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A NUCLEAR accelerator designed to replicate the Big Bang is under investigation by international physicists because of fears that it might cause "perturbations of the universe" that could destroy the Earth. One theory even suggests that it could create a black hole. Brookhaven National Laboratories (BNL), one of the American government's foremost research bodies, has spent eight years building its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on LONG ISLAND in New York state. A successful test-firing was held on FRIDAY (July 16, 1999) and the first nuclear collisions will take place in the autumn, building up to full power around the time of the millennium. Last week, however, John Marburger, Brookhaven's director, set up a committee of physicists to investigate whether the project could go disastrously wrong. It followed warnings by other physicists that there was a tiny but real risk that the machine, the most powerful of its kind in the world, had the power to create "STRANGLETS" - a new type of matter made up of sub-atomic particles called "STRANGE QUARKS". The committee is to examine the possibility that, once formed, strangelets might start an uncontrollable chain reaction that could convert anything they touched into more strange matter. The committee will also consider an alternative, although less likely, possibility that the colliding particles could achieve such a high density that they would form a MINI BLACK HOLE. In space, black holes are believed to generate intense gravitational fields that suck in all surrounding matter. The creation of one on Earth could be disastrous. Professor Bob Jaffe, director of the Centre for Theoretical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on the committee, said he believed the risk was tiny but could not be ruled out. "THERE HAVE BEEN FEARS THAT STRANGE MATTER COULD ALTER THE STRUCTURE OF ANYTHING NEARBY. The risk is exceedingly small but the probability of something unusual happening is not zero." .......the above article appeared on SUNDAY TIMES (BRITAIN) on July 18, 1999, under the title: "Big Bang machine could destroy earth" and was written by Jonathan Leake, Science Editor: <A HREF="http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/99/07/18/stinwenws02029.htm l?999">THE SUNDAY TIMES: NEWS </A> http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/99/07/18/stinwenws02029.html?999 from Norio Hayakawa [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SIGN UP NOW FOR FREE HOME IMPROVEMENT HOW-TO'S Receive seasonal how-to's and climate-specific advice via e-mail. http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/131 eGroups.com home: http://www.egroups.com/group/theeagle-l http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications
