the Large Hadron Collider Cern

Ah, the ignorant calling the knowledgeable stupid... Large Hadron Collider I'll bet not one of the posters decrying this electronic intrusion have adequate security on their own computers. And I KNOW none of them understand the complexity of a computer system that goes into running this facility. