World to be Swallowed By Black Hole...Or Dragon

There is a non-zero chance that the new particle accelerator being built in Switzerland could create a black hole that destroys the Earth.

"...anything created when the beams meet head-on in the collider will be born at rest relative to the laboratory and so will stick around and thus could create havoc.The new worries are about black holes, which, according to some variants of string theory, could appear at the collider."

Most of the scientists don't think it will actually occur, calling it "a long shot", but two crackpots in Hawaii have sued to stop construction.

Money quote:

"...there is some minuscule probability, he said, 'the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.'"

I'm Not Going to Say "I Told You So"...

even though I did. See here:

"Also, keep in mind that there may be many more hidden surprises out there, especially if the continued cooling of the housing market leads to greater defaults/delinquencies in the mortgage market. [Specifically I am referring to the possibility of a de-rating of the mortgage backed securities which could conceivably trigger all sorts of hell in the financial markets.]"

So for all those who said that it wasn't possible to see the coming financial crisis, it was.

A good summary from a guy at Goldman Sachs.