Mike Hanlon dons his sandwich board and paints a dire picture of the potential dangers -
“earthquakes would start unexpectedly, alerting geologists that something terrible, unimaginable, was amiss.
After a few days, these seismic disturbances would reach catastrophic proportions.”
Cities would be levelled, the oceans would rise and wash in a series of mega-tsunamis that would attack the world’s coasts, killing millions.”
Imagine the effect that will have on house prices! And it wouldn’t even be Gordon Brown’s fault.
Comments
Leave a Reply