This could be my last blog entry. This could be the last time you read a blog.
How many of you know about CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire/European Council for Nuclear Research)? About the testing planned in a giant particle collider beneath the bucolic cowfields of Switzerland.
Imagine humans trying to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang, in order to "better understand how the universe evolved".
Now imagine what would happen if colliding particles created a black hole. Or a strangelet... (For the uninformed, that would mean a fusion chain-reaction of nuclei--of our planet--into the type of quark matter believed to be inside stars!)
It could happen. Lawyers in the United States and Europe have already attempted to halt the experiment. So far they have been disregarded. Not without reason: scientists say the chance of something disastrous happening is like 50 million to one.
Hmm... I wonder how they came to that number. Seeing that they are waiting to see what is going to happen, that is...
I love technology. Probably more than I should. Looking forward a hundred years, the majority of the world’s problems will be solved by technology. If we spend the resources now to develop those technologies. And if the planet survives that long…
Perhaps by the time you read this, the experiment will have already happened. If it failed--that is, they did not succeed in getting photons to collide--we will have another chance to weigh the benefits versus the dangers here. Or maybe nothing bad will happen...
Let’s just hope it doesn’t end up looking like this:
