I don’t know if you realize this, but everyone on the planet might die very soon, very quickly. I’m not talking about global warming or terrorism or anything catastrophic like that. I’m talking about what could very possibly be the biggest threat facing all of humanity: physicists.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is nearing the completion of the construction of an enormous particle accelerator located 100 meters below the surface of Europe. The device was built with the intention of studying aspects of particle physics, which until now could only be observed theoretically. The Large Hadron Collider, as the device has come to be known, sends beams of tiny, subatomic particles flying at 99 percent of the speed of light toward each other with the intention of them colliding.
It is in that collision, CERN physicists say, that some of the deepest mysteries of science can be observed. It is also in that instance that a black hole can be created, those same scientists say.
The probability of that happening, they say, is less than one in several billion. They’ve actually studied this – no one wants to be responsible for ending the world – but two men from Hawaii weren’t convinced. In late March, Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho tried to halt CERN from activating the Large Hadron Collider in US District Court, which has no jurisdiction over the Switzerland-based CERN. The case was thrown out of court a few weeks later.
Even before the case was dismissed, CERN refused to subject themselves to the court’s whims.
“It’s hard to see how a district court in Hawaii has jurisdiction over an intergovernmental organization in Europe,” James Gillies, head of communications at CERN, told the New York Times in a March 28 article titled, “Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More.”
It wasn’t the first time Wagner and Sancho had sued CERN or other major scientific bodies, and many in the field have deemed them crackpots. And maybe they are. But isn’t the possibility of destroying the planet, the solar system and maybe so much more too great?
When Joe, one of my co-workers, starts sentences about setbacks, he always says “It’s not the end of the world, but …” Only in this case, it might be. If the men and women from CERN activate their device, they just might start the end of the world.
But then again, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing. A black hole might actually be cool. Famed physicist Stephen Hawking said if he got to choose how he’d die, he’d want to die by being eaten by a black hole (I’m paraphrasing, his answer was more technical and full of jargon). And since Hawking is a whole lot smarter than me, he just might be on to something.
Since no one has been sucked up by a black hole yet, no one really knows what will happen. The whole phenomenon might be interesting, with space and time changing so much that the universe becomes unrecognizable.
And if everyone dies at once, in the same instant, would any of us even notice it happened? Maybe I have been unusually harsh on physicists, because if CERN’s research goes according to plan, it won’t affect me at all. And if it doesn’t, the black hole probably won’t affect me either.
– Matt Collette is a senior journalism major and member of The News staff.
