CERN Sued for Risking Apocalypse

Only in high tech can you be sued for risking the end of the world.

The builders of the world’s biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.

Representatives at Fermilab in Illinois and at Europe’s CERN laboratory, two of the defendants in the case, say there’s no chance that the Large Hadron Collider would cause such cosmic catastrophes. Nevertheless, they’re bracing to defend themselves in the courtroom as well as the court of public opinion.

I say we switch it on and see what happens. The Web began as a CERN project; nothing they can cook up could possibly be more disruptive than that.