No, Particle Accelerators Will Not Destroy the Planet, But Humans Might
No, Particle Accelerators Will Not Destroy the Planet, But Humans Might
The future could be glorious or gloomy, and the gust of wind that tilts things in one way or another is us, the humans of the 21st century.
"The stakes are very high in this century," said British cosmologist Martin Rees. "It is the first century in which human beings ... can determine the future of the planet."
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During the last days, news have been reporting Rees's new book "On the Future: Prospects for Humanity" (Princeton University Press, 2018) makes a rather spectacular claim: if things go wrong, particle accelerators hit subatomic particles at immense speeds, such as Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, - could turn the Earth into a dense sphere or black hole.
In fact, Rees told Live Science in a recent interview, his book states otherwise: the likelihood of this happening is very, very low. The idea that the LHC forms mini-black holes has been circulating for a while and is not something to worry about, he said.
"I think people thought right about this question before doing the experiments, but they calmed down," he said. The tranquility comes mainly from the fact that nature already performs such experiments, to an extreme.
Cosmics rays, or particles with much higher energies than those created in particle accelerators, frequently collide in the galaxy, and have not yet done anything disastrous like ripping space, Rees said.
"It's not stupid to think about these things, but on the other hand, they're not serious concerns," he said. But instead, "if you are doing something in which you do not have a guide to nature, you must be a little careful".
In these cases, technology can be a realistic threat for the future, he said.
When nature does not know the answer.
Gene editing, for example, can produce new organic products that do not exist in nature, Rees said.
Sometimes, if you "play with a virus, then, of course, you can not be sure what the consequences are," he said. "It is possible that you can create a form of virus that has not arisen through natural mutations."
There is a lot of talk about the gene units, for example, modifications that are being considered for mosquitoes to reduce the transmission of diseases. Genetic impulses essentially modify the genetic code to alter the likelihood of inheriting certain traits and can lead to "unpredictable environmental effects," he said.
Technology is also making it easier for a person's actions to have far-reaching consequences, he said.
"Only a few people anywhere in the world can cause something that has global consequences in a way that they could not [before], "Rees said, an example is a cyber attack.
Technology also does incredible things, especially in medicine and space travel. And as such, "things can go extremely well," Rees said. "But there are all these dangers on the road due to the misuse of technologies."
The second great threat to the future is our collective. influence on climate, environment and biodiversity, he said. Therefore, it is important to have international conversations on how to combat the pressures that humanity has exerted on the world, he added. And it is much easier to solve the world's problems, such as combating climate change, than to pack our things and go to a new planet, he said.
"It's a dangerous illusion to think that we can escape the problems of the world by going to Mars," Rees said. In fact, robots, who will probably be better adapted to space travel than humans, will be the ones who explore the cosmos.
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Rees does not believe that robots are a real threat to the future.
"I do not care as much as some people make AI take over," Rees said. Humans evolved from previous primates due to natural selection, and the traits favored were intelligence and aggression, he said. The electronics "is not engaged in a struggle for survival as in Darwinian selection, so there's no reason for them to be aggressive, "he said.
For that reason, they probably will not kill the human race and expand into the universe. That would be too "anthropomorphic" for them, he said. "They may just want to sit and think," he said.
Originally published in Living science.
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