On 4 May 2009 at 19:23, Michael Britt wrote: > > The skit is about the infamous particle accelerator being built in > Switzerland. <snip> Oliver then > talks to science teacher Walter Wagner, who states that he thinks there's > a 50-50 chance that the world would blow up. Wagner's reasoning: it > (the world blowing up) will either happen or not happen - so it's a 50-50 > chance! He's filing a lawsuit to stop the accelerator.
Wikipedia cites astrophysicist Martin Rees as putting the odds at 50 million to one against the "probability that the Large Hadron Collider will produce a global catastrophe or black hole" as an upper limit, but they also report he now says he was misquoted. In any case, that's poorer odds than Mine That Bird winning the Kentucky Derby. An official review (http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3414) merely concludes that "such collisions cannot be dangerous". So we can go back to worrying about global warming and financial meltdown. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
