The Large Hadron Collider – advancing our knowledge or our doomsday?

The Large Hadron Collider is the largest man-made high-energy particle accelerator, which aims to allow scientists to test theories of particle physics. Through the collider, Physicists hope to find answers to some of the world’s still unsolved mysteries, such as the existence of the Higgs boson, a.k.a the God’s particle. Ultimately, it would advance our knowledge about the universe that we live in, and address the questions as to how it all began. However, some people has raised concerns as to the safety of the collider, due to the nature of the amount of  energy involved in the experiments and of the many laws of physics still unknown to us. There is even a website called Has The Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet, signifying the existence of large amount of concerns from members of the scientific community and the general public.

The Large Hadron Collider lies in a tunnel 175 metres beneath the border of France and Switzerland near Geneve, Switzerland

Opposition of the large hadron collider has proposed two such “ways” the world as we know it will end because of the Large Hadron Collider:

Micro black holes

Although the theory of the large hadron collider would ultimately reach energies high enough to create black holes has been disproved by the Standard Model of particle physics, some extensions of the Standard Model do however predicts the possible existence of micro black holes during the operation of the collider. Unlike the widely known black holes, micro black holes loses mass quickly than it gains, and eventually dissipates and vanishes. Therefore they are deemed harmless by most theories of physics now known to man.

Strangelets

A Strangelet is a hypothetical particle that consists of equal number of up, down and strange quarks, the elementary particles that form matters. Physicists predict the creation of such particle would results in a fusion process in which all nuclei that form all matter in a planet would be converted to strange matters. However, currently models suggest that strangelets, even if they can be produced, are short-lived and unstable under low temperatures, where the collision occurs in energies higher than the stable environment in orders of magnitudes.

Current theories have predicted the probability of a catastrophic event happening because of the collider is virtually none. However, if you are one of the people that lose sleep thinking about possibility of the end of world, you can rest assured until the year 2015, because during which the Large Hadron Collider has been shut down for upgrades since the end of 2012.

Jonathan Lui