Next Wednesday, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, will be switching on the Large Hadron Collider, which is a particle accelerator that will send beams of protons around a 17-mile underground ring. The LHC, which cost $6 billion, is aimed at recreating Big Bang’s effects by crashing protons into each other. Thus, hopes are high that the Universe’s mysteries will be no harder to solve than a corny 100-piece puzzle.

Nevertheless, opponents to the LHC fear that the experiment will create a black hole, putting the Earth and all of its creatures at risk. Therefore, on August 26, Professor at the Eberhard Karis University of Tubingen Otto Rossler, filed a lawsuit against CERN. It was filed with the European Court of Human Rights, the German Chemist reasoning that, in case switching on the LHC produces a black hole, humans’ right to life will be violated. Last March, another lawsuit was filed by two American environmentalists who demanded that the United States pull the plug on its participation in the project.

In order to put critics at ease, CERN issued a report revealing that, even if a black hole were to form, it would rapidly evaporate due to Hawking Radiation. So no harm done, the organization says.

The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator complex and was built in collaboration with more than eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries. Its construction was approved in 1995, while the first civil engineering construction work started in April 1998. The first high-energy collisions are scheduled to take place after the LHC’s official unveiling, on October 21, 2008.