Today's news: woman fails to save the Earth
March 10th 2010 06:18
The Large Hadron Collider
The woman, who has not been named, was convinced a resumption of scientific work at the collider, which has had a checkered and controversial history, posed a serious threat to the planet. She was so worried, she took her case to the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.
The Large Hadron Collider is a high-energy particle collider. Built in a 27-kilometre tunnel under the border between Switzerland and France, it was designed primarily to simulate the conditions prevalent during the Big Bang, and thus help scientists explain the origins of the universe.
The facility was opened, with great fanfare, in September 2008, only to break down after nine days. It stayed broken down for 14 months, opening again briefly in December last year before shutting down again, this time to get it ready for collisions at new "unfathomed" levels. It was these tests, which began last month, that the unidentified woman believed placed the world in danger of being sucked into a black hole.
It is thought she feared that scientists would find the answer to the biggest question of all — how do particles acquire mass? This is the holy grail of the scientists at work at the Large Hadron Collider. They are looking specifically for a surmised entity known as the Higgs Boson which could provide the answer. The Higgs Boson is more commonly referred to as the God Particle.
This is not to be confused with another theoretical particle called a strangelet which earlier opponents of the Large Hadron Collider said posed a great danger. If a strangelet was released, they claimed, it would turn the Earth to goo.
The German Constitutional Court, in its ruling on the latest protest against the collider, said: "The overwhelming scientific opinion is that the experiments carried out at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) present no dangers."
They then said the woman who feared we were all destined to become dinner for a black hole was "unable to give a coherent account of how her fears would come about".
Agence France Presse
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