Tuesday, September 30, 2008

It’s not the end of the world

I know it’s clichéd to moan that Americans are both laughably litigious and arrogantly imperialistic, but this just takes the piss:

A federal judge in Hawaii has dismissed a lawsuit trying to stop the world's largest atom smasher.
U.S. District Court Judge Helen Gilmor ruled Friday that federal courts don't have jurisdiction over the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, near Geneva.
Two Hawaii residents sued because they feared that the machine could create small black holes or other phenomena that could destroy the planet.

The LHC, of course, has broken down without either discovering any Higgs bosons or creating any black holes that would consume the Earth.

Maybe they should have been aiming their lawsuit at the financial sector: that seems much likelier to take us all to oblivion.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's also interesting to find out that Europe is near Geneva.

Perhaps you could add a lack of geographical understanding to the list of American cliches embodied in this story?

Tom Freeman said...

Well, it is Fox News...

Oh, and another cliche to add: delusionally anti-science.