This was in "News of the Weird", which is run in my local community paper (I get nostalgic sometimes, and read something that's not on the Internet):

In July, the director of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., finally got around to forming a committee of physicists to explore whether the lab's replication of the world-forming Big Bang, scheduled for later in 1999, could possibly backfire and destroy the Earth. Full nuclear collisions by the lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider will start in the fall, building to the Big Bang. Some physicists believe there is a small chance that the machine could create new kinds of matter or form mini-"black holes" and suck in all surrounding matter.

(Damn, now we'll never get to see the outcome of the doomer/polly debate!)

Anyone know of any sources for further info, on this?

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 13, 1999

Answers

I happen to know first hand that such occurences are probable and completely plausible if the scientists go ahead with this expiriment. I know because about three years ago I had a very small nuclear reaction in my hall closet that produced a number of quarks and nuons. I can't trace the origin of the reaction all the way to it's source but I think it had something to do with the fact that I put the dog food and cat food on the same shelf. Anyway, the was a subsequent nuclear reaction and sure enough a tiny little black hole formed in the back behind the trash can. I've lost house keys, a whisk broom, an almost full box of garbage bags, and to top it all off I am being taxed by the Federal Government for disrupting the Space/Time field without applying for Form 4587F. Just FIY, in case any of you are thinking about building your own Big Bang machines.

-- (the taxman@cometh.com), August 13, 1999.

Damn! The cat food/dog food thing! Sometimes it just takes a while to put 2 and 2 together. Now I know what happened to my missing socks!

But seriuouly, folks, has anyone seen other mentions of this story?

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 13, 1999.

seriously, even.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 13, 1999.

Bokonon (I love Vonnegut!),

There are two other threads that I recall on this topic a few weeks ago. I think the source was the London Times. They are buried somewhere in the archives...you might try the miscellaneous category. Also, Brookhaven's website has additional info about the project.

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), August 13, 1999.

RUOK,
See the cat? See the cradle?

My bug-out bag has A small selection of Vonnegutt novels in it (Can't face the end of the world without reading "Cat's Cradle", one more time).

Thanks for the info. I'll check it out.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 13, 1999.

No the socks disappear in the washer. During the spin cycle the drum turns so fast that socks and anti socks are formed and occasionally annilate each other. Thats why the switch that turns off the motor if you raise the lid. They don't want you to get a dose of gamma radiation from the annilation ;>)

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), August 13, 1999.

GN had an article on this the week of 7-19. I have looked but didn't see it.

-- DOC (hoping_for@the_best.com), August 13, 1999.

At: http://www.pubaf.bnl.gov/pr/bnlpr071999.html

you can find the following press release:

July 19, 1999

Statement from BNL Director on Consequences of Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) Operations

The following statement was issued today by Brookhaven National Laboratory in response to an article on RHIC published in the July 18 Sunday Times of London.

Statement by John Marburger, Brookhaven Lab Director, on Consequences of RHIC Operations July 19, 1999

Yesterday, the Sunday Times of London published a story under the headline "Big Bang Machine could destroy the Earth," with an accompanying editorial. The story has its origins in a letter in the July 1999 issue of Scientific American magazine, in which a prominent physicist describes a possible scenario in which an exotic elementary particle transforms its surroundings.

I am familiar with the issue of possible dire consequences of experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which Brookhaven Lab is now commissioning. These issues have been raised and examined by responsible scientists who have concluded that there is no chance that any phenomenon produced by RHIC will lead to disaster.

The amount of matter involved in the RHIC collisions is exceedingly small - only a single pair of nuclei is involved in each collision. Our universe would have to be extremely unstable in order for such a small amount of energy to cause a large effect. On the contrary, the universe appears to be quite stable against releases of much larger amounts of energy that occur in astrophysical processes.

RHIC collisions will be within the spectrum of energies encompassed by naturally occurring cosmic radiation. The earth and its companion objects in our solar system have survived billions of years of cosmic ray collisions with no evidence of the instabilities that have been the subject of speculation in connection with RHIC.

I have asked experts in the relevant fields of physics to reduce to a single comprehensive report the arguments that address the safety of each of the speculative "disaster scenarios." I expect the report to be completed well before RHIC produces the high-energy collisions necessary for any of these scenarios. When the report is completed, it will be broadly published and placed on the Laboratory's web site.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), August 13, 1999.

GN had an article about socks and anti-socks? I musta missed it. I was too busy calculating the minimum distance between cat and dog food before a black hole is formed.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), August 13, 1999.

