moeloubani

I'm a semester away from a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics :P

But really, this stuff does have a chance of happening. But it's such a tiny chance that it's dumb to think of it at all. When you shrink things down to that size, weird things happen and probability takes over where certainty reigns in the 'normal' world. For example, it's totally possible that someone could put their hand on a door and their hand would pass right through. But it would require the exact alignment of all the trillions of atoms in their hand and in the door, and the probability of that all coming together is so slim that it just doesn't happen. But you could still say it could happen and no one can say it can't because well, it can.

The point is that the risk of something happening that would have an affect on anything outside the collider and it's sensors in terms of physical damage is almost zero. And it's not like winning the lottery almost zero, it's like winning the lottery, then winning it again with the same numbers 5 weeks in a row. It just won't happen. But what will happen is people will be able to see and measure for the first time the elementry particles (particles that can't be broken down any further) that make up the atoms that make up all the shit we see today. Included with those elementry particles is a theoretical particle called the 'graviton' or Higgs Boson that is what most physicists today think is responsible for gravity (kind of crazy that with all we know, we really don't know what causes gravity). But the experiments carried out with that collider could very well lead to the discovery (or experimental proof) of the particles that lead to gravity which would then lead to a clearer understanding of the world at a quantum level.