swivel
March 28th, 2008, 09:34 AM
Wha?! France is somehow going to do for the entire universe what they couldn't even do to Eastern Europe? Not likely.
I can't figure out what the motivation is behind this suit. I have a hard time believing these guys really think strangelets, monopoles, or persistent black-holes are going to destroy the Earth if the LHC conducts experiments. Then again, some people still believe that the world is flat, that the Holocaust never happened, and that the Civil War was not about slavery... so you never know.
What really pisses me off is that these experiments should have been done first in the United States. We had a massive collider being built in Texas that Congress scrapped (led by the religious wing of the Republican party). The most important discoveries in the history of physics could have been done here!
The case should be interesting to follow because courts operate on a system of "reasonable doubt" and science makes its living off of the same principle. However, science uses the idea for constructive purposes, while the court sees it as a damning principle. What happens when these two opposing philosophies collide? How does science learn to prove the negative, which is the hallmark of law, but also of pseudo science? It is a dilemma that few fully appreciate.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx
I can't figure out what the motivation is behind this suit. I have a hard time believing these guys really think strangelets, monopoles, or persistent black-holes are going to destroy the Earth if the LHC conducts experiments. Then again, some people still believe that the world is flat, that the Holocaust never happened, and that the Civil War was not about slavery... so you never know.
What really pisses me off is that these experiments should have been done first in the United States. We had a massive collider being built in Texas that Congress scrapped (led by the religious wing of the Republican party). The most important discoveries in the history of physics could have been done here!
The case should be interesting to follow because courts operate on a system of "reasonable doubt" and science makes its living off of the same principle. However, science uses the idea for constructive purposes, while the court sees it as a damning principle. What happens when these two opposing philosophies collide? How does science learn to prove the negative, which is the hallmark of law, but also of pseudo science? It is a dilemma that few fully appreciate.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx