Fears continue to grow over CERN\'s atomic particle accelerator. Image: ImageEditor/Flickr.
At least, that’s the view of a concerned German chemist from the University of Tübingen, who believes that an upcoming scientific experiment to re-create the first moments experienced by the universe after the Big Bang could produce black holes that will consume the planet from the inside out.
Professor Otto Rössler is but one outspoken critic of the controversial Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which has been constructed by the European Nuclear Research Centre (CERN) in Switzerland to simulate the effects of the Big Bang and provide scientists with a clearer understanding of the universe’s origins.
According to a Telegraph report citing Professor Rössler, CERN’s project leaders have already conceded that “mini black holes could be created” when the giant machine is turned on, but they do not consider that possibility to be a genuine risk factor.
Further to that potential harbinger of doom, the professor has claimed his own calculations reveal it to be “quite plausible” to conclude that any resulting black holes during the LHC experiment “will grow exponentially and eat the planet from the inside,” across a devastating four-year period.
Professor Rössler went on to say he has been in contact with CERN regarding the danger its LHC project might pose, and to also plead with the centre to hold a pre-launch safety conference to allay mounting concerns. CERN has no such plans ahead of the machine’s official power-up, according to the professor.
As a result, Professor Rössler and other LHC opponents have now submitted a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, targeting the 20 countries providing funding for the project. The legal challenge against CERN claims that the centre has not fully explored all the necessary precautions related to the project in order to best protect human life.
This latest legal filing comes after opponents failed to secure an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights this past Friday, which would have prevented CERN from throwing the power switch on its giant, ringed collider.
The 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider cost some $8 billion USD to develop and construct. Its creators hope the machine’s function of smashing accelerated atoms together in heat of more than one trillion degrees Celsius will provide scientific enlightenment with regard to the creation of the universe.
As the LHC’s launch date draws ever-closer, core scientists connected to the project maintain that “extensive” tests conducted with the machine have already proven its safety, and that current fears gathering around its launch are “absurd.”
A CERN report into the collider’s safety, which has been approved by a group of external scientists, outlines that conditions likely to be replicated within the machine also happen routinely in nature through the Earth’s contact with cosmic rays.
Located outside of Geneva, some 300ft below the Frenco-Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider will blast atomic particles around its 17-mile circumference approximately 11,200 times every second before then smashing them headlong into one another.
Although scientists have been utilising particle collision devices similar to the LHC for some 30 years without incident, concerns over CERN’s device have arisen due to it being the biggest and most powerful collider ever built.
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