You could win the lottery, or CERN could create a life-sucking black hole -- same odds

Here I am in London (currently hiding out in the loo while the husband and child sleep in), having a jolly good time (not in the loo but on the trip in general) when my spouse asks me last night, "Hey, have you seen this article about the collider?" (as in the Large Hadron Collider CERN is building under Switzerland and France).

Of course, I hadn't seen the article as a) we have been in the UK madly running around with little time to read anything; b) although we have a computer (his), I have barely been on it; and c) if I have gone on it, it is only to briefly check email, not to search out articles about the Earth's impending demise. But once you open Pandora's Box...

So I read the article, an essay by the New York Times's Dennis Overbye titled "Gauging a Collider's Odds of Creating a Black Hole." The good news: According to one report Overbye sites (about the Brookhaven, NY, collider, which, as far as the general public knows, has not created a non-evaporating black hole that is slowing sucking Long Island into its maw -- though some would argue that would not necessarily be a bad thing, though the beaches are quite lovely), the odds of a major disaster occurring due to a collider experiment are just less than one in 50 million, or put another way, about the same as an asteroid crashing into the Earth (the reason why we currently exist, btw, and why there are not T-Rexes still roaming around the Dakotas) or just less than a chance of winning some lottery jackpots.

Some may find this risk analysis comforting. Not me. Have you seen (or heard about) the number of Powerball and Mega Millions winners out there?! Just in the past year alone there had to have been a least a half dozen. That said, if we are destined to be sucked down a black hole, Lord, could I win the Powerball first? Please? (Though I know I can't take it with me. Still... )

Okay, okay. I know that I may be overreacting to all this. (Shocking, I know.) But my attitude (and apparently the attitude of some scientists) is why take the risk? And why spend billions of dollars on such an endeavor when the money could be used to save lives -- and discover things like fresh sources of water, clean sources of energy, the cure for cancer and other diseases?

I am all for scientific discovery and understand that many great inventions have come from things like the space program (though apparently Tang wasn't one of them -- it was invented before and only became popular after the astronauts made it to the moon and back), but the Large Hadron Collider, even with its enormous cool factor, seems unnecessary and unacceptable, especially as we already have a perfectly good dollar-sucking collider right here in the old U. S. of A.

Well, my daughter just got up, which is my cue to end this post. Gotta spend time with her while I can.