Re: Gaia

Don_from_AZ <djatechNOSPAM@comcast.net.invalid> wrote:

Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> writes:

I'm reminded of a George Carlin talk where he pointed out that
"saving the Earth" is nonsense.  Earth will survive anything we
can do to it.  We might not.

Well, perhaps not the Earth either.  In David Brin's aptly named
"Earth" novel, scientists have created a micro black hole that gets
loose and starts orbiting within the Earth itself, slowly accreting
mass.  Eventually the Earth will implode.  It has been a long time
since I read the novel:  I think they finally managed to save the
planet, but if some real-life supercollider manages to make a black
hole, we might not be so fortunate.

When I experienced the 2011 earthquake here in Virginia, that was
my first thought:  That those who warned that the LHC or some other
collider would create a black hole that would swallow up the Earth
were right, and I was about to fall 4000 miles straight down, along
with everyone and everything else on Earth.

It retrospect it's a rather silly idea.  Every day for billions of
years, Earth has been exposed to cosmic rays with far higher energies
than LHC could ever reach.  If planets could so easily collapse,
our solar system would contain a lot fewer planets and a lot more
planetary-mass black holes.  And yes, someone would have noticed
such black holes by now.  Just ask Adams and Le Verrier.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.