Re: Serious quesiton about large hadron collider

Erik Max Francis wrote:
Torbjorn Lindgren wrote:

A bit of that potential is probably lost due to directionality but I
can't see how that would give you much more than a factor of 2. You'd
probably would need an accelerator ring the size of our solar system
to generate those kind of per particle energy levels! (using current
technology).

So while I'm no physicist I think it's pretty clear than the entire
meme that LHC is dangerous due to the collisions is downright silly,
it would be happening all the time all over the universe if it could
happen at LHC energy levels.

You don't have to be a physicist to realize that the concerns are completely unwarranted, as you have so deftly pointed out. If the results of any particle accelerator could come anywhere near causing the kind of bad things that people are concerned about, then we wouldn't be here in the first place, since they'd have happened long before we came around.

I'm not losing any sleep over the LHC causing the end of the world, but
there is a reasonable counter-argument that's been proposed against what
you're saying. There are some long-shot theories under which it would be
possible to make microscopic black holes at LHC energies. If those
theories are right, then cosmic rays are making black holes in our
atmosphere all the time. However, those black holes are created at
a center-of-mass velocity close to the speed of light, so the holes
would pass through the earth quickly and do no harm. At the LHC, the
center of mass is at rest.
.

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