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Litigious woman fails to prove atom-smasher will end world

Published: 9 Mar 10 14:40 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20100309-25759.html

A German woman fearing that Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole failed on Tuesday in her court attempt to halt the world's most powerful scientific atom-smasher.

The Constitutional Court in the western Germany city of Karlsruhe threw out
the woman's appeal because she was "unable to give a coherent account of how
her fears would come about."

"The overwhelming scientific opinion is that the experiments carried out at CERN present no dangers," the court said, referring to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.

CERN scientists are looking to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to mimic the conditions that followed the Big Bang and help explain the origins of the universe.

Housed inside a 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border, the collider was started with great fanfare in September 2008, only to break down after nine days for the next 14 months. It was shut down again in December, this time to ready it for collisions at unfathomed energy levels which began last month.

The scientific holy grail is to find a theorised component called the Higgs boson, commonly called the "God Particle," which would explain how particles acquire mass.

The woman, who has not been named and who lives outside Germany, failed with an injunction with a Cologne court seeking to oblige the German government to stop the project.

Other opponents have also sought to stop the collider, fearing either a black hole whose super-gravity would swallow the Earth or a theoretical particle called a strangelet that would turn the planet to goo.

AFP (news@thelocal.de)

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Your comments about this article:

#1
15:17 March 9, 2010 by Celeon
LOL

Its a bit late anyway as the collider is in operation since October of last year and has performed over one million collisions since then. :-D
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#2
19:27 March 9, 2010 by magdelana
It does sound like a dangerous experiment. What do I know. Andrea Merkel is the Physicist. If theres a mistake sorry will not matter. Hopfully no pandora's box will be opened.!!
Report abuse »
#3
19:36 March 9, 2010 by Thames
My question is has it been able to prove how the world was created?
Report abuse »
#4
20:14 March 9, 2010 by dcgi
@Thames: As I understand this machine isn't built to prove how the *universe* was created, but it has enough power behind it to simulate the kind of conditions soon after the big bang happened, the big experiment everyone is hoping that this machine is going to have some success with is finding the Higgs boson.

From wikipedia... "

The Higgs boson, or "God Particle", is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model in particle physics. At present there are no known fundamental scalar particles in nature. The existence of the particle is postulated as a means of resolving inconsistencies in current theoretical physics, and attempts are being made to confirm the existence of the particle by experimentation, using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Other theories exist which do not anticipate the Higgs boson, described elsewhere as the Higgsless model.

"
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#5
23:07 March 9, 2010 by freechoice
Now is that why we have so many earthquakes recently?
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#6
04:49 March 10, 2010 by 1FCK_1FCK
You won't be laughing when we're all being sucked into a black hole & transported to the other side of the universe, where pink unicorns frolic with leprechauns. You'll be sorry, then, won't you? And will any of you apologize to this poor woman? Of course not. You'll just pretend her court case never happened. But you can't erase history. This woman will ride the unicorns and rule us all with her coterie of leprechauns. Mark my word.
Report abuse »
#7
11:16 March 10, 2010 by dbert4
If this woman really is interested in "saving the world", she should start working on getting an injunction against Wall Street!
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#8
11:34 March 10, 2010 by dcgi
From the BBC: "

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) must close at the end of 2011 for up to a year to address design and safety issues, according to an LHC director.

"

-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8556621.stm

My guess it slips back to 2012 and everyone goes crazy with fear!
Report abuse »
#9
11:43 March 10, 2010 by FreiburgandCambridge
I quite like the idea of the whole world turning to "goo" though.
Report abuse »
#10
12:24 March 10, 2010 by michael4096
The LHC does nothing that doesn't happen naturally at the edge of our atmosphere every day. It just does it where and when we want so that we can watch
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#11
13:42 March 10, 2010 by dcgi
@FreiburgandCambridge: you mean "Spaghettification"? A great word for what happens to matter when sucked into a black hole :)
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#12
13:47 March 10, 2010 by Celeon
@ freechoice

Basically, yes. Its also the source of global warming and behind 9/11.

But its actual purpose is to remote manipulate the academy awards and that worked out quite well this year. :-D
Report abuse »
#13
19:38 April 2, 2010 by wxman
@Celeon

You're too much!
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