Word: lhc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...with Luis Sancho, petitioned for a temporary restraining order against the United States Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation, and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in order to stop the building and operating of CERN’s new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The reason for halting the construction the LHC is quite simple: the LHC, when normally functioning may lead to the destruction of the entire earth...
...specific concern filed by Wagner and Sancho is that according to some theories, the LHC, by fracturing atoms into smaller and smaller parts, may create one of three exotic yet dangerous possibilities. The first option is a strangelet, a small particle that makes other atoms strangelets until it “eventually [converts] all of Earth into a single larger ‘strangelet’ of huge size.” If you don’t like the prospect of being turned into exotic atomic material without your consent, then perhaps you should consider what?...
...CERN claims that it is actually not trying to turn the earth into a medium-sized black hole. On a question and answer forum, CERN explains, “The LHC has not been built to create black holes,” and goes on to explain that despite its evil-sounding acronym name fit for a James Bond terrorist organization, “CERN’s scientists also have families, parents, children, and friends,” which we can assume they don’t want to turn into strangelets...
...faring life is that all of them have been prevented either by a barrier that would prevent them from getting to our stage of development (i.e. conditions needed to start life) or by a barrier that destroyed them before they could begin spreading into space (i.e. they built a LHC). If the barrier is the latter, then humanity could be in store for a bumpy future...
...Wagner and Sancho’s lawsuit, while improbable, is not frivolous. After all, the one time we got it wrong would easily outweigh all the previous times we were overly cautious. Most likely, when the LHC goes online later this year, nothing will happen, which I will hear about from my basement with my jugs of water and a game of Scrabble...