08.12.08
The ultimate lottery
“Something odd is happening in Geneva…” These could be the very last words ever spoken by a human.
On September 10th next the world’s biggest particle collider will be switched on. Costing $10 billion the machine is designed to hunt for new particles that could overturn theories about nature’s most fundamental laws. It will do this simply (but by way of a very large and complex machine) by crashing atoms together at near to the speed of light.
Martine Rees in his book ‘Our final Century’ outlines three possible catastrophic consequences of these experiments (Page 120/121).
1. A black hole might form sucking in everything around it.
2. Quarks might reassemble themselves into a very compressed object called a strangelet. This strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encountered into a strange new form of matter. And could, according to Rees, transform the entire planet earth into an inert hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across.
3. The most catastrophic consequence could be that space itself is engulfed, that a ‘phase transition’ could be triggered ripping apart the very fabric of space.
Rees goes on to discuss the morality of such experiments (Page 125). Commentating on assurances from scientists he says:
“Even if one accepted their reasoning completely, the level of confidence they offered hardly seemed enough. They estimated that if the experiment were run for ten years, the risk of a catastrophe was no more than one in fifty million. These might seem impressive odds; a chance of disaster smaller than the chance of winning the UK’s national lottery with a single ticket, which is about one in fourteen million. However, if the downside is destruction of the worlds’ population, and the benefit is only to ‘pure’ science this isn’t good enough.”
So in reality the scientists are playing lottery with the planet which brings a whole new meaning to some lotto motto’s.
The UK lottery motto is “This time tomorrow”. That could be changed to read ‘This time tomorrow – Nothing.’
The Irish lottery motto is “It could be you” which could become ‘It could be everybody.’