Meanwhile, about those anti-socks, there's this theory.....

Jerry

:-)

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), August 13, 1999.

Bokonon,

I may be one of the few here that was around when the first "atom" bomb was tested, then used. The bigger news was when they decided to do a large scale test of the "hydrogen" bomb. A number of physicists were concerned about a problem, namely that the reaction might be big enough to start a runaway chain reaction that would destroy a lot of the earth itself. They did it anyway. A lot of money involved. A lot of promises about the scientific need to do it. I think it will be the same as the test you mention. They'll do it, the same as they launched the Challenger spacecraft with the faulty O-rings. Politics!

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), August 13, 1999.

Jerry B,

Damn, there goes my hopes for a painless end-of-the-world. Oh well, at least now I'll be able to find out how the debate turns out.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-deja.com), August 13, 1999.

Just read an article on this in Newsweek. Bottom line is they don't know what will happen, but they have CONFIDENCE everything will be o.k. Based on what exactly? Why isn't anyone doing something to stop this? Talk about MAD scientists...

-- Gia (laureltree@hotmail.com), August 13, 1999.

Yep, saw it.

Posted a similar thread to yours last week. I was equally aghast.

-- R (riversoma@aol.com), August 13, 1999.

Several months--maybe even a year--ago, Art Bell interviewed a highly- credentialed physicist whose name, I'm sorry to say, I do not recall. (Johnson??) A calm, quiet-spoken man in his mid sixties, he was instrumental in getting the Texas accelerator closed down through his work to inform federal legislators about the dangers it posed. More recently, his concern focused on issues such as the one raised by this thread. He was lobbying to persuade experimenters to allow teams of top physicists and mathematicians to check all calculations before proceeding with this kind of work. He, too, believed that an error could result in the instantaneous destruction of everything within four light years of earth. I seem to remember that his main worry was work scheduled to begin in Chicago labs this past April.

(I apologize for giving such sketchy information. Bell's show doesn't begin until 1 a.m. in these parts, and I'm an early-rising workin' girl.)

-- Faith Weaver (suzsolutions@yahoo.com), August 13, 1999.

To say that they do not know what will happen does not mean that there is nothing that they know will happen. One thing that they know will happen is: the law of conservation of energy (or of mass/energy, if you prefer) will remain intact.

Another thing that will happen is that debates among particle physicists will continue to puzzle, sometimes astonish, but usually bore, non-physicists (and even some physicists).

Hint: considering the vast differences in the amount of mass involved, phrases such as "black holes" and/or "Big Bang" in reference to the RHIC experiments, whether by proponents or opponents, are blatant hype.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), August 14, 1999.

R, could you post the URL of your thread here, please?

-- can't (find@it.archives), August 14, 1999.

Jerry,

I read once, that there were people in the scientific community, in the early days of A-bomb development, who really pondered the possibility that fission would start a chain reaction that would destroy the planet, which might seem pretty silly now.

Still, it's always good that someone does ponder these things, just in case.

-- Bokonon (bok0non@my-Deja.com), August 14, 1999.

This essay is from the NYT web site. I'm going to simply hope that AOL doesn't screw this up, and claim fair use.

From

August 10, 1999

ESSAY

Will Brookhaven Destroy the Universe? Probably Not.

By MALCOLM W. BROWNE

Amid the summer news doldrums, what could be more invigorating than a warning that physicists may be on the verge of destroying the world?

Luckily, this and similar alarms can be taken with a large grain of salt, and viewed in the proper light, disaster warnings can be fun. The idea that human beings could actually obliterate their planet may be scary, but like a roller-coaster ride, it is thrilling. Even in the face of doomsday speculation, most reasonable people are pretty sure that the global roller coaster will stay on the track despite the hair-raising ride.

Disaster forecasts have a peculiar appeal, particularly if human beings are the potential agents of destruction. Many of us may even feel a perverse sense of empowerment when told that the human race, ineffectual though it is in solving its biggest problems, might at least be capable of wiping itself out.

Anyway, here is the latest bad, albeit entertaining, news for disaster fans: Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., has just finished a huge accelerator capable of smashing together the nuclei of very heavy atoms at nearly the speed of light. Builders of this machine hope that collisions of gold or other atoms will not only shatter the atoms' nuclei into their constituent protons and neutrons, but will pulverize the protons and neutrons themselves, leaving a "plasma" -- a kind of energy soup -- briefly consisting of loose quark and gluon particles. These building blocks of matter have never before been studied in such a state.

