The Large Hadron Collider is ready

First, I want to appologize for not posting as often as I used to be, I’m really busy at the moment and don’t have much time to investigate new scams! That being said, if you don’t already know, the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made tomorrow, September 10.

There are a lot of fears surrounding the LHC and it’s for a good reason: it’s one of the most complex machine ever built and could be able to spawn mini black holes. It looks a little scary I know, but I wrote a post a couple of months ago about the LHC and why it shouldn’t be a threat and it explains a lot of important things. (See that I use “should” here because it’s so complex, even Stephen Hawkins could be wrong! ). If you haven’t read the article I suggest you do and if you’re too lazy, here’s a straight to the point explanation of why you shouldn’t fear:

While it is totally possible for the collider to generate a black hole, it wouldn’t result in a doomsday scenario simply because we have to put everything in perspective. A black hole generated in the collider would be too small to have any sort of influence. Mangano, a member of the CERN group studying the safety of the collider doesn’t deny the possibility that the collider could spawn a black hole, but he says the energy would be concentrated in a space thinner than a human hair. That’s simply too small to even have a slight influence on us. That would be a spectacular thing though, because black holes are still a mystery to scientists.

There’s also the other fact that the energy created by smashing protons and lead ions together might not produce enough energy to create a black hole. Energy created by the collider can reach 14 trillion electron volts, but it is not widely accepted as being enough to spawn a black hole.

There you go, we’ll see tomorrow if everything went right!