The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World- Part 2

#3.Strange Matter

As you've probably worked out by now, there's some weird shit out there in the world of science. That's because a whole lot of the fundamental theories about reality are based on mathematical equations rather than actual observation. So there are all sorts of things out there that seem to exist in theory, but we've never seen them. At least one scientist has suggested that if we ever saw them with our own eyes, it's likely that we would start screaming and never stop. Well, it wasn't so much a scientists as HP Lovecraft.

Anyway, Strange matter is one of these things. It's a hypothetical material made up of quarks, which are one of the building blocks of reality, things so small that you can't even possibly imagine. Seriously, don't even try to think about it.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
There are two hypotheses about strange matter. One is that the stuff will simply disappear a fraction of a second after it appears. The other is that it will stabilize and convert every atom it comes in contact with into more strange matter. It could go either way, really.

There's a theory that there are entire stars out there in the universe that are made out of strange matter, just because a microscopic fragment of the stuff made contact once and then everything went to hell.

Now imagine, just theoretically, if some of this strange matter should appear on Earth. And, just theoretically, it should be stable enough to start a reaction with regular matter. Theoretically, we'd all be fucking dead.

Not Pictured: Life.

So, Basically It's Like...

Imagine you're like the fabled King Midas, and you have the power to convert matter with a single touch. Except that instead of gold, everything you touch turns into shit. And everything it touches turns to shit. Before you know it, the whole world is shit, and it's all your fault.
How Long Have We Got?

Luckily for us, strange matter can only be created in high-energy particle collisions, and nothing like that ever happens here, right? Oh, wait.

Meet the Large Hadron Collider. Again.

That's right, our friends at the LHC project expect a lot of weird things to pop up when they start smashing atoms together, and strange matter is one such possibility. That's why scientists have written papers with boring titles such as Will Relativistic Heavy-ion Colliders Destroy Our Planet?, the rebuttals to which were basically, "Let's turn them on and find out!"
At this point we're kind of wondering whether there's anything this machine can do that doesn't involve killing you and everyone you care about.

Risk Level: 5
Scientists respond to the strange matter problem by saying if it was ever going to happen, it would have happened already (since these kind of reactions happen a zillion times a second in our atmosphere anyway). We like to call this piece of rhetoric the cop-out hypothesis, because they know damned well that if it turns out they're wrong, there won't be anyone left to sue them.