Becq
Visitor
|
Re:End of the world? - 2008/09/14 22:57
I re-read an excellent book by Martin Rees last night - 'Our Final Century'. He is one of the most respected scientists in the UK and you may have read him being quoted as saying that he thinks the odds of something going wrong with this experiment are 50 million to 1. Actually, in his book he says that those odds were given by the CERN safety team themselves. So those scientists who are saying that there is nothing to worry about believe that there is a 1 in 50 million chance of the world ending as a result of this experiment. Those odds may sound huge, but they are only 3 times greater than for a particular individual winning the lottery. And as Rees points out, a 1 in 50 million chance of 6 billion people being killed (and of course all the billions or trillons of 'future people' who would otherwise be born) is hardly insignificant.
The second point Rees makes in his book is that when those same scientists try to reassure us by saying that these high impact particle collisions happen all the time in space THEY ARE LYING. Actually, these collisions that will take place at CERN have NEVER occured naturally in the universe. This is because the particles will be colliding in a manner (face on) that just doesn't (and can't) happen naturally in space.
The other thing to remember is that the experiment will be in testing phase for the first month. Nobody expected anything to go wrong immediately.
|
Messageboards 
