posted on Jun, 22 2004 @ 05:46 PM
Couple things. I've heard that it is indeed abandoned, and that you can go there and see the buildings and ring all in an obvious state of decay.
Also $2billion isn't that much when it come to colliders, and its a lot less if you stopped before spending another $4 billion just to have a
collider you can afford to run.
As for the worry over a collider casing some kind of miniblack hole that would endanger earth, well, you are partially right.
CERN's heavy collider (due to come online in 2007) is made with the intent of hammering subatomic particles to study things like spraticles (super
heavy versions of normal particles) and to search for free standing gravitons and such. However, even if they make a blackhole it would quickly
evaporate according to theory.
The only real risk is that current theories are wrong or incomplete and scientist do something horrible without meaning to. For example, for many
decades scientist have messed around with explosives, and yet never split an atom with them. Then once they realized they could, the atom bomb was
invented. Now imagine the right situation had come about to split atom BEFORE we knew the kind of energy they had.
When you are smashing particles near the energy levels they were near the big bang, you could unless a big mess of new physics. FOr starters we are
starting to understand there are 6 more dimension we don't see everyday, and that some particles move through them. Well what if you accidently
unrolled those dimensions....eeek.
However, i think no one understand the risk more than those conducting the experiments, and I feel pretty safe. None the less, a lot of big
breakthrough were purchased by accidents and payed for in human life.