I linked to this subtly in my post about my trip to the UK next month to visit Europe's new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but it deserves more attention. Two men are suing to stop the LHC from being switched on, saying it may be dangerous and might even destroy the Earth:
But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. [...] The lawsuit, filed March 21 ...
