So the Large Hadron Collider went online this week in Europe. And for some reason, a lot of people are relieved it hasn't created a black hole that destroyed the world. Now, this may be reasonable, but it's a lot like heaving a sigh of relief after your two-year old hitting his bedroom wall with a plastic hammer doesn't knock down your 5-bedroom brick house. The fabric of space and time isn't that fragile. Certainly not fragile enough to be ripped apart by CERN's first week trial runs.
As a public service, I'm linking to a simple flash presentation that explains a little bit about black holes, starting with how they're formed by collapsing stars thrice the size of our sun. Anyone who's worried can ask themselves "how likely are two colliding particle streams to recreate these conditions in an underground lab?"
http://www.thinktechnologies.com/portfolio/demos/Blackhole.html
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I have been really excited about the whole LHC story for some months now and all of the crazy news surrounding its launch. I have even been checking on their live webcams every now and then just to see how this beast really works. It's pretty cool: http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
I also love how, from what I understand, they haven't even collided any particles yet. People are getting way to worked up about nothing, and about a month too soon.
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