Big Bang experiment sparks fear of apocalypse

SEARCH FOR TRUTH? Core magnet of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. (Photo: Reuters)

ibnlive.com is on mobile now. Read news, watch videos
be a Citizen Journalist. Log on to m.ibnlive.com NOW!

Related Stories

Top Headlines

Top Videos

Most Popular

• Education reform will be for all Indians: Sibal 

• Federer wins record-breaking 15th Grand Slam title | Photogallery 

• Budget preview: Promises to keep | What to expect and what not 

• One-upmanship: Sonia, Pawar in foodgrain politics 

• 5 feared dead in Madhya Pradesh factory explosions 

• Policemen guard Maya's statue wealth across UP 

• Youth shot dead by cops had 26 injury marks | Watch 

• CPI-M leaders to act to curb Kerala infighting 

• Recruiter of child suicide bombers held in Afghan 

• Paes-Black lose Wimbledon mixed doubles final 

• Pranab has promises to keep in Budget of hope 

• Youth shot dead by cops had 26 injury marks 

• Kargil victory was certain: ex-army chief 

• Bollywood stars sizzle at the IIFA fiesta 

• IBNFocus: TDS process simplified 

• No minister contacted Madras HC judge: CJI 

• Scrap EVMs, let's go back to ballot, says Advani 

• CNN-IBN debate: Homosexuality vs Indian morality 

• Watch: Parties react to HC judgement on gays 

• Railways fail to provide basic facilities to passengers 

• Kambakkht Ishq is not vulgar or offensive: Akshay 

• Federer wins record-breaking 15th Grand Slam title 

• Umpire dies after being hit on head by ball 

• Budget preview: Promises to keep 

• Education reform will be for all Indians: Sibal 

• Who said what about record champion Federer 

• Chronology of Federer's record 15 Grand Slam titles 

• 5 feared dead in Madhya Pradesh factory explosions 

• Recruiter of child suicide bombers held in Afghan 

• Scenarios: What to look for in budget, and what not 

Photogallery

Find us on Facebook | Join IBNLive community

Stay ahead with G-Talk Buddy | Click now!

Geneva: Scientists involved in a historic "Big Bang" experiment to begin this week hope it will turn up many surprises about the universe and its origins, but reject suggestions it will bring the end of the world.

The French physicist who heads the CERN Research Centre Robert Aymar, predicted that discoveries to emerge from his organisation's 6.4 billion euro ($9.2 billion) project would spark major advances for human society.

"If some of what we expect to find does not turn up and things we did not foresee do, that will be even more stimulating because it means that we understand less than we thought about nature," said British physicist Brian Cox.

"What I would like to see is the unexpected," said University of Michigan’s Gerardus t'Hooft.

Perhaps, he suggested, the Large Hardron Collider (LHC) machine at the heart of the experiment "will show us things we didn't know existed".

Once it starts up on Wednesday, scientists plan to smash particle beams together at close to the speed of light inside CERN's tightly-sealed Large Hadron Collider to create multiple mini-versions of the primeval Big Bang.

Cosmologists say that that explosion of an object the size of a small coin occurred about 13.7 billion years ago and led to formation of stars, planets and and eventually to life on earth.

A key aim of the CERN experiment is to find the "Higgs boson," named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who in 1964 pointed to such a particle as the force that gave mass to matter and made the universe possible.

But other mysteries of physics and cosmology, supersymmetry, dark matter and dark energy among them, are at the focus of experiments in the 27-km (17-mile) circular tunnel deep underneath the Swiss-French border.

Fears of Disaster

CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, says its key researchers – and many ordinary staff – have been inundated by e-mails voicing fears about the experiment.

There have been claims that it will create "black holes" of intensive gravity sucking in CERN, Europe and perhaps the whole planet, or that it will open the way for beings from another universe to invade through a "worm hole" in space-time.

But a safety review by scientists at CERN and in the United States and Russia, issued at the weekend, rejected the prospect of such outcomes.

"The LHC will enable us to study in detail what nature is doing all around us," Aymar, who has led CERN for five years, said in response to that review.

"The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction." Cox, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Britain's Manchester University, was even more trenchant.

"I am immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around," he said.

When the experiment begins soon after 9 a.m. (0700 GMT) on September 10, disaster scenarists will have little to work on.

In the first tests, a particle beam will be shot all the way around the LHC channel in just one direction. If all goes well, collisions might be tried within the coming weeks, but at low intensity.

Any bangs at this stage, said one CERN researcher, "will be little ones."