Are Dragons Going to Eat Us All?

The New York Times reports on worries that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world by, for example, creating a tiny black hole that then, instead of evaporating harmlessly as predicted by standard theories, will proceed to eat up the earth and beyond. In what is meant to be a reassuring comment, William Unruh, of the University of British Columbia, is cited as saying “Maybe physics really is so weird as to not have black holes evaporate. But it would really, really have to be weird.” Well, he must be using “really, really weird” in a technical sense, because by any common-sense standards that train has left the station: we already know that the universe is really, really weird and so not having black holes evaporate, perish the thought, doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

On a lighter note:

Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”

Great, don’t tell your kids. That’ll make for doozies of nightmares.