Re: CERN Atom Smasher May End the World

On 2008-04-14, Eivind Kjorstad <eivindorama@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Yeah. Sure. You can accelerate particles to 99.999% of C or
> thereabouts, crash it into something

In this case, crash it into something that has exactly the same mass
and is going as close as human science can arrange in exactly the
opposite direction with the same energy.


> and end up with a black hole that by a MINDBOGGLING coincidence has
> a speed relative to earth of less than 10km/s or so.
>
> Which doesn't sound very likely.

Oh, I agree that it is an incredibly unlikely scenario.  We'd almost
certainly see billions of signatures of stable black holes before one
hit that particular "jackpot".


> Besides, it's moot anyway; any black hole created at the energies
> involved would eva****ate near-instantly anyway.

I wouldn't bet the existence of Earth and all life upon it just on
that untested theory.  It's still a safe experiment, but for other
reasons.


- Tim