Geneva (Switzerland) - When the LHC is switched on in less than two days, Switzerland may finally pay the ultimate price for never having chosen sides.  In this case, for deciding not to choose to walk on the side of caution. That is, if what many scientists, watchdog groups and concerned activists believe is about to happen. The worst case doomsday scenario resulting from the operation of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) involves the total destruction of the Earth within minutes or days of the planned online time.  The best case doomsday scenarios involve a slow poisoning of the Earth through unexpected radioactive emissions. So, is the sky really falling? No, because many scientists believe that all such fears are unfounded and even silly.


TG Daily has spent some time compiling the doomsday warnings and arrived at a final conclusion regarding the state of the Earth:  The conclusion: Either the LHC is a ticking time bomb and switching it on may well be the last act we humans comit ... or not.  Read through the diverse set of compiled beliefs in this article and see if you fall into a particular camp. Before we start, let’s look at some quick background data about the LHC, what it is and why it is fascinating.


The LHC in a nutshell

The Large Hadon Collider (or LHC, as it is commonly known) is a 17 mile (27 km) long circular underground tunnel constructed at CERN (The European Center for Nuclear Research, or in French, Center European Research Nuclear) in Geneva, Switzerland, consuming 45 Megawatts of continuous power when in use.  The facility has been constructed 100 meters below the ground and houses a ring of superconducting 1232 dipole and 392 quadrupole magnets designed to accelerate the smallest bits of matter to 99.9% of the speed of light.  The purpose of the high speed motion is to collide the accelerated particles directly into other particles and watch how they explode upon impact, shattering their basic structure and quickly releasing and forming new particles.

Why do scientists believe all of this is important?  They're stuck.  Many of their dominant theories are beginning to break down as more and more high-end particle physics experiments are carried out.  In addition, there have been great advances in science from similar lower-energy collisions at previous facilities.  For example, before the LHC was built the most powerful collider in the world was Fermilab's Tevatron in Batavia, IL (consuming only 1.5 Megawatts).  While the LHC is 17 miles long and will ultimately accelerate particles at 7 TeV (tera electron volts), the Tevatron is only 4 miles long and accelerates at 1 TeV.  Still, even with its notably lesser capabilities it has been host to three major findings in the past 30 years, those which have rocked the scientific world.

Such enormous high speed collisions in "controlled environments" (meaning they're not taking place in Earth's upper atmosphere where scientists would be able watch them) provide the ability to probe deep  into matter in the search for building blocks and previously only theorized particles.  As noted, in 1997 and 2000, the discovery of the bottom quark and tau neutrino was made with the Tevatron.  And just last week in 2008, Fermilab announced they had observed 18 instances of  a "doubly strange" particle comprised of three quarks, the so-called Omega-sub-b, with two up quarks and one down quark.  This makes it the third (of six) particles found in the "One bottom quark" level of the Baryon Periodic Table, bringing scientists one step closer to proving through experimentation what their formulas predict in theory.

While the ultimate goal is much bigger than just observing new particles, namely finding a single formula to unify the four known forces of matter (the strong and weak nuclear forces as well as electromagnetism and gravitation via something called the Grand Unifying Theory, or GUT), it is very likely the intermediate steps will involve finding these kind of Omega-sub-b-like theorized particles, and then experimenting with them to push their theories beyond what is envisioned today.

The GUT would ultimately allow physicsts to relate all four fundamental forces of nature.  This knowledge will provide mankind with the real potential of harnessing otherwise unattainable sources of clean, renewable energy, as well as the manufacturing of materials which are light, strong and custom tweaked into a variety of uses for applications across the spectrum, making even more advances possible for mankind.  It is literally the Holy Grail of science endeavors.

Dr. Fabiola Giannotti, working at the LHC facility in Geneva, Switzerland, said with an observed degree of uncertainty in her voice to an Italian reporter for Corriere, "Do not be afraid of [the LHC].  Our superaccelerators are not going to destroy the Earth." And later, "The LHC is going to be the place and the moment where and when we will decide about the future [direction] of particle physics."  Dr. Giannotti is one of more than 10,000 scientists who have worked on creating the technology necessary to build the LHC over the past 20 years.  She is leading up the Atlas facility, one of the six detectors used to analyze the results of collissions.

Read on the next page: Advancing science and Theorized Risks