Some weeks ago, New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote a piece about the possibility of black-hole production at the LHC. I think she took this far too seriously; the chance of the LHC making black holes is super-tiny, and these aren’t the sort of black holes that are going to eat anything anyway. Today Collins (who really is one of my favorite columnists, very trenchant political commentary) returned to the matter. This time she did talk to an actual physicist, Brown’s Greg Landsberg, who is the US CMS physics coordinator. She’s still too hung up on it, but at least she gave us some publicity for the big September 10 date, and even said that LHC startup will be as exciting as the upcoming Democratic and Republican conventions. For sure, it will be more suspenseful!
