The 5 Most Predictable Aviation Disasters of All-Time

We take air travel for granted, but sending massive amounts of machinery hurtling into the air is still a risky endeavor. Sometimes, things go wrong and you find yourself on the business end of an emergency landing in the Hudson River.

The worst part is, you just never can tell when disaster is going to strike. Well, maybe sometimes you can...

#5.

First Hot Air Balloon Flight Ends in Tears (and Explosions)

On September 19th 1783, a sheep, a cockerel and a duck embarked on an untethered hot air balloon ride from the front courtyard of the Palace of Versailles. Incredibly, that's actual history and not the opening line of a joke.

The mastermind behind this animal-tastic adventure was Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier. Prior to sending a bunch of farm animals off to their inexplicably avoided death in a hot air balloon (how he get them back down to Earth is anyone's guess), Monsieur Rozier was renowned for his research in flight technology.

Rare photo of Monsieur Rozier

After his first foray into balloon flight resulted in zero animal deaths, Rozier concluded that there was no reason humans shouldn't be all up in hot air balloons also. With one unprecedented win under his belt already, he was able to convince King Louis XVI to allow him and a nobleman named Francois Laurent d'Arlandes to become the first human untethered hot air balloon pilots.

After several successful flights, Rozier decided that he was above the laws of physics and logic and decided to make a trip across the English Channel using what he dubbed his "hybrid balloon." The balloon featured two compartments. One was heated by an open flame which was fueled by brandy, a fact we have deemed to be completely fucking rad.

Dad called it fuel for a reason

Rozier decided to foolishly fill the other compartment with highly combustible Hydrogen instead of the more reasonable choice, Helium, just because that element wouldn't be discovered for another fifty years. Besides, who has time for determining the capacity for explosiveness when there are awesome hot air balloon flights to embark on?

Roughly fifteen minutes into the English Channel flight, the flame and the hydrogen predictably found each other and joined forces to form a Voltron like explosion of awesome and carelessness. Surprisingly, the explosion wasn't fatal, but that 1,500 foot plummet to the unforgiving ground beneath them most certainly was.

Of course, the lesson the world learned from this was that there had to be much more awesome ways to go down in one of these things. Like...

#4.

First Female Balloonist Ends In... Well, Guess

Throughout history, there have been women who have attempted to carry on their husbands' work after he passed on. Not a problem if the husband was a day laborer or a prostitute or something. But in the case of Marie Blanchard, her husband was a goddamned balloon pilot. Not exactly the kind of thing you just pick up on the fly (GET IT?!?!?).

You think they just give out these babies?

Nevertheless, after Blanchard's husband died from a heart attack (followed by a fall from a hot air balloon, of course) in 1809, Marie continued his rich tradition of balloon demonstrations. Though inexperienced in balloon piloting, she made up for it with an even more astounding failure to understand anything at all about combustible gasses and what happens when you shoot off fireworks around them.

Don't even act like you don't want to keep reading now.

One night (yes, night) Marie took her balloon into the air and, figuring that piloting a flying death trap in the dark wasn't crazy enough, decided to launch fireworks from the balloon. Fireworks! Within minutes, Marie let one fly too close to the balloon and the flame ignited the hydrogen inside.

Wait 'til you land before celebrating

After an undoubtedly flamboyant fall from the sky, Marie caught a break and landed on the roof of a building. But to the horror of the crowd below, she then slipped from the roof to the street below where her neck caught a far less lucky break. Marie not only earned the distinction of being the first woman balloon pilot, but also the honor of being the first woman to die in one.

#3.

The Flying Flea

Would you fly in a plane designed by a man hell bent on convincing the world that flight science was a scam? Of course you would, because flying is awesome. If you don't believe us, look no further than the story of Henry Mignet (we chose to link to that site mostly for the bitchin' background music).

During WWI, he convinced a friend of his in the French Air Force to let him taxi a plane (the driving portion of a flight before takeoff). For most people, this would be enough. For Mignet, it was not. He decided to add a little bit of the ol' "let's gun this bitch and see if we can fly it" to the end of his taxi maneuvering. Not surprisingly, he crashed. This was the moment he decided flight science is a scam.

"This is bullshit!"

To alleviate this, he designed his own "aircraft," dubbed it The Sky Louse and released the design to the public.

