We are used to trusting what smart people in lab coats say and do, whom we call scientists.
But what if one of them decides to put knowledge and science above everything else and sticks his curious nose where he shouldn't, inadvertently triggering a chain of events that will lead to a catastrophe on a global, if not universal scale? We have collected 5 of the most dangerous experiments that can give us the Apocalypse just the other day.
5. Recreating the Big Bang
The Big Bang haunts scientists. How so - they missed the event that marked the beginning of all existence simply because humanity did not bother to begin to evolve 13 billion years earlier!
The conclusion of scientists: you need to make the Big Bang happen again. They claim they can stage it by really pushing a few protons hard. Rather, they already can, and successfully create in artificial conditions a million such collisions per second, which is 999,999 times more than the creator of our Universe planned.
What could go wrong?
Imagine an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust, multiply 120 billion times, and then multiply it again by a number close to infinity. As a result, we get about 1/8 of the power of the Big Bang. Despite this, scientists are confident that they can keep this power in a closed test tube. The amendment is in a really big test tube.
Promotional video:
Meet the Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator ever created by mankind, launched in September 2008. It is here that the best minds of mankind drive elementary particles along a 26-kilometer ring, collide them with each other, and see what comes of it.
The main problem is that even the best of the best in the scientific community don't know exactly what will happen as a result of these experiments. Perhaps the main discovery made thanks to the LHC will be that it can be used to turn our planet into cosmic dust.
Risk level: 3
Researchers and third-party experts working at the LHC unanimously assure that there is no danger, and predict that the results of experiments with it can turn the whole of modern science, directly sending us into the Golden Age of absolute knowledge about life, the Universe and all that other stuff. If, of course, we are lucky and humanity will survive.
4. Quantum Zeno effect
For years, scientists have combed space in search of a strange, hypothetical anti-gravity contraption they call "Dark Energy." And they even achieved some success in this matter … although, perhaps, the value of our unfortunate souls.
Quantum physics versus classical physics looks the same as a David Lynch film versus a mainstream blockbuster. It is full of particles that sometimes exist, then do not exist, or exist in two places at once, and generally behave shamelessly. To simplify greatly, then at a level smaller than the size of atoms, at the quantum level, our entire universe turns … into some kind of circus.
But the strangest thing about all of this is the quantum Zeno effect, a theory that simply by observing particles, we are already changing them (more precisely, changing the level at which they decay). How exactly? No one knows.
What could go wrong?
One distinguished scientist, Professor Lawrence Krauss, has put forward the theory that changes caused by mere observation of dark energy could trigger its collapse, which would eventually take the entire universe with it. The rest of the scientists, apparently wanting to test this assumption, began to observe dark energy with double persistence.
How much do we have left?
Professor Krauss believes that the result is not far off, especially given the fact that in the late 90s, when scientists were lucky enough to detect dark energy, they just observed a series of supernova explosions. So it is quite possible that only by the fact of observing the Universe, we will make it burst, like a soap bubble. Or not burst. When it comes to quantum physics, as always, no one can say anything for sure.
Risk level: 3
This, of course, cannot be, although one of the most famous physicists in the world speaks about this, having published a huge list of articles and books on this topic. By the way, one of them is called Physics in Star Trek. So we're safer to think that he just licked that idea off of one of the Next Generation scripts.
Number 3. Strange matter
As you already understood, there are many different inexplicable things in the scientific world. This is because most of the fundamental theories about our reality are based on mathematical calculations rather than observations. So many things exist only in theory, but we can never see them. One scientist even suggested that if we did see them with our own eyes, most likely we would spend the rest of our lives screaming non-stop. Okay, this was not a scientist, but Howard Phillips Lovecraft, but still.
In any case, strange matter is just one of those things. It is a hypothetical substance composed of quarks - particles that are the building blocks of reality. Remember the mythical king Midas, who had the ability to turn everything he touched into gold? Strange matter does the same.
What could go wrong?
There are two hypotheses about strange matter. The first one thinks that this thing will simply disappear a split second after it appears. The second claims that it will stabilize and begin to transform every atom with which it comes in contact into the same strange matter.
