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From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.sci
Subject: Re: What's All This, Then (Workshop on Exploding Particle Accelerators)
Message-ID: <11752@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sat, 8-Feb-86 07:13:10 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11752
Posted: Sat Feb  8 07:13:10 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Feb-86 04:23:36 EST
References: <572@hounx.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: weemba@brahms.UUCP (Matthew P. Wiener)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Xref: watmath net.physics:3836 net.sci:517

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!

Ever see "Plan 9 from Outer Space"?  Truly a wonderful film.

>		Such a macroworry is exquisite.  While we stand by,
>	physicists are planning giant accelerators.  A scientist in
>	a white smock will soon throw that switch.  And for thousands
>	of people the last thought before the cosmos winks out, is
>	sure to be, "Darn, why didn't I start a petition?"
>
>Anybody heard about this theory?  It all sounds a bit preposterous,
>but then much of modern physics is weird, as one poster recently
>observed.  Do I have time to have a little fun in life before we
>blow it?

I saw a paper in a conference on inflationary big bang theories discussing
the question of whether the universe might still be in a metastable state.
Their conclusion was that it was possible, and that the expected quantum
jump out of the well would be the end of the universe as we know it.  The
affect would start at random somewhere, and propagate at the speed of light
everywhere else.

If you insist on worrying about life, the universe, and everything, you as
might as well worry big.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720