Mignet's original "Sky Kill PainCopter" was deemed impractical

According to people that have actually built them, the Louse resembles a coffin with a motor on front and is constructed from spare wood, nails, glue and a motorcycle engine. Look for a KISS version to be available sometime next year. Interestingly, the Louse contains none of the conventional features of an airplane such as rudder pedals or engine cowls. It does, however, contain an extra (albeit unnecessary) set of wings behind the cockpit.

Upon its release, the numerous people that built and tried to fly them (as if you wouldn't have) found that if they sent the plane into a steep enough nose dive, the Louse would lock into that position and crash. As far as why people continued this experiment after the first few times, we have no idea.

#2.

Better off Wet

If you asked an old-school airplane designer to draw you a picture of an airplane, you would HOPE it looked like this:

And in fact that was made by designer Gianni Caproni, who designed perfectly normal and functioning planes...until he decided to throw all of his design experience to the wind and design a plane that looked like this:

Holy shit! There are many words that come to mind when looking at the picture above (Photoshop being among them), but we assure you, it's real. Rather than design a plane that resembled designs he knew worked, Caproni decided to build a plane that would allow us to laugh at him 88 years later.

Question: If you call a plane with two wings a bi-plane, what is a plane with nine wings called?

Answer: Hilarious.

Built from a houseboat, Caproni intended for the Caproni Ca.60 to be a 100-passenger transatlantic machine of awesome and excellence, something unheard of in the early 1900's. But still, Caproni had very few naysayers. Given his fame as a designer, it would have been like telling Henry Ford, "Honestly, that whole gas thing is probably a mistake."

Ford to naysayers: Go fuck yourselves

Unsurprisingly, the Caproni Ca. 60 made only made one flight. And by "flight" we mean "it lumbered its way to a cruising altitude of 60 feet before crashing to the ground and shattering just 15 seconds later. Somehow, Caproni survived. Even more impressive is the fact that his reputation pretty much came out intact also.

#1.

The Gimli Glider

In 1983, Canada had recently switched from the British Imperial system of measurements to the Metric System like a bunch of weirdos. During a preflight check, Captain Robert Pearson discovered the fuel gauge had malfunctioned. As this was one of only four all computerized planes in Canada's fleet (they have six now), Pearson contacted Air Canada's Maintenance Control and asked what to do, as the plane no longer conformed to the MEL (minimum equipment list).

Rather than telling him to cancel the flight, they told him the plane was fine to fly as long as he was certain he had enough fuel. As Canada had only recently switched to that newfangled Metric System thing, Pearson had a difficult task ahead of him.

He knew two things to start with. 1) He needed 22,300 Kg of fuel to get to his destination and 2) there were 7,682 liters of fuel already in the tanks. In order to know how much fuel he needed, Pearson had to know how many liters are in a kilogram. With his back against the wall, Pearson turned to the most obvious source of mathematical information...the guy driving the fuel truck. The number they came up with was 1.77.

Not a mathematician

Unfortunately for Pearson, he and the man driving the gas truck were only partially right. 1.77 is the correct number if you are converting liters to POUNDS. In order to get kilograms, you multiply by .8. In other words, Flight 143 had 20,302 pounds in its tank. And because a pound weighs less than half of what a kilogram does, the plane didn't even have half of the fuel it needed.

When the first engine failed, Pearson planned to land at the nearest major airport, but when the fuel ran out completely a few minutes later, Pearson made an even emergencier landing at an abandoned Air Force base in Gimli.

When he arrived, he was forced to land a 300,000 "glider" at an abandoned air force base that, it turned out, was not abandoned. There was a drag race being held there that day. No one bothered to tell the pilot that, probably figuring a bunch of drag racers were acceptable collateral damage.

Luckily, only a few passengers were injured and no one was killed. For his unbridled weights and measurements prowess, Pearson received a medal. And a suspension from Air Canada, which is probably just as good as a medal.

Starting a new sort of business

As everybody know about the software companies, we are working with them and we are paid salaries. But the scenario is like they think we are working under them. And that makes us very vexed if we are under some pressure from work and affecting our personal life. I was experiencing this since the past three months. I was able to cope up with work and due to which my personal life was about to go out of control.

So to deviate myself from all the hurdles and achieve something big (just a dream) I have started taking steps to establish a business where we put our skills to develop a culture which is not like a corporate. I have started a website http://www.verticalinfoedge.com/ with the help of my friends and the circle I have. I got some projects pipe lined and am yet to get start.

Am actually feeling better after deviating myself to the other things. After the big start, I am doing great in my personal life too. So, guys whenever you feel your life is looking something different, do something different in life, may be it succeeds, who knows??? But am sure you will get some peace outta it.

