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Asked by markus15 to Tim, Kristian, Joel on 8 Nov 2013.
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Kristian Harder answered on 8 Nov 2013:
No. Next question please. 😉
Seriously, a Big Bang like the one that created our universe involves A LOT of energy. I am sure we’d be proud if we could achieve something like that with our tiny machine on that little planet in the small galaxy somewhere in a random area of the universe, but we wouldn’t be able to do this. Ever.
As much as we try to put the maximum amount of energy into the collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, it’s not a lot. Ok, it is A LOT of energy for a small number of elementary particles, but on a human scale it’s really not much. Someone compared the energy involved in a single LHC collision to the energy of two mosquitoes colliding in mid-air. You wouldn’t those two poor mosquitoes to be able to accidentally destroy the planet, would you? 🙂
But: before the LHC was switched on, some people were worried about some kind of a runaway effect. For example, a collision at the LHC creating a small black hole, that then starts sucking up the planet (and ultimately the rest of the universe?). To be honest, I and many others of us laughed at that idea initially – this is just such a crazy idea, not at all in line with what we’ve learned about how particles work so far. But on second thought we realized that such concerns do need to be taken serious. We’ve been wrong about how the universe works often enough in history, so what if we’re wrong this time? But fortunately nature provided us with the answer. The earth’s atmosphere has been constantly bombarded with particles from outer space, the cosmic background radiation, with collisions of much much higher energy than we could ever hope to achieve with a man-made particle accelerator. This has been ongoing for billions of years, and nothing has happened. That is a very convincing proof that there is no risk of us doing any harm with our (comparatively) little machine.
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Joel Goldstein answered on 11 Nov 2013:
The total energy in each collision at the LHC is actually tiny (about a microJoule) so the effect is about the same as being hit by a mosquito in flight. For subatomic particles of course, this is a huge amount of energy, and that means that we are recreating conditions as they were in the universe just after the big bang.
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Tim Hollowood answered on 11 Nov 2013:
There is really no worry about that, the energies involved are just not big enough.
Actually though there are 2 other disturbing possibilities but let me assure you no one thinks these are at all likely. But they have been investigated just to make sure:
(1) The famous Higgs boson (pronounced bozon) can be thought of as a ripple on the Higgs field which is a bit like a magnetic field filling all of space. It’s actually the Higgs field that gives all the other part ices mass because it acts like treacle making it difficult for the other particle to move through it (hence inertia). Now the Higg’s field has a particular value and changing it a bit a one point in space should be make it ping back into its stable value like a rubber sheet. However, what if it’s not like that and by making Higgs particles at CERN we actually create an instability in the Higgs field. If this happens then a bubble of new Higgs field will be created which will sweep everything before it at the speed of light. Basically we are all toast but we wouldn’t see it coming.
This scenario is considered very very very unlikely.(2) OK second nightmare. The LHC may produce a mini black hole which is possible in some people modified theories of gravity (not the standard one). Black holes are greedy and suck up matter around them. Not good for us. The mini black hole would actually sink down into the centre of the earth and grow in size. This scenario is also considered very very very unlikely but two scientists in the US tried to get a court order again CERN to stop the LHC.
The fact that we got to November 2014 without either (1) or (2) happening is a good sign but as they say on crime watch, sleep well….
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