This was an exhaustive review of all the physics and potential problems, and they have found that the LHC won’t kill us all. I hate to disappoint the doomcriers, but reality has a way of disappointing them time and again. The fact that we’re still here is pretty good evidence of that.

My thanks to Brian Cox — yes, that Brian Cox — for sending me this info. As he pointed out in his email to me:

Please pay particular attention to a key point that is often missed in these “discussions”. The argument based on cosmic ray collisions is not limited only to cosmic rays impacting on the Earth, but on every astronomical body in the observable Universe, including very dense ones such as neutron stars. It is estimated that the Universe conducts of order 10^13 complete lifetime runs of the LHC every second, with no observable consequences at all. This is on top of very sound theoretical arguments that IF micro black holes can be created, then they must also decay. This statement is based not on speculative stuff like extra dimension theories, but on pretty basic quantum mechanics.

Cern to Morons

McPherson went on to explain that ATLAS is one of four detectors that will monitor these collisions, which will re-create conditions similar to those that existed within billionths of a second of the big bang. Experiments at ATLAS will, essentially, take us back in time, close to a point when everything that exists began from an unimaginably small point of infinite energy, when the entire universe was no larger than a sphere one-third of a metre in diameter.

It sounds scary, and it is. Building the LHC in a tunnel was a prudent move. The particle beam could drill a hole in just about anything, although the most likely victim would be the apparatus itself. One minor calamity has already happened: A magnet all but jumped out of its skin during a test in March 2007. Since then 24 magnets have been retrofitted to fix a design flaw. The people running the LHC aren't in a rush to talk about all the things that can go wrong, perhaps because the public has a way of worrying that mad scientists will accidentally create a black hole that devours the Earth.

How does an infinitely dense universe become a vast and spacious one? And how is it filled with matter? In theory, as the early universe expanded, energy should have condensed into equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which would then have annihilated each other on contact, reverting to pure energy. On paper, the universe should be empty. But it's full of stars and planets and charming French villages and so on. The LHC experiments may help physicists understand our good fortune to be in a universe that grew with just enough more matter than antimatter.