LHC disaster scenarios?

Question

Are there any potential disaster scenarios related to LHC experiments at CERN? If so, how can we avoid the potential apocalypse while increasing our knowledge of particle physics?

Answer 1

Well, there are possibilities, but they are highly unlikely.

Theoretically, we can form black holes by splitting atoms. It is possible that these black holes could devour our galaxy, but this is unlikely, because any black hole this size would quickly dissipate due to Hawking Radiation (which, just like the micro black hole, is also hypothetical).

We could somehow create magnetic monopoles, which would catalyze proton decay exponentially. I'm not sure how magnetic monopoles would be created, that's just what i was taught. However, if they sped up proton decay, then every atom would be vulnerable and all of our current understanding of matter would cease to exist and we'd be left with a cloud of mostly photons and pions.

Another possible problem is with the creation of stable strange matter. If strangelets are created, then they can potentially affect all of the quarks in all of the matter present in our solar system. All of the earth would rapidly convert to strange matter and our planet could be potentially converted into a sea of QGP, although highly unlikely.

All of these scenarios are nearly impossible.

Hope that helped.

Answer 2

OneMoreTime's logic is flawed. Such an apocalypse is intrinsically unobservable because of what it does to the observer. The rate of occurrence of unobservable events cannot be empirically determined, or even bounded.

That fact that he is able to note that our portion of the universe has not been destroyed only implies that such a collision (natural or otherwise) hasn't happened near enough to reach us yet. Since only observers in such places are capable of writing (and reading) such statements, the observation is biased to the point of providing no information whatsoever about what fraction of the universe has *not* been destroyed. We already know there are a lot of places in universe with no observers around for all sorts of reasons. What's one more?

This is the result of a basic confusion about prior and conditional probability. I suggest reviewing Bayes Theorem.

That said, note that natural collisions of equal magnitude are ongoing. What is correct to say is that if LHC has a significant chance of destroying the local universe if it's turned on, the odds of us being around long enough to turn it on are negligible.

Answer 3

Actually, it's not a far-fetched idea to think that an energetic particle collision could create a region governed by different gauge fields and symmetries, and that this region would expand at the speed of light -- basically "destroying" our universe.

Not far-fetched at all, but also not very likely, considering the fact that energetic particle collisions have been happening naturally since the beginning of time, and we haven't had a cataclysm so far...