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From: wls@astrovax.UUCP (William L. Sebok)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: What's All This, Then (Workshop on Exploding Particle Accelerators)
Message-ID: <737@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Feb-86 21:09:43 EST
Article-I.D.: astrovax.737
Posted: Sun Feb 16 21:09:43 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Feb-86 06:27:14 EST
References: <572@hounx.UUCP> <139@epimass.UUCP> <624@frog.UUCP>
Reply-To: wls@astrovax.UUCP (William L. Sebok)
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 21

>>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!
>. . .
>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.

I believe that in that paper Piet came to the same conclusion, that if this
were a possiblity that cosmic rays would have already triggered it. There
exist cosmic rays much more energetic than anything we could create in
an accelerator today.

One could ask him.  Although iasvax is no longer running uucp he has a guest
account here astrovax!piet.
-- 
Bill Sebok			Princeton University, Astrophysics
{allegra,akgua,cbosgd,decvax,ihnp4,noao,philabs,princeton,vax135}!astrovax!wls