But no one is quite sure what these collisions might spawn, and the uncertainty has encouraged some people to speculate that Brookhaven's new accelerator might turn out to be a doomsday machine.

Last month, The Sunday Times of London informed readers that Brookhaven might have created a world-devouring monster. The British weekly commented that "the men in white coats would send us, and them, into the oblivion of a black hole of their making." (In reality, accelerator physicists wear jeans and sport shirts, but never mind.)

In one version of the supposed danger, a gold-to-gold collision might create "strange" quarks that would pair up as "strangelets." These supposedly might go on to annihilate the ordinary matter around them, ending the world as we know it.

Another idea mentioned by The Sunday Times and in letters from readers published in the July issue of Scientific American is that the high energy density of a gold-to-gold collision might nucleate a tiny black hole that would grow like a cancer, eventually devouring the earth.

Mainstream physicists have cast cold water on such fears, but every time a new accelerator begins operating, dire warnings have ensued.

In the 1980's, when Fermilab's mighty Tevatron accelerator was under construction in Illinois, alarms were heard that when protons and antiprotons collided at a combined energy of two trillion electron volts, the result might be a microscopic tear in the fabric of space- time that extends throughout the universe -- a tear that could bring on the ultimate Armageddon.

There had been speculation by Dr. Frank Wilczek of the Institute for Advanced Study and other physicists that the birth of the universe might have left it with a false floor -- one that we consider the absolute absence of energy: a kind of zero point. But energy scales are relative; the zero point on one scale may not be zero on another. So some physicists wondered whether there might be a hidden floor with an energy even lower than that of the zero point familiar to us, and if so, what would happen if a hole should open in the false floor.

One idea was that a tear in space-time, perhaps caused by one of the Tevatron's proton collisions, might bring on the collapse of the false vacuum, annihilating all matter in the path of its collapse. The collapse bubble would balloon outward at the speed of light, eventually destroying the universe.

The trouble with this ingenious idea, physicists soon realized, was that if such a catastrophe could occur it would have happened long ago. The earth is constantly peppered by cosmic-ray particles, some of which have energies 100 million times greater than the energies of particles accelerated by the Tevatron or any other machine, and yet the universal vacuum floor is intact and we, the earth and the universe are still here. The Tevatron itself has been producing rich discoveries for years, without endangering anyone.

Physics has provided more than its share of doomsday scenarios, real and imaginary.

In the 1980's, for instance, some scientists theorized that a nuclear war would be followed by a deadly "nuclear winter." Fortunately, we have never tested that prediction.

Nuclear weaponry from its inception has inspired horrifying speculation. Before the first nuclear explosion, the Trinity test in New Mexico on July 16, 1945, there were suggestions that a nuclear explosion might ignite the earth's atmosphere, destroying all life. The great Enrico Fermi was inspired to do some calculating just before the Trinity test and concluded that the atmosphere was in no real danger.

After the blast, J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Los Alamos bomb team, uttered one of the most most often repeated -- and some would say, pretentious -- reactions of the day. Quoting the Hindu god Shiva, he said, "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds." .

Doomsday speculation has also been sparked by chemists.

In the early 1960's, an obscure Soviet chemist named Nikolai Fedyakin reported that water in thin glass tubes seemed to be transforming itself into a peculiar viscous form. A famous physical chemist, Boris V. Deryagin, announced that his own experiments confirmed Mr. Fedyakin's discovery of "anomalous water," and dozens of scientists in Europe and the United States chimed in with additional confirmations.

The stuff was dubbed "polywater"-- ordinary water molecules chained together as a polymer -- and some scientists speculated that it might convert all the world's water to an unusable polymerized form, thereby killing off most life. It sounded all too similar to an imaginary high-temperature ice, "Ice-9," a fictional invention of the novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who imagined the world being destroyed by the elimination of all liquid water.

It took four years to dispel the polywater myth: scientists finally determined that polywater was nothing more than dirty water.

But in place of the polywater menace we have seen a spate of warnings about asteroid impacts, gene-splicing mishaps that could turn the human race into centaurs, super earthquakes, and much more.

It is worth remembering that there are plenty of serious threats to the planet resulting from human bungling, of course.

There is the thinning ozone layer, a victim of chlorofluorocarbons released from refrigerators and other sources over the years. Large third-world nations still manufacture chlorofluorocarbons, despite a ban on their manufacture and use in industrial nations.

