Really Big Bang

"But, we hasten to add, that's only if the collider misfires and disgorges something called a "strangelet" that could transform this planet into a giant lump of what physicists call "strange matter.""

Misfires? I guess when doing your excellent research for this article you just decided to leave out that even the hypothesis of strange matter is radical and nearly unfounded. No direct search for strangelets has ever turned up any evidence for their existence, and further more if it can be proved that even a single neutron star has a conventional nuclear matter crust then the entire hypothesis can be thrown out.

I suggest everyone read "Adam and No Eve", a short story by Alfred Bester.

I wouldn't start worrying until a particle accelerator is built that circumnavigates the moon. Now that baby would have power to do some damage! The one in Switzerland is just a pea shooter.

You're running through a forest ...

You're running through a forest ...

B A M

You hit a tree.

Hale-Bop is back! Put on your purple capes and new Keds and hop on to avoid a black hole encounter this summer! Pretty dense, eh?

Quack Quack Quack. This guys a Quack. He neither understands physics or the probability of this happening and if it does what kind of black hole it will produce. We don't need these writers from the political papers, all they know is drama not facts.

Thank you for your OpEd piece on this strange matter!

Personally, I am happy to hear that the director of the Hadron Collider project is now forced to spend time explaining that his project probably won't end up destroying the planet as a result of a collider produced black hole.

Why? After Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Bhopal, two space shuttle disasters and numerous costly unmanned space missions ending up failing, often due to _stupid errors_ made by the world's "brightest", it seems wise policy to force our world's scientists and engineers to at least explain themselves before the rest of society shells out billions of dollars at at time for their projects.

No one likes to be evaluated or regulated that is true. But it would really suck, if my vacation to Florida this summer would be cut short by the gravitational pull of a black hole made by some Frankenstonian scientist in the Alps.

Bryon W. Wolf, Bryon Wolf, Mr. Wolf says: I prefer to be inthe dark on this subject. Thanks for nothing!

The Big Bang theory has already proved to be wrong. Just when it appeared to be unshakeable dogma.

I can't wait for this thing to be fired up.. if just to shut up all of this fear mongering the media is doing!

Should we be worried about aliens next?

Is it just me? Personally, I think people who are unable to write in complete sentences or spell correctly should be more careful when spouting off uneducated opinions about scientific theories they couldn't begin to understand. As the saying goes, those with the least education always know the most.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the ultimate warning about human hubris regarding the dangers and limitations of science. Science has the answers to many questions. But every question is not susceptible to the scientific method. And human ignorance far exceeds our knowledge.

Science can not even explain physical reality. We have known for about 45 years that there is some form of matter called dark matter that we have never seen nor can we satisfactorily explain that makes up about 24% of the universe. For the last 10 years we have been aware of a form of energy that we have neither seen nor can explain that makes up about 72% of the universe. Thus 96% of physical reality is a mystery that is explained as well by theology as it is by science at this stage of our understanding. Einstein Newton and Coperinicus can tell us about the remaining 4%.

Scintists do a very bad job telling us what they don't know. Their expanations for what they do know are full of coded jargon that does as muuch to obfuscate the facts as it does to explain. Those few scientists who come down off of their pedestal and dummy down to the rest of us are truly public servants. Before the first atomic test -Trinity-was done some scientist thought it might fizzle like a little sparkler and some feared that it might trigger a world wide fiery atmospheric conflgaration. Both sides proved to be wrong. Caution is always warranted when the risk are as great as the ignorance. The public should be included in the debate.