KCR sinking, Parliament urges him to break fast

Andhra Pradesh has been put on high alert as Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President K Chandrashekhar Rao's health continues to deteriorate.

Rao's deteriorating health and the agitation for a separate state of Telangana also echoed in Parliament on Wednesday as both the Houses debated the issue with MPs urging him to break his fast and insisting that the Centre look into the matter urgently.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also spoke to MPs from Andhra Pradesh and expressed concern over KCR's health

While Lok Sabha MPs asked Centre to intervene and resolve the Telangana tangle, in Rajya Sabha Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs forced an adjournment on the issue.

"We are very concerned about KCR's health. I on behalf of every body would appeal to him that we are as concerned about Telangana but we are also concerned about his health," said BJP MP and Leader of Opposition LK Advani.

"Andhra situation is very explosive. Government should have taken note of it as it erupted," said Janata Dal (United) President Sharad Yadav.

Congress MP Jaipal Reddy also appealed to KCR to end his hunger strike.

Rao, popularly know as KCR, has been on hunger strike for the past 11 days demanding that a state of Telangana be carved out of Andhra Pradesh.

Doctors attending KCR at the state-run Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) in Hyderabad are trying to convince him to break his fast.

"He (KCR) is not cooperating. He is refusing anti-biotics and IV. He is conscious but very weak," said a doctor attending KCR. He added that till now KCR's vitals signs were stable.

A medical bulletin issued by NIMS said that though KCR was conscious and speaking, but he has been refusing to take medicines and antibiotics.

Doctors said that if he did not take food and medicines, his condition would start to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, police have begun a crackdown on protestors in Hyderabad and forcibly evicted students from Osmania University hostels in Hyderabad on Wednesday morning.

TRS protestors and students also clashed with police outside the Andhra Pradesh Assembly on Wednesday morning.

There was an uproar in the Andhra Assembly on Telangana issue for the second day on Wednesday with Speaker Kiran Kumar Reddy first adjourning the House for 15 minutes and then for the entire day.

Chief Minister K Rosaiah appealed to the MLAs to let the Assembly function claiming that Centre was considering the issue of a separate Telangana state but TRS MLAs supported by BJP and the Communist Party of India (CPI) gathered near the Speaker’s podium shouting slogans forcing the adjournment.

Andhra Opposition leaders including Telugu Desam party chief N Chandrababu naidu also appealed to KCR to end his fast.

Rosaiah will also be coming to Delhi on Wednesday to meet Congress President Sonia Gandhi and discuss the issue.

Prohibitory orders banning the assembly of five or more people at a place under Section 144) of the Code of Criminal Procedure will also clamped by 1800 hrs IST in all 10 districts of Telangana including Hyderabad.

Andhra Pradesh government has shut down all universities, colleges and hostels in the region till December 19 to pre-empt the Assembly Chalo (march to the Assembly) rally called by the TRS and the students unions on Wednesday.

"We hope that people who are intending to come and lay siege on the Assembly will be prevented. We will try and see that there will not be any violence and there will no inconvenience to the general public," said Hyderabad Police Commissioner B Prasada Rao.

"We are getting inputs that anti-social elements will be mixing with the protestors to create unrest. We will be deploying heavy forces, special police and paramilitary forces. Osmania University is on a 15 day holiday. We will make sure that the students vacate the hostels," added Rao.

There has been heavy deployment of security forces in Telangana region including Hyderabad with authorities having called in 8,000 policemen. Rapid Action Force and Central Reserve Police Force platoons have also been deployed in the region.

Police officials say the heavy deployment has been necessitated because TRS is planning to bring in its supporters from neighbouring districts and for the Assembly Chalo rally on Thursday.

Security forces have also set up check points at all entry points in Hyderabad to prevent Telangana supporters from entering the city.

Senior Congress leaders in Delhi including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P Chidambaram have been keeping a close watch on the Telangana agitation in Andhra Pradesh and are also in contact with leaders from the state to finds a solution.

6 'Brilliant' Movie Scientists (Who Suck At Their Job)

Here at Cracked we hold our heroes to a higher standard than most. Especially our fictional heroes because, well, they have the freaking advantage of being fictional. Yet, so, so many of them still manage to screw it up.

For instance, look at some of the most brilliant scientists in movie history and you find a bunch of guys who should never have been allowed near a Bunsen burner. Like:

#6.

