Strangelets

They actually officially studied the possibility of disaster scenarios at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider that I alluded to earlier. I don't know, somehow this seems like something out of a comic book -- and you know where the plot goes...

Statement on Committee Review of Speculative "Disaster Scenarios" at Brookhaven Lab's RHIC
October 6, 1999

Brookhaven National Laboratory has posted on its Web site a report by expert physicists who recently reviewed speculative disaster scenarios at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider.

The report summarizes technical discussions that conclude there is no danger of a "disaster" at RHIC.

In July 1999, Brookhaven Lab Director John Marburger convened a committee of distinguished physicists to write a comprehensive report on the arguments that address the safety of each of the speculative disaster scenarios at RHIC. The scenarios are:

- Creation of a black hole that would "eat" ordinary matter.

- Initiation of a transition to a new, more stable universe.

- Formation of a "strangelet" that would convert ordinary matter to a new form.

"We conclude that there are no credible mechanisms for catastrophic scenarios at RHIC," said committee chair Robert Jaffe, Professor of Physics and Director, Center for Theoretical Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Accordingly, we see no reason to delay RHIC operation."

Gotta love how they write "eat." That was to "dumb down" the word "accrete" in the full report.

The first paragraph alone of that report is worth reading for a kick.