Word: rhic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...RHIC, which generates high-energy subatomic collisions between gold ions, quietly opened for business in 2000. Even RHIC’s sharpest opponents calculate the risk of a world-ending “strangelet scenario” to be very, very small. According to Posner, an upper-bound estimate of the danger of a strangelet disaster is 1 in 500,000 over the 10-year period for which RHIC will be in operation. An alternative estimate from Swiss and Israeli scientists puts the danger at 1 in 500 million. But although the likelihood of a strangelet catastrophe is minimal, should...
Posner blows the whistle on the Relativist High Ion Collider (RHIC)—affectionately known among physicists as “Rick”—a federally-financed research facility on Long Island...
...argument—that the likelihood of a world-ending strangelet scenario over the next decade is 1 in 10 million. In other words, there’s a 1 in 10 million chance that 6 billion people will die at some point in the next decade because of RHIC. Thus on average, we would expect RHIC to kill 60 people per year. Is that a sacrifice we should be willing to make to push the frontiers of physics forward...
Admittedly, the results of the RHIC experiments could be fascinating. They could “give us insight into the conditions of the early universe, and perhaps also the mechanics of super-dense conditions in black holes,” according to Physics Department Chairman John Huth...
...Harvard physicists’ rejection of Posner’s calculation suggests the risk of catastrophe posed by RHIC might fall within a margin that most of us would be willing to tolerate...