Monday, June 30, 2008

Are We Sure About This?

Call me anti-progress, but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with any scientific experiment that has the possible side effect of blowing up the world.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I have taken the time to research the people behind the this lawsuit. NOT ONE IS AN ACTUAL PHYSICIST. Dr. Wagner is a medical doctor, and possesses only a minor on physics. Dr Raj Baldev has a "Ph D." in Astrology... not astronomy. Dr. Tutt is a medical doctor. Dr. Paul Werbos holds an interdisciplinary Ph. D. economics and mathematics. Dr. Otto E. Rossler is also a medical doctor.

This small black hole scenario relies on sooo many what ifs and maybes that it reaches past the possibility of being absurd. For a good run down read this post

Unknown said...

Experiments that could blow up the world? You mean like the Manhattan project that brought us nuclear weapons, but also brought us the means to move toward free and abundant energy and other nuclear breakthroughs?

D.J. Williams said...

Well, guys - I hoped that a degree of humor was evident in my post. I'm not holding my breath for the world to end when the accelerator is flipped on, but I do find our scientific arrogance a bit troubling - this is not the only arena in which we're tinkering with forces we don't fully understand.

And Paul, I'm not sure the Manhattan Project is the best poster child for great experiments. Sure, its implications have had a lot of benefits, but we only had to incinerate 200,000 Japanese people to get there. Perhaps sometimes the benefits of opening Pandora's Box might be outweighted by the consequences of not being able to close it again.