eli5: What exactly does the Large Hadron Collider do, and why are people so freaked out about it?

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Bonus points if you can explain why people are freaking out about CERN activating it during the eclipse specifically. I don’t understand how these can be related in any way.

In: Physics

23 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

According to laymen’s science, the LHC has the power to create black holes if used improperly. That combined with the spiritual beliefs and superstitions surrounding a solar eclipse sounds like it should be some kind of omen or bringer of bad things.

In reality, the LHC and solar eclipse are unrelated phenomenon, but the human mind likes to make connections in chaos and find patterns in randomness. Many theoretical physicists theorize that the particles in the accelerator could collide with high enough energy to produce miniture black holes, however these black holes would fizz out in microseconds and not have enough energy to sustain themselves.

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