Will it destroy our world eventually? The famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is what I am referring to here. The LHC has always been a controversial project; concerns raised from media, science community and general public regarding the possible dangers and destructions associated with its operation continue to heat up.
You may have already had a little acquaintance with the LHC, but in case you haven’t, here is a little introduction. The LHC is the world’s most expensive and complicated machine that is a 17-mile underground tunnel which lies near Geneva, Switzerland. It is designed to accelerate protons and collide them at high energies. Basing on quantum physics and mathematics, it is anticipated that the collision will create a situation that is similar to when the universe starts - the Big Bang - and it will demonstrate the existence of the hypothesized particle Higgs Bosons, whose existence, if proven, can be used to solve some of the most fundamental questions about physics, such as why matter has mass.
But ever since its constructions, the LHC has had many unexpected troubles and accidents: explosions, sced on suspicions of terrorism, magnetic failure, and, of course, that famous “time traveling” bird. Many people have expressed concerns about the possible catastrophic results that the LHC may lead to - some are bizarre, some seem reasonable. The bizarre side of the concerns targets at the mysterious Higgs Boson. You must remember Tom Hanks’ movie “Angels and Demons”, in which the extremists use a super-powerful matter called “the antimatter”, produced from a large tunnel-looking accelerator, to blow up the Vatican City. That resembles case here; people suspect that Higgs Boson may have destructive potential. This concern reaches its climax when physicists, Holger Bech Nielsen of Denmark and Masao Ninomiya of Japan, argue that the frequency of the problems is not a coincidence, it’s signs of the collider being sabotaged by its own future. They suggest that the Higgs Boson might be “so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather”. That bird - which drops a piece of bread onto the electrical section above the accelerator and causes a power cut - is thus referred to as a “time traveling bird”. The time travel idea may or may not seem fictional to you, it certainly does to me. No science is even needed to rule out such a logically distorted argument. This is when the “grandfather paradox” comes to play. Consider this scenario: “you travel back in time and cause the death of your grandfather. Therefore you cannot be born and, in turn, you cannot go back in time ... so your grandfather lives. So, you are actually born and go back in time and ... so on and so forth” . Therefore, this concern is simply absurd.
Feel your head overheated? Bear with me; interested? More is coming up.
The majority of the opponents of LHC has a much more scientific reasonable approach. One supposed danger of the LHC is based on the theory that high-energy particle collisions could lead into creating mini black holes; people are worried that these mini black-holes have the potential to grow and evolve dangerously to a level where it will eat up the world. So, back to the very first question, will it finally destroy our planet? No - says Physicists Benjamin Koch, Marcus Bleicher and Horst Stöcker. Intending to answer these concerns, these scientists analyze the nature and evolution paths of mini black-holes, and examine the outcomes associated with each path in their paper “Exclusion of black hole disaster scenarios at the LHC”*; they conclude that there are no evidences that the black holes from the LHC would trigger a catastrophic doomsday to earth.
They acknowledge the possibilities of creating black holes, stating that in the extra dimensions of the the universe, the they could be produced through the collapse of charged particles that collide. They state that if mini black holes are produced that way, many would have already been produced the high-energy cosmic rays that “strikes” the earth everyday, which are much more energetic and powerful than the charged protons in the LHC. Since none of those hypothetical black hole created by the cosmic rays have damaged the earth as we can see, the much weaker ones from the LHC would not cause a bit danger. They then study the evolution paths that the mini black holes follow during their development. Each path would raise mini black holes to ones that emit different level of radiation: high radiation, negligible radiation and weak radiation. Lower emitting radiation means more consumption by black holes (the lower the radiation is, the faster the black holes will grow). Scientists show that even the lowest radiation-emitting mini black holes at the LHC would emit more matter than they gain. In other worlds the mini-black holes would be so weak that it would quickly shrink and decay. Therefore, the doomsday scenario is very likely impossible.
Having done much research to write this post, I notice that the majority arguments of the skeptics are not published in a a peer-reviewed publication, in stead, many of them are through popular media. That makes it more convincing that the end-of-worlders are wolf-criers. More importantly, the rejections to the skeptics have conveyed to us the following massage: the mini black holes are harmless and the LHC is safe! There is no reason for concerns. We should feel assuring and should fully embrace this majestic experiment. The next operation of the LHC is scheduled on February 20, this year, which is less than 2 weeks away. I can’t wait to see what revolutionary discoveries this powerful machine would lead us into.
No comments:
Post a Comment