Growing evidence shows that human use of carbon-based fuels is contributing to global warming.

The habitats that nourish pandas, penguins, parrots and thousands of other animals and plants are disappearing because of human activity, and the diversity of life on earth faces disastrous impoverishment.

So the trick will be sorting out the red herrings like accelerator disasters and polywater from the real dangers. While we're at it, we might quit basing self-esteem on the ability of the human race to commit collective suicide.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company

-- Harlanquin (harlanquin@aol.com), August 14, 1999.

Hmm. Posted fine, just ate the URL.. Try this http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081099sci-essay.html

And if that disappears, someone else will have to fix it, I'm outta ideas....

-- Harl (harlanquin@aol.com), August 14, 1999.

Like I said befor, Super Colliders have been around banging away for a long time. http://wwwlhc01.cern.ch/general/gen_info.htm

The past ...

During the first half of this century, achievements in Europe dominated progress in the physics, from the discovery of the electron to the atomic nucleus and its constituents, from special relativity to quantum mechanics. Sadly, the conflicts of the 1930s and 40s interrupted this as many scientists had to leave for calmer shores. The return of peace heralded some decisive changes. By the early 50s, the Americans had understood that further progress needed more sophisticated instruments, and that investment in basic science could drive economic and technological development. While scientists in Europe still relied on simple equipment based on radioactivity and cosmic rays, powerful accelerators were being built in the US. Table-top experiments were being overtaken by projects involving large teams of scientists and engineers.

A few far-sighted physicists, such as Rabi, Amaldi, Auger and de Rougemont, perceived that co-operation was the only way forward for front-line research in Europe. Despite fine intellectual traditions and prestigious universities, no European country could cope alone. The creation of a European Laboratory was recommended at a UNESCO meeting in Florence in 1950, and less than three years later a Convention was signed by 12 countries of the Conseil Europien pour la Recherche Nucliaire. CERN was born, the prototype of a chain of European institutions in space, astronomy and molecular biology, and Europe was poised to regain its illustrious place on the scientific map.

... the present ...

CERN exists primarily to provide European physicists with accelerators that meet research demands at the limits of human knowledge. In the quest for higher interaction energies, the Laboratory has played a leading role in developing colliding beam machines. Notable "firsts" were the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) proton-proton collider commissioned in 1971>/b>, and the proton-antiproton collider at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), which came on the air in 1981 and produced the massive W and Z particles two years later, confirming the unified theory of electromagnetic and weak forces. The main impetus at present if from the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP), where measurements unsurpassed in quantity and quality are testing our best description of sub-atomic Nature, the Standard Model, to a fraction of 1% soon to reach one part in a thousand. By 1996, the LEP energy was doubled to 90 GeV per beam in LEPII, opening up an important new discovery domain. More high precision results are expected in abundance throughout the rest of the decade, which should substantially improve our present understanding. The LEP/LEPII missions will by then be largely completed.

... and the future

LEP data are so accurate that they are sensitive to phenomena that occur at energies beyond those of the machine itself; rather like delicate measurement of earthquake tremors far from an epicentre. This gives us a "preview" of exciting discoveries that may be made at higher energies, and allow us to calculate the parameters of a machine that can make these discoveries. All evidence indicates that new physics, and answers to some of the most profound questions of our time, lie at energies around 1 TeV (1 TeV = 1,000 GeV).

To look for this new physics, the next research instrument in Europe's particle physics armoury is the LHC. In keeping CERN's cost-effective strategy of building on previous investments, it is designed to share the 27-kilometre LEP tunnel, and be fed by existing particle sources and pre-accelerators. A challenging machine, the LHC will use the most advanced superconducting magnet and accelerator technologies ever employed. LHC experiments are, of course, being designed to look for theoretically predicted phenomena. However, they must also be prepared, as far as is possible, for surprises. This will require great ingenuity on the part of the physicists and engineers.

The LHC is a remarkably versatile accelerator. It can collide proton beams with energies around 7-on-7 TeV and beam crossing points of unsurpassed brightness, providing the experiments with high interaction rates. It can also collide beams of heavy ions such as lead with a total collision energy in excess of 1,250 TeV, about thirty times higher than at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) under construction at the Brookhaven Laboratory in the US. Joint LHC/LEP operation can supply proton-electron collisions with 1.5 TeV energy, some five times higher than presently available at HERA in the DESY laboratory, Germany. The research, technical and educational potential of the LHC and its experiments is enormous.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), August 14, 1999.