No black holes from Large Hadron Collider, say scientists

Remember the fear that the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in 1945 might ignite the atmosphere? The Large Hadron Collider, a massive particle accelerator 17 miles in circumference that begins operation today, comes with its own apocalyptic possibility: teensy black holes with gravitational appetites voracious enough to swallow the Earth.

But you can breathe easy, because some scientists believe that worry is just as baseless as the A-bomb's flaming atmosphere.

On Tuesday, the American Institute of Physics' news update presented evidence from Steve Giddings of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Michelangelo Mangano of CERN -- the nuclear physics lab where the LHC is housed -- concluding there's no threat from little black holes.

If such black holes were to be created by a chance cosmic ray, for example, their runaway growth would be most evident from feasting on the super-dense matter of white dwarfs and neutron stars, but there are plenty of those stars that are very old.

Scientists once believed black holes' inescapable gravitational forces meant they'd grow inexorably, but renowned physicist Stephen Hawking later countered with the view that energy can in fact leak away from black holes, causing them to effectively "evaporate."