I read something very unsettling today in “Skeptic” magazine while browsing at the local bookstore. It was an excerpt from Richard A. Posner’s book “Catastrophe”- the part which caught my eye was about the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven Laboratory. I had heard speculation about potential disasters involving this type of collider before, but never that there were three scenarios considered: a black hole, “strangelet” matter created by a certain kind of quark which could turn the world into a small sphere, and a “phase shift” which could destroy the whole universe.
I was a little freaked out after reading this. I try to console myself with the thought that we can’t possibly create conditions the universe hasn’t already seen. Is this a correct assumption? - For example, are those artificial elements at the end of the periodic table truly man-made?
Well, many of the situations that scientists try to create with accelerators are those that existed in the first few moments of the Big Bang, for one thing… conditions that HAVE existed, but due to expansion/cooling of the universe, no longer do.
So I guess the answer to your question is a sorta-kinda yes.
Well, according to SF author Spider Robinson, the only way in which a strangelet can induce a phase collapse is if it is struck by a 1920s style death ray. That, unfortunately, is not another instance of a tired SMB in-joke, but a honest and literal summary of the physics background for the plot of one of his novels.
As for the non-catastrophe aspects of the OP question, we have undoubtedly induced effects not previously known to have existed anywhere in the Universe. Cryogenics has created temperatures well below the “background radiation temperature of the Universe.” I seem to recall that when the Bose condensate was created a year or two back, it was commented that this may very well be the first time one had existed, anywhere.
Transuranic elements, on the other hand, are produced in supernovas (and conceivably by other non-catastrophic processes that provide adequate excess energy to counter the intensely endothermic nucleosynthesis). The signature for Cf-257 has been observed in supernovas. Technetium (not a transuranic but an unstable element) not only has been observed but is one of the standard identifying characteristics of one class of M stars. Np-237 and its daughers are certain to have existed in Earth’s early history, since the quantities of Bismuth are proportionate to those of the Lead isotopes, implying that some of each is primordial and some the end-products of a breakdown sequence. A small but measurable trace of Pu-239 is present in any Uranium ore.
Why get freaked out? That’s actually really cool! I wonder what happens afterwards. If the universe gets destroyed, what’s left? Anything? Nothing? If nothing, will another big bang come along sometime soon?
I mean, it’s just an amazing concept… undoing all of existence? No more space, no more time, no more no mores… eh? Boggles the mind.
IMHO “undoubtedly” is too strong, if only because of the possibly of alien civilizations doing similar experiments, if not simply from the possibility that such effects might happens naturally in ways not imagined yet.
The strangelet theory is wildly overblown. Scientists have only created a stable strangelet once. In the 1960s. For 20 minutes. Not nearly long enough devour the earth.
Actually, I know nothing about strangelets. But from a strictly logical standpoint, if the universe was so unstable that the formation of a single odd particle could make it come completely unglued, it seems unlikely that it would have managed to survive almost 14 billion years so far.