CERN’s Large Hadron Col­lider is due to start smash­ing pro­tons together this sum­mer which has lead some to the­o­rise that the end of the world is nigh. Not to worry, though: we can all sleep soundly enough, as it’s unlikely any­thing other than some inter­est­ing physics is going to be hap­pen­ing under­neath France and Switzerland.

These con­cerns, how­ever, have raised some inter­est­ing ques­tions which The New York Times does a good job of com­pil­ing in their essay, Gaug­ing a Collider’s Odds of Cre­at­ing a Black Hole:

One prob­lem is that soci­ety has never agreed on a stan­dard of what is safe in these sur­real realms when the odds of dis­as­ter might be tiny but the stakes are cos­mi­cally high. In such sit­u­a­tions, prob­a­bil­ity esti­mates are often no more than “informed bet­ting odds”.

The most basic ques­tion, “How improb­a­ble does a cat­a­stro­phe have to be to jus­tify pro­ceed­ing with an exper­i­ment?” seems never to have been seri­ously examined.

via Vit­a­min Briefcase