Idiots sue CERN

Apparently a couple of idiots have decided to sue CERN in a Hawaii district court (!), along with the U.S. Department of Energy, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the National Science Foundation. Mr Walter L. Wagner and Mr Luis Sancho contend that there exists a non-negligible risk that CERN's new Large Hadron Collider might generate a black hole that could eat up all of Earth-and us with it. Or it could spit out a particle called a "strangelet", which might also contaminate all matter on Earth and turn it instantly into a dead cluster of strange particles. So they are seeking an injunction to stall the construction and powering up of LHC until it has been proven such catastrophy will not happen. Which, by the way, physicists say is impossible to prove with 100% certainty. Scary, huh!

Look, idiots: I've studied particle physics in grad school and particularly quantum gravity and I can reassure you on this-you're not about to get eaten up by a black hole from CERN. Not in a million years. The truth is, according to quantum physics, conceivably anything might potentially come out of the energy-to-matter conversion process at play inside the accelerator experiments. And that precisely is the whole point! Yet there is much less of a chance that either a black hole or even a clone of U.S. president George W. Bush might come out it at any time to destroy us than the two of you ever receiving the Nobel prize in physics. That said.