Could the Large Hadron Collider make an Earth-killing black hole?
No. Not even if you violate the laws of physics in two fundamental ways.
John Oliver: So, roughly speaking, what are the chances that the world is going to be destroyed? One-in-a-million? One-in-a-billion?
Walter Wagner: Well, the best we can say right now is a one-in-two chance.
John: 50–50?
Walter: Yeah, 50–50… It’s a chance, it’s a 50–50 chance.
John: You come back to this 50–50 thing, what is it Walter?
Walter: Well, if you have something that can happen and something that won’t necessarily happen, it’s going to either happen or it’s gonna not happen. And, so, it’s kind of… best guess at this point.
John: I’m… not sure that’s how probability works, Walter. –The Daily Show
Every time we push the frontiers of knowledge, it comes with a risk, and it comes with the prospect of a reward. The risks are many: failure to find anything new, futility of the experiment to function as designed, and even the possibility of damage and destruction if things go awry. But the rewards can be tremendous, including the unlocking of new knowledge, the development of new technologies, and the advancement of the entire human enterprise of science.
One of the places that personifies all of this is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, where we’ve begun…
