The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring which straddles the French and Swiss borders at the CERN center is buried 330 feet underground. But some have fears. Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

 

LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second and has been doing for billions of years, and all those astronomical bodies including the Earth and the Sun. They are still here. So though there really is no problem, but okay, if people are concerned about it, we'll certainly discuss (it).

 

The safety of the collider, which will generate energies 7 times higher than its most powerful rival at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory here in Chicago, has been debated for years.

 

When you collide two particles, it nearly seems like colliding two mosquitoes. These will be incredibly small black holes with no more energy than a mosquito. Very likely these things are not going to be made at all. If they are made, then they’re surely going to decay.

 

A lawsuit was filed against CERN and its US partners in a Hawaiian court on March 21st, but a ruling has yet to be made.

 

I think obviously we have no concern at all. There is a huge community of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly concerning LHC. But nevertheless this creates problems in the general public where LHC is concerned and we have to answer to that.

 

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test rounds until August, and ramping up to full power could take months.