Subscribe by EmailLHC: Why you won’t die today
September 10, 2008 by admin | 3 comments
Yes folks, now that the LHC has already fired 2 beams of protons, one clock-wise, and one counter clock-wise, you can be pretty sure that today won’t be the day you die. But it wasn’t supposed to happen anyways. Do you know why? Because no particle collisions have occured as of yet, and none will until October 21, 2008. But don’t worry, as we said recently, there’s absolutely no reason to be afraid.
This means that we’ll have to endure the endless paranoid rambling of wanna-be scientists for two more months, and that I’ll have to keep on moderating the 100’s of “We’re all gonna die” comments that we’re getting on some of our LHC-related posts. Bummer.
- CERN scientists spammed with death threats over LHC activation
- How the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Works… For Dummies
- Lawsuit filed to stop CERN sucking us all into an alternate universe
- The Six Billion Dollar Experiment
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phew
Glad that it all got off to a good start, but the condescending tone of these blog entries is pretty hard to swallow.
“Wanna-be scientists”, as you call them, surely have a right to protest a decision they disagree with, no matter how misguided, or otherwise?
Simply name-calling and dismissing risks involved is extremely small minded, so hopefully there will be someone posting to give a blow-by-blow account of what the theorised risks are, why they will theoretically fail to eventuate and what are the actual probabilities of them occuring.
As many people know, the risk doesn’t have to be great to still be a risk or to be unconscionable. I have seen few people argue that the creation, and persistence, of black-holes is a certainty, let alone a 50:50 proposition – most would say it was a chance in millions – but that doesn’t mean we should adopt a “let’s do it!” or “full steam ahead” mentality.
Belittling critics and criticisms, reasoned or unreasoned, as “wanna-be scientists” (dissenters) with one fell swoop is not the way to alay fears but a way to encourage a sense that CERN, and the interest groups involved, are acting irresponsibly.
Hi there… I thought I had added the link to the CERN report explaning why people should *not* be afraid.. anyhow, it’s there now if you want to read it.. and here’s the direct link.
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html