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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Particle accelerators once stirred up doomsday scenarios
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:01
	Publish Date:		2015-10-07 19:00:00
	Description:		With all the new discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider, it’s hard to imagine that the particle accelerator once created quite a stir over its potential doomsday scenarios, including the creation of microscopic black holes. Particle physicist Marjorie Shapiro of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that the concern was significant enough to have a group of independent scientists review the scenarios. "I would say most people thought it didn’t make much sense, but it's an important enough issue that you don't want to go by your gut. It’s easy to say, “Oh, come on,” but if you’re talking about the fate of the world, it’s not an appropriate way to respond. In fact, because there was so much concern in the general public, the Director General of CERN put together a blue ribbon panel of extremely well-known physicists, to really go through all the arguments and convince everybody that there was no chance that this would be the accelerator that ate the universe."
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