Tony Stark from Iron Man

Why He's A Genius:

Tony Stark built a killer battle suit, which was badass and all. But then Jeff Bridges found the prototype and built a bigger, far more awesome suit. As a general rule, when you get out-scienced by the guy who played The Dude in The Big Lebowski, you'd better have something else up your sleeve.

Preparing to activate his White Russian arm cannons.

Stark's ticket to movie science credibility was actually located in his chest: A tiny, stable, almost limitless energy source. So powerful it can do the job of massive generators and jet engines simultaneously, and can go years without refueling. So simple it could be slapped together out of spare parts by two guys in a cave.

It's the miniature arc reactor, a device that by all rights should've revolutionized the world. Give the man a Nobel Prize!

Why He Should Not Have Been Allowed To Do Science:

The more you look at Tony Stark, the more you realize he developed the mini arc reactor only to play God, or at least a shitfaced version of Shaquille O'Neal's Steel.

We'd so pay to see that movie.

Case in point: After first discovering this world changing energy source, he makes exactly one more arc reactor, and uses it to power his pizza-colored murder suit. He doesn't make any demonstration models for his company. Hell, he doesn't even draw up any blueprints. In fact, he's so damn Howard Hughes about the whole operation, that he instructs Pepper Potts to destroy the original model, rather than turn it over to his company's engineers to mass produce and solve all of the world's resource problems forever.

Wait a second. Who throws away the only backup power source for the machine that's keeping him from having a heart attack?

Comic books have a name for brilliant scientists with nearly debilitating Messiah complexes. They're called supervillains.

#5.

Dr. Henry Wu from Jurassic Park

In Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs weren't resurrected by the rich old guy (he was just the CEO), Samuel L. Jackson or even the mailman from Seinfeld. No, Dr. Wu, the guy responsible for all those scene-stealing sauropods, only got a measly 10 minutes of screen time. Ouch.

Why He's A Genius:

Dr. Wu fulfilled every child's dream of seeing a real live Triceratops. He also fulfilled every Internet denizen's dream of watching two lesbian T-Rexes bumping uglies in an orgiastic fury.

Tyrannosaurus-Sex!

Why He Should Not Have Been Allowed To Do Science:

Wait, lesbian T-Rexes? Yeah, remember, Dr. Wu bred all the dinosaurs as females to prevent any prehistoric hanky-panky. He also spliced the dinosaur DNA with frog DNA. Sounds fine, except that after discovering hatched dinosaur eggs in the wild, it took Allen Grant five seconds to figure out that certain species of frog can spontaneously change sex in the absence of a mate.

And Dr. Grant was just a paleontologist--his job was to dig up dino bones. The man was a frog gene novice. How in the hell did this eensy-weensy detail elude Dr. Wu, who spent his career reverse engineering all those 65-million-year-old killing machines?

Perhaps he was distracted by his own handsomeness.

But the frog DNA flub is just the slack-jawed tip Dr. Wu's mentally retarded iceberg. No, his most unforgivable fuck-up was to breed Velociraptors.

Raising intelligent, sickle-toed murder-lizards for a children's theme park would give even the most bastardly supervillain pause. Remember, no one had ever heard of Velociraptors before the release of Jurassic Park, so unlike the carnivorous T-Rex, there was no money in breeding them.

So why the hell did Dr. Wu need Velociraptors? The only logical explanation is that he needed extra contestants for a little pastime we at the Cracked offices like to call "Lasersaurus Battle Derby."

#4.

Dr. Otto Octavius from Spiderman 2

Note that we're not criticizing Dr. Octavius for becoming the supervillain Doc Ock later. That was his own choice and we respect that. No, we're talking about before, when he was a scientist yet somehow quite a bit more dangerous to the world than when he took up supervillaining.

Why He's A Genius:

Dr. Octavius devised a renewable fusion energy source from the radioactive isotope Tritium. Despite the immense power generated by this reaction, the only safety gear required was a set of off-gray pajamas...

...and four metal tentacles partially controlled by the Doc's brain, and partially having minds of their own.

Why He Should Not Have Been Allowed To Do Science:

Quick question: What do the New Mexican desert and the Soviet steppe have in common?

If you answered, "They're reasonably safe places to test nuclear devices," then bingo. If you inexplicably added "but a quaint prewar loft in the middle of Manhattan would also do nicely," then you're either Doctor Octopus or the world's evilest interior designer.

The gamma accelerator should always match the drapes.

