i think that the purpose off my post has been dilluted. i was trying to convey that these little intellectual snobs just thumbed their collective noses at the basics of safety in science. now i know risks are in exploration but they are not and will never be a purposeful part of discovery or invention.
i refuse to adhere to the term "acceptable risks". i never will.
What makes you think there was ever any danger? I'm afraid the article linked on slashdot does not have anywhere near the information to make such a conclusion; it typical media hype about science that they have no real conception of.
Did you read the article from Sandia I linked (
http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm)?The experiment takes place under high vacuum, The timescale of the experiment is on the order of microseconds. It amounts basically to a glorified lightbulb burnout.
I am also in serious doubt about the temperatures reported. Temperature is a way for humans to express the collective kinetic energy of a group of particles. It has no real meaning applied in this context, just public effect. I'd like to see the details on the measurement apparatus. (in fact the actual numbers are electron volts... on the order of 200 eV)
So where is this perceived risk?
Was the minute amount of superheated plasma with microsecond lifetimes somehow going to breach a large vacuum and consume the earth?
I have produced energies on a similar scale (70 eV) under high vacuum literally thousands of times, I'm still here. In fact I did so for the purpose of protecting the environment. Can you conceive of that?
Why aren't you concerned by military antimatter containment efforts which can pose a real and genuine threat to the integrity of the earth's structure... we were able to store a few hundred antiprotons on the benchtop for over 10 minutes over ten years ago... I am very suspicious of the lack of reports on progress in this area. Why? Because only minute quantities of antimatter are required to produce an explosion that will literally crack this planet in half.... I'm not worried about fancy lightbulbs.