Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Renowned Cosmologist Professor Martin Rees thinks a particle accelerator experiment gone awry could destroy the world – though there are good reasons to doubt the significance of this risk.
Earth could shrink if black hole experiments fail, astronomer warns
By Lauren Fruen, The Sun
October 2, 2018…
Professor Lord Martin Rees has said a “doomsday scenario” could see our planet reduced to 330 feet across if particle accelerator experiments mess up.
The respected astronomer made the outlandish warning in his new book, “On The Future: Prospects for Humanity.”
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The Telegraph reports how Rees also claims “a black hole could form and then suck in everything around it.”
Lord Rees added: “The second scary possibility is that the quarks would reassemble themselves into compressed objects called strangelets.”
“That in itself would be harmless. However, under some hypotheses a strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encounters into a new form of matter, transforming the entire earth in a hyperdense sphere about one hundred meters (328 feet) across.”
A third danger is that the particle accelerators could destroy the Earth by a “catastrophe that engulfs space itself,” according to the scientist.
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Read more: https://nypost.com/2018/10/02/earth-could-shrink-if-black-hole-experiments-fail-astronomer-warns/
Fun though it is to contemplate these outlandish possibilities, there is a good reason to doubt whether any of these possibilities are a significant risk.
Every day the Earth is bombarded by untold billions of cosmic ray particles emitted long ago by violent distant cosmic events such as the formation of black holes. Many of the particles which strike the Earth are orders of magnitude more energetic than anything we are ever likely to produce. Some particles like the infamous “Oh-my-god” particle which struck Earth in 1991 with an energy of 3×10^8 TeV, hitting us at 99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light defy explanation – we shall likely never find a way to produce particle energies of that magnitude (for comparison the Large Hadron Collider, Earth’s most powerful particle accelerator, produces particles at around the 4TeV range).
The point is the Earth has already been struck many times by particles of a very broad range of energies, including the range of energies used by particle physicists. If anything bad was going to happen due to a collision between particles of a specific energy, it should have already happened long ago when a cosmic ray of that energy struck the Earth.
On the other hand we have the Fermi Paradox – the mystery of the missing aliens. One possible explanation for why our universe seems so empty of intelligent alien life is that (almost?) all technological civilisations make a common mistake – they reach a level of technology which enables them to commit an act which results in their own destruction. One possible candidate for that act of self destruction is a high energy particle physics experiment which goes horribly wrong.
I haven’t read Professor Rees’ book, so for all I know he has an explanation for the cosmic ray flaw in the “particle experiment will destroy the world” theory. But for now I’m not going to be losing any sleep over this alleged risk.
Update (EW) Added the paragraph “The point is the Earth has already been struck many times…” to clarify the Cosmic Ray objection to the alleged risk of particle physics experiments.
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So we’re still doomed, then.
Harald tells why no Haden Collider can kaputt solar system or even universe:
every minimal time there’s produced a pair of quarks – up, down / left spin, … AND + a third RANDOMLY which destroys the first pair by mating with one of that couple.
So matter destroys antimatter by leaving 1 quark FOR THE NEXT ROUND.
Blasting the same container with invisible previous buildups inside it isn’t what happens in nature.
Years ago I heard a debate on the LHC as a potential earth destroyer. As I remember it, the argument for concern was as follows:
High energy collisions are ubiquitous everywhere, including earth, but they’ve clearly not caused widespread collapse of planets. That would argue that transient black holes from high energy collisions (even if they do occur) are not likely to grow. And that conclusion in turn would argue that the LHC is unlikely to create a stable, all-consuming, black hole on earth.
However, the high energy collisions in the LHC may be different from ‘wild’ high energy collisions … in that the LHC causes head-on collisions of identical particles. That sort of collision would be much more likely to cause events with small inertia relative to the point of collision than would collisions in the ‘wild.’ Transient black holes from ‘wild’ high energy collisions would be blasted away from the collision point rapidly. But the LHC would provide many more zero inertia events. So perhaps LHC operation would create events that would be exposed to a dense matter environment (the center of the earth?) before they dissipated.
The problem is, small black holes dissipating is a theoretical conclusion. Small black holes can’t be detected in a container and that container will be bombarded over and over.
There are theorists who say that black holes can’t dissipate if there’s a quantum length around them which doesn’t allow for Hawking radiation. They will persist until they’re bombarded with enough energy to start a chain reaction of mass accumulation. Also theorists differ about the size of the quantum mass.
Theorists tried to sue the LHC, but the judge in the case in Hawaii said that she wasn’t qualified to make a decision.
The more energy that becomes available to the LHC the more dangerous this becomes. Of course no one knows what that level of energy is. The theorists getting the money at the LHC tell us there’s nothing to worry about.