Will relativistic heavy-ion colliders destroy our planet?

TL;DR

This paper assesses the safety of high-energy heavy-ion collider experiments by using natural cosmic-ray collisions to establish an upper limit on potential planetary destruction risks from hypothetical strangelets.

Contribution

It introduces a method to derive a conservative safety bound for collider experiments based on natural cosmic-ray collision data.

Findings

Natural cosmic-ray collisions set a stringent upper limit on strangelet production.

The risk of planetary destruction from collider experiments is effectively negligible.

The study provides reassurance about the safety of current and future heavy-ion collision research.

Abstract

Experiments at the Brookhaven National Laboratory will study collisions between gold nuclei at unprecedented energies. The concern has been voiced that ``strangelets''-hypothetical products of these collisions - may trigger the destruction of our planet. We show how naturally occurring heavy-ion collisions can be used to derive a safe and stringent upper bound on the risk incurred in running these experiments.