A respected cosmologist has warned about the dangerous threats posed by particle accelerators.
Particle accelerators, such as CERN’S Large Hadron Collider, smash particles into each other at extremely high speeds to test theories relating to particle physics, find unsolved questions in physics, and discover new particles.
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, acknowledged that the high-speed collisions can help scientists discover new particles such as the Higgs boson, or the “God particle” that LHC physicists discovered in 2012.
Rees, however, warned that these particle accelerators come with risks.
In his new book On The Future: Prospects for Humanity, Rees warned of potential catastrophes that may occur as a result of experiments that smash particles at velocities that are close to the speed of light.
At this speed, the gravitational pull of these particles is trapped, which could theoretically produce a black hole that can suck in everything around it.
Quarks could also reassemble themselves into compressed objects known as strangelets.
Strangelets may be harmless by themselves, but some hypotheses suggest that strangelets, by contagion, can convert anything into a new form of matter and reduce our planet into a small ball.
Rees said that Earth can be transformed into a hyperdense sphere spanning just about 330 feet, or about the length of a soccer field.
It isn’t also just earth that could be in danger. Rees said that the energy produced by colliding particles could potentially rip the fabric of space.
“Some have speculated that the concentrated energy created when particles crash together could trigger a ‘phase transition’ that would rip the fabric of space,” Rees said, according to The Telegraph.
He added that this event would be a cosmic calamity and not just a terrestrial one.
The cosmologist, nonetheless said that these possibilities are remote, and should not stop scientists from conducting experiments with colliders that can offer a better understanding of the universe
Concerns that particle accelerators may destroy Earth and wipe out humanity are not new, but the team behind the LHC has time and again assured of its safety.
“Concerns about the safety of whatever may be created in such high-energy particle collisions have been addressed for many years,” CERN said. “LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern. Whatever the LHC will do, Nature has already done many times over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies.”
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