Please could someone answer a few questions about the LHC for me?

Question

I'm not a physicist, so I don't know much about the LHC at CERN, and while I'm not worried about it as a) I can't do anything about it, and b) several of my friends are PhD astro-/physics students and assure me that the chance of anything coming out of it to destroy the Earth are practically zero, there is one point I don't really understand, and that is Professor Rossler's argument (i.e. that a black hole may be created which could destroy the Earth in 50 months).

- Could someone explain the maths he did to me (in a fairly simple way, I'm a scientist, but not a mathetmatician!)?

- Why is his theory implausible? It seems plausible to me, but as the scientists at CERN have dismissed it I presume its not.

- One of my friends suggested he was just trying to make a load of money and popularity, as his 50 months prediction ties in with the Mayan Nibiru prophecy (which I believe there is no scientific evidence for). Is there any truth in this suggestion?

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

It would be very hard to explain the math involved on Yahoo if I understood it, but consider this, each day since its creation, the earth has been bombarded by cosmic rays, which are very high energy particles. In fact cosmic rays can be more than 10^10 times more energetic than anything that the LHC will be able to produce. When cosmic rays enter the atmosphere they collide with particles just like  the collisions in the LHC. It stands to reason that the same particles that will be created in the LHC have already been created by these collisions with cosmic rays. This implies that if the LHC were able to produce mini-blackholes that would gobble up the earth, then cosmic rays would be able to do so too. Yet the earth is still here, so Dr. Rossler's theory does not match observation.

If that is not enough to convince you, then consider that every celestial body is exposed the same cosmic rays. And their existence is more evidence to suggest that he is wrong.

Answer 2

I am not familiar with Rossler's premise, but the notion that the LHC, or any other earthly machine, could create a black hole simply doesn't compute.  The masses involved are minuscule, and Hawking radiation from a created black hole would destroy it immediately.