Let's put it this way: As of the last U.S. census, New York City had perhaps 26,000 people per square mile. A nuke's effective radius is about six miles. By our rough comedy article math, approximately 2.9 million people would be instantly obliterated if the good doctor paused to scratch his ass.

Mind you, this figure doesn't even account for those millions in the outlying area sickened by radiation or horrifically mutated by fallout. On the plus side, New Jerseyans would barely notice, as they're used to living in a miasma of toxic crap.

Ah, another spring morning in Hoboken.

What's even stranger is that of all of the guests and press present for his experiment, no one suggested moving it to Los Alamos instead of conducting an unstable, free-floating nuclear reaction in what was basically a Pottery Barn showroom. Even Peter Parker--the guy whose alter-ego is supposed to protect the city--didn't say a damn thing. He could've ended the movie right there and saved us an hour of staring at Alfred Molina's man-boobs.

But the most damning thing is that when his "evil" robotic arms take over (turning him into Doc Ock) and subsequently recreate the Tritium reaction at the film's climax, even they had enough sense to move the freaking experiment to an abandoned wharf away from from a heavily populated area.

When your criminally insane prosthetics displayed a greater concern for human life than you, you are a shitty scientist.

Dr. Lawrence Angelo from The Lawnmower Man

Why He's A Genius:

Dr. Angelo (Pierce Brosnan) invented Project 5, a virtual-reality program that transforms its users into telekinetic gods. Unfortunately, godhood isn't all that it's cracked up to be, since you end up looking like Max Headroom on angel dust.

Not that this would hinder your chances of getting laid. The film's portrayals of VR sex are so disturbing that a man's penis would invert itself.

Why He Should Not Have Been Allowed To Do Science:

The film opens with the good doctor unsuccessfully testing Project 5 on chimps. After failing to create psychic ape-messiahs, Dr. Angelo recruits Jobe (a.k.a. Frank Lapidus on Lost), the titular, mentally retarded groundskeeper, to test Project 5.

"My experiment will make you smarter..."

And when we say "Dr. Angelo recruits Jobe," we actually mean "Dr. Angelo hops the unwitting schmo up on IQ-boosting video games and smart drugs for laughs."

"...or an episode of ReBoot directed by David Cronenberg."

Dr. Angelo had good intentions but a miserable grasp of scientific ethics. The ability to read at a middle-school level would be mind-blowing enough for Jobe, but giving him the ability to blow up a middle school with his mind? Please. We'd be better off with the chimps. The worst they'd do is transmogrify reality into a giant banana.

#2.

Dr. Herbert West from Re-Animator

Why He's A Genius:

Dr. West concocted the Re-Agent, a serum that resurrects the dead as mindless zombies. At first, the Re-Agent sounds like a truly awful idea. But think about it: Zombies are tireless, have no use for money and have crossed the unknowable chasm between life and death. In sum: They're the ultimate migrant laborers.

Sure, people would probably protest that these undead abominations are taking jobs away from living Americans, but that's simply because they don't have a zombie butler yet.

Why He Should Not Have Been Allowed To Do Science:

The Re-Agent raises some profound ethical questions, such as "Where's the dignity in dying if your rotting corpse is forced to work at Arby's?"

Regardless of a societally suitable answer (frankly, we'd only settle for nothing less than In-N-Out), Dr. West said, "Screw that noise!" and tested his serum in secret. This meant sneaking into morgues, reanimating disgruntled zombies and then reanimating any poor bastard unlucky enough to wander into the undead's path.

Needless to say, West racks up a sizable body count by the film's end. Had he just told someone what the fuck he invented, we're sure the N.I.H. would've provided him with a dump truck full of overripe old folks to un-birth. The movie would then be exactly like Cocoon if all the senior citizens ate each other.

Heck, West could've held a press conference to demonstrate the Re-Agent. Sure, there's the chance one of his test subjects would strangle an audience member with its zombie intestines, but that's the kind of stuff that gets your driveway paved in Nobel Prizes.

#1.

The Ghostbusters

Why They're Geniuses:

For those two readers who have never seen Ghostbusters: drive to your nearest mall and buy it. Now. Drive in the left lane if it's quicker. And don't worry about fatalities, the cops will understand. They've seen Ghostbusters.

For the rest of humanity: In no time and for little cost, they slapped together the Psycho-Kinetic Energy Meter, the Proton Packs, ghost-capturing technology and had the foresight to buy up cheap downtown New York real estate during the pre-Giuliani years.

