Whats up with the law suit over CERN project black hole on earth derf derf?

Question

What is there that I can do to help the people making the suit against them? Will it be effective before the project is up and running?

Answer 1

This is a new one to me. I have heard of neither the project nor the law suit, and I am very interested in scientific activities. However, if the project is named for what they are trying to do, then I can understand the suit; because it means they are trying to create a mini-black hole on earth, keeping it "alive" in order to study it. That would normally upset some people because they've heard how black holes suck up everything in their vicinity through a very strong gravitational pull. And while scientists are confident of their ability to control it, a lot of people are not so sure--partly, no doubt, because of Hollywood's portrayal of scientists' overconfidence.
As for what you can do; try finding out who instituted the law suit, contact them and ask what--if anything--you can do to help. On your own I'm not sure you could do much. Law suits always take time, partly because of backlogs in the court system, partly because each side needs time to gather information relevant to the case; so there's no telling how long it will take.

Answer 2

I recently watched a vodcast of an Australian TV show called Andrew Denton where he interviewed one of the many scientists working on this project. Although I knew most things he said, it was good to find out about them in depth. Now here is what will happen: When they fire the atoms, there will be a small chance it will create tiny black holes, but these will do no harm, rather they will be"pretty exciting". The black holes are just a side effect so to speak, and it is likened to the conditions of the big bang because when the particles collide, it will create, well, a big bang!

Answer 3

My understanding is that some people have filed suit to stop operation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Their concern is that the energies involved may result in the creation of quantum black holes. They are afraid that once these black holes are created, they will absorb matter and put the entire Earth at risk.

The problem with the suit is that someone hasn't run the numbers on the size of the black holes that may (mind you, may) be formed. A rough order of magnitude calculation suggests that the mass is going to be quite small with the resultant event horizon smaller than the size of a proton. This will make any absorbsion very limited.

In addition, black holes that small are going to be subject to Hawking radiation emission. This effect increases as the size of the black holes decreases. The ballpark figure I've heard is that the black hole will evaporate on the same timeframe as it would take to absorb one atomic particle. The ulitmate result will probably be a gamma-ray burst of an energy no larger than what the LHC is capable of providing.

I would suggest you find some other noble cause. This one isn't worth the paper it's printing on.