I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised, but there does seem to be an alarmingly large number of people who think that the world is going to end in two days time when the Large Hadron Collider is switched on. Most of them sound simply worried, but I note that the scientists at CERN have also received death threats. I do hope that we are not going to see a real-life equivalent of the plotline in Contact where the first machine gets blown up by a religious nutter.
What I would say is that it is not sensible to hold an opinion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Whilst I understand that much of the language of particle physics is opaque, there does come a time when it is worth accepting the views of experts. The analogy I would give is the design of aircraft wings – I am happy to trust an expert in aerodynamics to get it right rather than offer my own opinion about what shape they should be. It’s really the case that the particle physics community are sensible, rational human beings who go about their research because they believe that exploring the subatomic world is good for our civilization, not to mention interesting. It is also true that if anyone, including myself, had any doubt about the safety of what we are doing, we would stop immediately. I and all my colleagues consider our personal safety and the safety of our families to be FAR more important than the search for the Higgs particle – indeed, if the risk were even as high as 1 in a billion, or whatever people quote, then I would be campaigning with you to stop it.
Or, as he also has said, somewhat more pithily, and just as accurately:
Anyone who thinks that the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.
Quite.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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