14 North Moore Street. Google Map it.

Why They Should Not Have Been Allowed To Do Science:

When faced with irrefutable proof of mankind's ultimate question--the existence of ghosts and thus life after death and the soul--the Ghostbusters did what absolutely no ethical scientist would do: declare war on the spirits and imprison them in tiny boxes.

The theological and philosophical ramifications of an afterlife? Poppycock. The fact that most apparitions are just looking for earthly closure? Bosh. What about the possibility of reconnecting with dead loved ones? Screw that noise! Treat those bastards like we're exterminators and they're a roach infestation!

So let's just that say that if Grandpa Jim materializes in your home, DON'T call the Ghostbusters. Otherwise Peter Venkman will show up stinking of Campari, bark a witticism to no one in particular and unceremoniously Proton Pack the shit out of your living room.

Once all your earthly possessions are charred and radioactive, Venkman will slap you with a $1,000 invoice and ship Gramps off to ghost jail, where he'll spend eternity getting buggered by poltergeists in a firehouse basement.

And about those Proton Packs? These "unlicensed nuclear accelerators" have a fairly important design flaw: If you cross the streams, you'll destroy the universe.

This means that, at any given moment, reality as we know it rests in the hands of three clumsy, out-of-shape scientists.

Say Venkman trips. End of the universe. Stantz sneezes. End of the universe. Egon prolapses. End of the universe.

Winston was not a scientist.

Holy crap, the dickless EPA guy was right!

Experiments to know how the big bang theory worked

Sci/Tech

Not the end of the world

Two long tunnels bring together matter at near the speed of light

By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse

Scientists have quashed suggestions that a £350m experiment planned for the autumn could cause the destruction of the Earth.

The director of the laboratory commissioning the machine says there is "no chance" of the atom-smashing experiment causing a disaster, such as a black hole that would devour the entire Earth.

Researchers have spent eight years constructing the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in New York state. Its goal is to smash the nuclei of atoms together and study their wreckage to determine the fundamental properties of matter.

Huge magnets are needed to accelerate the particles

RHIC takes atoms of gold and swings them around two 3.8 kilometre (2.4 mile) circular tubes where powerful magnets accelerate them to almost the speed of light. When they collide, they do so in minute collisions that are 10,000 times hotter than the Sun.

Scientists hope to create a quark-gluon plasma, a fundamental state of matter that probably has not existed naturally in the Universe since the Big Bang.

Armageddon?

But could they create something else, a mini-black hole perhaps or a new form of particle with unknown properties that could expand and engulf the Earth?

That was the suggestion made recently in the letters section of the Scientific American magazine, "I am concerned that physicists are going where it is unsafe to go," said one correspondent

If a mini black hole was created then some speculate that, in certain circumstances and if it was next to a concentration of mass, it could become stable and continue to grow. It would be drawn towards the centre of the Earth, where it would start to grow. It might engulf the entire Earth within minutes.

Too far-fetched

But it is all a bit-far fetched according to the scientists commissioning the particle collider. John Marburger, Director of Brookhaven Laboratories says: "I am familiar with the issue of possible dire consequences of experiments at the RHIC, which Brookhaven Lab is now commissioning.

"These issues have been raised and examined by responsible scientists who have concluded that there is no chance that any phenomenon produced by RHIC will lead to disaster.

"The amount of matter involved in the RHIC collisions is exceedingly small - only a single pair of atomic nuclei is involved in each collision. Our Universe would have to be extremely unstable in order for such a small amount of energy to cause a large effect."

"On the contrary, the Universe appears to be quite stable against releases of much larger amounts of energy that occur in astrophysical processes."

He emphasises that RHIC collisions will be within the spectrum of energies encompassed by naturally occurring cosmic radiation that strikes the Earth all the time.

Experts in the relevant fields of physics have been asked to produce a single comprehensive report on the safety of each of the speculative "disaster scenarios". When completed it will be placed on the laboratory's web site.

Familiar fear

It is not the first time that scientists and others have worried that they may produce some form of chain-reaction in their particle colliders that may endanger the Earth.

In the 1970's the Russian physicist Yakob Zeldovich expressed concern that experiments being carried out at the Cern European particle physics centre in Switzerland may result in catastrophe. He later carried out more calculations and decided that his fears were groundless.

In 1995 protestors picketed the Fermilab laboratory near Chicago carrying the banner "Fermilab: home of the next supernova." Experts said their fears were baseless.