• Question: Do you think that research at CERN is a danger to society?

    Asked by 824nepk48 to yoyehudi, Oli, Nina, Kerrianne, Ed on 6 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      No, they have all their risk assessments and safety reports in order.

      The collisions that happen at the Large Hadron Collider occur routinely in the universe without super dangerous consequences, including ultra-high-energy cosmic rays observed to impact Earth with energies far higher than those in any man-made collider. It would be bad for a person to be in the beam, but it’s highly shielded. It is not much more dangerous than other experiments, in that they all have risks that need to be carefully controlled, but it’s not a danger to the public.

      I don’t think it’s a danger to society at all. It’s a invaluable benefit and progression of knowledge to society!

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      I agree with Kerrianne – I trust the people who’ve evaluated the risks and found they’re acceptably small, and the potential benefits could be enormous. Not just in terms of what new things we’ll learn – important as they are – but also what good effects and products will eventually come out of it. After all, you can’t learn new things about the universe without a few benefits happening on the side 🙂

    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 6 Nov 2017:

      Hmm. I’ll admit I don’t know a whole lot about the Large Hadron Collider – but in my experience, there are a lot of newpapers and media outlets that like to sell exciting stories by bending or sensationalising the truth, making things sound more exciting or terrible than they are – just in order to sell papers. I strongly suspect that was the case here, and it’s a really disappoint aspect of the media. 😐

      Also, http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/ is a useful reference 😉

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