Luddites and CERN: The End of the World is Nigh?

So, there's a bunch of reports of people worried about CERN's Large Hadron Collider project. The statements include worries of black holes being formed that will swallow the earth, or strange matter that would convert the Earth to strange matter, or other basic chain reaction ideas.

While, at first thought, this principle seems kind of plausible in the "well, we made the atomic bomb" sense. And while I think we ought to always question scientific theory and what we claim to know about the universe, the evidence is extremely overwhelming that everything will be ok.

The thing is, people have always liked to say the world is at the end. This is a cross-religion notion, though I can't begin to fathom the sociological reason we're so negative about the world's fate. The Aztecs thought the world was going to end when the conquistadors came, and began sacrificing people at an even higher rate to appease the gods. When Jesus was witnessed to have given statements about returning, the early Christian churches literally expected it to be in their lifetime. During the times of the plague in Europe, it was prophosied to be the end of the world. And within our own lifetimes, we've lived through a glut of "world ending" predicted dates.

Here's the thing - the end of the world is kind of a relative concept. To the ancient Romans, when the barbarians sacked Rome and the empire began its fall, that must have been, relatively, the end of their world. When the plague spread through Europe, even if you were one of the 2/3 people who survived bubonic plague, there's almost no way you didn't lose at least one loved one. That had to have been the end of their worlds. Or Hiroshima, at the end of World War II, a whole city being eradicated, the end of the Japanese Empire - is that not another end of the world? In a way, "the world" continues to end over and over in many points in history.

But in a more immediate sense, let's look at the reality with our world ending. It's far, far more likely that nuclear weapons are deployed than a bizarre physics event at the Large Hadron Collider. Even with a limited nuclear exchange of a few dozen weapons, the folks who don't die will be plagued with increased radiation and a drastic temperature change. Economies will tumble, and many industrialized nations will return to an agrarian lifestyle. Hospitals and medical care may revert to levels a hunded or more years ago. Basic immenities like heating and cheap clothing won't be available. Transportation will grind to a halt after oil infastructure is inevitably destroyed or atrophied from lack of resources or funds. Isn't this the end of the world?

Why then, do Luddites feel the need to look at the Large Hadron Collider? Aren't their energies better served promoting nuclear disarmament, toward resolving international tensions, toward tolerance between warring ideologies? Wouldn't they save many more lives lobbying against drunk driving, or funding cancer research, or AIDS education in Africa? To me, the initial response I have is that these people can't handle the fragile, broken world we already live in, and so fears are much more easily placed in some science-fiction caliber worry, as the people likely to complain about science are the uneducated masses who can't bother to put effort into fixing our more immediate problems.

Me? I can't wait til Wednesday, when the LHC fires up. Maybe we'll actually figure out what gravity is, considering we've known about it for hundreds of years and have had no success in really knowing much about it. :)