05 September 2008

The end is not near

Cory Doctorow tells us not to sweat it:

In case you're still worried that the universe will wink out of existence in 5 days when they turn on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, rest easy: a new report from the LHC Safety Assessment Group says it ain't gonna happen.

Or, as one physicist told me when I asked about this last month while researching my Petacentres article for Nature, "Look, it's a 10^-19 chance, and you've got a 10^-11 chance of suddenly evaporating while shaving."

Okay, I feel a bit better about the reactor, but now I'm afraid to shave.

Full article: LHC Switch-on Fears Are Completely Unfounded

1 comments:

Chris said...

One of the XKCD comics from last week should accompany Doctorow's assertions: The End is Not for a While

Post a Comment