There are suggestions that somewhere in the vastness of the Universe there are whole stars, consisting of strange matter only because a microscopic dose of this substance came into contact with the matter of the star, and everything went to dust.
Now imagine at least theoretically what strange matter will do if it appears on Earth. And - in theory! - it will be stable enough to react with normal matter. Then in theory … we will all die a very unpleasant death.
How much do we have left?
Fortunately for us, strange matter can only arise as a result of high-energy collisions of elementary particles, so there is no danger at all. Wait a minute, we have …
The Large Hadron Collider! After all, when scientists were building the LHC, they hoped to discover a lot of different things, colliding atoms in a huge underground tunnel, and strange matter is just from this list.
Risk level: 5
When asked about the problem of strange matter, scientists usually answer that "if something could have happened, it would have already happened." But only because they are sure that if something really happens, no one will be left to ask them.
# 2. Time travel
There are hundreds of stories of time travel, and almost every one has a place for the disastrous consequences of careless handling of the law of causation. Although most physicists are convinced that time travel is impossible in principle, and that the very existence of the universe proves this. And think for yourself - even if time travel is invented in the future, then why then none of these inventors appear in our time? We would have noticed a huge flying steam locomotive, right?
Of course, there are enough ways that Creation can punish us for neglecting the most fundamental law of cause and effect. The most modest considerations on this score: the world, at least, will explode or collapse into a singularity. As a maximum, it will completely disappear without a trace.
But we propose to consider a scenario of chronological collapse that is more humane to our Being. In the distant future, when the stars burn out and the planets leave their eternal orbits, the descendants of humanity will be on the verge of extinction, and if they have access to a time machine, they will most likely say: “What the hell ?!” and go back to time to return to a more comfortable point in history.
The flow of refugees from the future to the present will only grow, because as time approaches the End of Everything again, people will again and again go to our present, and so on ad infinitum. It would seem, what does the Large Hadron Collider have to do with it?..
How much do we have left?
Is he again? Yes, again. We add time travel to a dozen ways to end the universe with the LHC. Although so far none of the scientists are seriously developing a way to travel in time, but penicillin was discovered by accident.
One speculation is that high-energy particle collisions at the LHC could open up wormholes in the fabric of the universe that future generations will learn to manipulate for time travel.
Risk level: 7
You probably thought: “If we had a time machine, and we knew that a time machine can destroy the Universe, then we just need to go back to the past and destroy this device! Easy! But in this case, if you destroy the time machine in the past, then where do you get the time machine in the future, because in that case … No, stop. Better not to continue.
No. 1. Nanotechnology
Modern technology revolves around making increasingly complex devices smaller and smaller. So nanotechnology, which makes it possible to create robots the size of a molecule, is just what you need.
What is the use of this? Imagine millions of microscopic machines traveling through a patient's blood vessels to attack a malignant tumor or hunt AIDS viruses with tiny lasers. Or tiny droids cleaning our rivers of pollution. Or similarly invisible building robots, capable of building a building in the blink of an eye, molecule by molecule.
But besides fantastic prospects, there are also problems. For example, how are you going to build so many microscopic machines? The answer is simple - you need to teach them to reproduce their own kind from the available materials of the environment.
What could go wrong?
The problem with nanobots is that they can become the same terminators, but at the cellular level, completely destroying organic life overnight. Kim Eric Drexler, one of the founding fathers of the entire concept of nanotechnology, has come up with some chilling options for Nano-Day. For example, in a scenario known as the "gray goo problem," self-replicating robots will consume all the material available to them on our planet, and along with the Earth itself. What will be left in the end will be a gray mass of nanobots, drifting in outer space.
How much do we have left?
Scientists are happily reporting that we will have a murderous swarm of invisible robots at our disposal in the next 20 years. At the moment they are working on the creation of a "manufacturer" - a kind of "queen of nanobots" that can produce trillions of such tiny machines and operate them.
Risk level: 10
In general, only one thing can save us from the prospect of being converted by nanorobots into gray nanoslime: the Large Hadron Collider, which will kill us earlier.