Risk Evaluation for Strangelets - Risk-Evaluation-Forum.org - "The CERN studies evaluate the possibility of dangerous phenomena in the context of our current theories, but these theories are not complete and unexpected phenomena could occur." 'Ion-Smashing Yields New Knowledge, But Some Still Question Risk' - Voice Of America: "Federal appeals court judge and author Richard A. Posner outlines the scenario in his latest book, Catastrophe: Risk and Response. “Within a fraction of a second, this strange matter would expand, so the entire earth was a strangelet,” he said in an interview. “And because of its great density, the earth in its strange form would be only 100 meters in diameter. And then it would blow up.”" "Richard A. Posner, who advocates the use of cost-benefit analyses in making policy decisions, says, “It’s a very abstract scientific interest that drives this research. It doesn’t sound like a particularly good investment, in which event why take even a very small risk?”" "Yet Mr. Posner and a few other critics, including University of Cambridge physicist and mathematician Adrian Kent, say that a process for deciding on such experiments should be established that includes risk-analysis scholars and the public – particularly since next year the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva, will open a collider 30 times more powerful than RHIC, that’s expected to offer the deepest views into the nature of matter yet." 'Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More' - New York Times: "...anything created when the beams meet head-on in the collider will be born at rest relative to the laboratory and so will stick around and thus could create havoc." Strangelets @ Wikipedia: "...all the nuclei of all the atoms of Earth are converted, and Earth is reduced to a hot, large lump of strange matter." Ice-9 @ Wikipedia: ""Ice-nine" has been used as a metaphor... Such metaphors have included... a runaway fusion reaction of negatively-charged strange matter" The Large Hadron Collider Explained