Later this year, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is scheduled to go into operation outside Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists hope the LHC will enable them to better understand what happened when the universe was born. Some critics fear that the machine could trigger a catastrophe that ends life on Earth — and maybe the Earth itself. That risk is minuscule to the point of being practically nonexistent. And while the LHC will likely go ahead as anticipated, the controversy does raise important issues about public understanding of science and risk.

The LHC will slam together protons, the basic particles of matter, at energies of 7 trillion electron-volts, which will create conditions last seen trillionths of a second after the Big Bang. A successful experiment will give us insight into how the universe works. Some fear that this experiment will unleash or create strange particles or events that could destroy the planet. Supporters counter that these concerns have been aired each time a particle collider — the LHC is only the most powerful yet created — has gone into operation. (Some worried that the first atomic bomb test might incinerate the atmosphere.)

In addition, supporters explain that the LHC will merely replicate events that occur 100,000 times a day as a result of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. When pressed, they confess that the detritus from those collisions continues through the Earth at near light speed. The LHC collision remnants will not be moving relative to the Earth itself and will therefore remain at rest relative to the laboratory. They might in fact have different results.