http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

"As with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), people both inside and outside of the physics community have voiced concern that the LHC might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth or even the entire Universe."

Im against it.  if they want to risk the entire universe they can bloody well get my permission.

They say it's no problem since "it is not possible to produce microscopic black holes unless certain untested theories are correct".

But isn't the whole point of the device to test untested theories? Just because it's 1940 and nuclear weapons are 'an untested theory' doesn't mean that they aren't possible or even likely. It's quite disturbing to me that the best rebuttal they have is 'untested theories would have to be correct' as opposed to 'the proposed disaster is completely at odds with what is known to be possible under any circumstances'.

This is real life, it isn't StarGate where if you accidentally open a wormhole to another dimension, there's some guy who will call his space alien friends to save them.

That the Swiss are not taking these questions seriously shows that they can not be trusted to do this sort of research.

The scientists doing the research aren't Swiss, they just provide the collider.

Collider providers! Catchy...

Then they are even more responsible, just like crack dealers are the ones who must be dealt with. Find out who is supplying irresponsible physicists with universe-destroying megacolliders, and we stop this madness at the source!

Call me a supercollider snob, but I wouldn't want anything besides a hand crafted Swiss supercollider. It is something you can open up wormholes with your whole life, or until the universe is destroyed, and then pass it on to your grandson. I'm sure the Chinese will eventually start flooding the market with cheap supercolliders, but they will only be good for two or three mini black holes, and then you'll need to get a new one.

on the whole I'd rather we all get blown to fuck by people trying to learn something than by people that are actually trying to blow us all to fuck.

Reminds me of Lexx.

Hey I understand someone killing me because they are pissed off about something. Being killed to satisfy some fucker's intellectual curiosity - that I have a problem with.

Wait, we're all software people, right?

So you do you test a Supercollider that's supposed to be able to produce a microscopic black hole, without actually producing a microscopic black hole?

In other words, they'll have already done it by the time they have to deliver.  So we're guaranteed to be safe.

Just a thought.

I'm pretty sure they'll use a virtual machine OS first. Worst case scenario ... blue screen of death.