Fermi officials: New collider won't end the world

Early Wednesday, scientists from two sides of the world will come together for a celebration. Wine, cheese -- the whole deal.

These very smart men and women, many of them wearing footie pajamas, will then flip a switch on a massive device located under Europe and, within seconds, our world will be swallowed by a black hole and crushed into nothingness.

At least, that's what former nuclear safety officer Walter Wagner believes may happen when the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile-long particle accelerator, is given its trial run this week. The LHC is located at CERN, on the border between France and Switzerland, and scientists at Fermilab in Batavia have been working with their European counterparts to bring it online for years.

Those efforts could be halted if Wagner and his Citizens Against the Large Hadron Collider have their way. Wagner has sued CERN, Fermilab and the U.S. Department of Energy, in courts in two countries, seeking an injunction while his safety concerns are considered.

The U.S. government has asked a federal judge in Hawaii to dismiss the case, but last week, it was continued. The legal wranglings won't stop the test this week, of a machine scientists hope to use to unlock some secrets of the universe.

What's Wagner worried about? Well, according to Wagner's Web site (www.lhcdefense.org), there exists the possibility that the LHC could produce black holes, or theoretical particles called strangelets, or even things called magnetic monopoles, all of which would be, on a scale of one to 10, fairly catastrophic.

His claims have been rebutted by scientists, for reasons well above the heads of most people without advanced degrees in particle physics. Earlier this month, CERN updated a 2003 assessment of the potential risks associated with the LHC, and found nothing to worry about.

Fermilab spokesman Judy Jackson was even more direct. She said Wagner's claims have no scientific merit whatsoever, and she's looking forward to hosting an early-morning pajama party at the lab Wednesday to watch the first test of the LHC.

Still, it's a scary thought, especially since it's so difficult to explain just what the LHC does, and how it works, to laymen. But it's worth noting, Jackson said, that this is not the first time opponents of particle physics have given voice to these fears.

Fermilab is home to the Tevatron, which is now the second-largest particle accelerator in the world. It's been online since the mid-1980s, and substantially upgraded a few times since then. Jackson said a similar furor rose up over the Tevatron when it was first built, and there were protests at the lab over fears it would tear a hole in the universe.

Even more protests arose over the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which opened at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., in 2000.

At the moment, all the scientists at CERN and Fermilab can do is put their heads down and move ahead with the LHC, confident that they have checked the scientific risks thoroughly. And when the switch is flipped Wednesday, Jackson promises you won't feel a thing.

"Here is what will happen on Sept. 10," she said. "We will inject a beam into the LHC for the first time, and the world will not end."