Fear of black hole machine triggers threats to researchers

The Large Hadron Collider

Scientists preparing to fire up the world's largest atom smasher are being flooded with phone calls and emails – even death threats – from people worried that the Large Hadron Collider, when activated, will obliterate planet Earth.

James Gillies, head of public relations at the European scientific consortium called CERN that is building the Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, told the London Telegraph that he gets tearful phone calls from people pleading with the organization not to turn on the machine.

"They phone me and say, 'I am seriously worried. Please tell me that my children are safe,'" said Gillies.

Some scientists have reported receiving death threats.

"There are a number who say, 'You are evil and dangerous and you are going to destroy the world," reports Gillies.

Currently, the world's largest operational supercollider has a circumference of about four miles and is housed at Fermilab near Batavia, Ill. The new particle accelerator CERN is building, however, is 17 miles around and will have seven times the energy of Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator.

As WND reported earlier, some scientists have expressed concern that the Collider's capability of slamming protons together at an unprecedented peak energy of 14 trillion electron volts could create black holes on earth or hypothetical super-atoms called strangelets, either of which, according to some theories, could expand in massive reactions to completely destroy the planet.

WND also reported some of those scientists are suing to delay CERN's plan to fire up the Collider on Sept. 10, hoping more safety studies will be done before unleashing the Collider's power.

CERN, an acronym for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is no stranger to doomsday predictions about its research.

Author Dan Brown, famous for writing "The Da Vinci Code," wrote another novel called "Angels & Demons," about antimatter stolen from CERN to build a bomb. The book's popularity prompted CERN to create a webpage devoted to debunking the rumors stirred by the novel.

Official CERN logo

Internet conspirators have also pointed out the organization's logo, constructed from the drawn paths of three supercolliders, resembles the organization's name surrounded by the numerals 666, a number Bible prophecy assigns to the end-times Antichrist.

Others have whispered that a statue of "the Indian god of destruction" Lord Shiva, given to CERN by Indian dignitaries four years ago and displayed outside the building, is proof that the organization is destined to destroy the world.

CERN officials and scientists, however, assert that fears of dark conspiracies and cataclysmic events following the startup of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are unfounded.

"The LHC will enable us to study in detail what nature is doing all around us," said CERN Director General Robert Aymar in a press release. "The LHC is safe, and any suggestion that it might present a risk is pure fiction."

In 2003, a safety review of the project was completed and reviewed by 20 independent external scientists, then updated again last year.

"The LHC safety review has shown that the LHC is perfectly safe," said Jos Engelen, CERN’s Chief Scientific Officer, "it points out that nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programs on Earth – and the planet still exists."

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