NEWS UPDATE: UPDATE: SEPT 10, 2008 - The first particle beam has been successfully sent around the 27 km long tunnel at the LHC. This is the equivalent of a power-on, self test, the team is yet to collide any hadrons at near light speed or make any nano black holes or indeed spot the so-called God Particle. Nevertheless, Sciencebase has now published aLarge Hadron Collider LHC-FAQ and will keep you up to date with the latest from the LHC via the site's RSS newsfeed; subscribe for free now to stay informed.
This article was a response to the original blog post by David Bradley Science Writer on the subject of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
The Large Hadron Collider [LHC] at CERN might create numerous different particles that heretofore have only been theorized. Numerous peer-reviewed science articles have been published on each of these, and if you google on the term "LHC" and then the particular particle, you will find hundreds of such articles, including:
In 1987, I first theorized that colliders might create miniature black holes, and expressed those concerns to a few individuals. However, Hawking's formula showed that such a miniature black hole, with a mass of under 10,000,000 a.m.u., would "evaporate" in about 1 x 10<sup>-23</sup> seconds, and thus would not move from its point of creation to the walls of the vacuum chamber [taking about 1 x10<sup>-11</sup> seconds travelling at 0.9999c, 9999/10000ths the speed of light] in time to cannibalize matter and grow larger.
In 1999, I was uncertain whether Hawking radiation would work as he proposed. If not, and if a mini black hole were created, it could potentially be disastrous. I wrote a Letter to the Editor to Scientific American [July, 1999] about that issue, and they had Frank Wilczek, who later received a Nobel Prize for his work on quarks, write a response. In the response, Frank wrote that it was not a credible scenario to believe that miniature black holes could be created.
Well, since then, numerous theorists have asserted to the contrary. Google on "LHC Black Hole" for a plethora of articles on how the LHC might create miniature black holes, which those theorists believe will be harmless because of their faith in Hawking's theory of evaporation via quantum tunneling.
The idea that rare ultra-high-energy cosmic rays striking the moon [or other astronomical body] create natural miniature black holes