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From: jbuck@epimass.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.sci
Subject: Re: What's All This, Then (Workshop on Exploding Particle Accelerators)
Message-ID: <139@epimass.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Feb-86 17:26:59 EST
Article-I.D.: epimass.139
Posted: Wed Feb  5 17:26:59 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Feb-86 21:34:04 EST
References: <572@hounx.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 25
Xref: watmath net.physics:3828 net.sci:511
Summary: What about cosmic rays?

In article <572@hounx.UUCP> kort@hounx.UUCP (B.KORT) writes:
>The current issue of Smithsonian has a guest column on modern-day worries
>by Richard Wolkomir.  The author picks up a nasty new macroworry:
>
>	...physicists Piet Hut and Martin J. Rees, of the Institute
>	for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, have dreamed
>	up a beauty.  They have a notion that new particle accelerators
>	may create subatomic collisions intense enough to trigger a
>	chain reaction and thus vaporize the entire Universe!

The problem with this is that cosmic rays, which are largely subatomic particles
accelerated to high energies, strike the atmosphere every day, and a significant
number have higher energy than have ever been produced in any man-made accelerator.

If you look at the inflationary theory, a modification of the big bang theory,
there are some weird things there though, like the possibility of space-time itself
undergoing a phase change at high energies.

I think though, that if this were a real possibility, the cosmic rays (or 
intelligent beings on another planet) would have wiped us out by now.

-- 
- Joe Buck
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or ihnp4!pesnta!epicen!jbuck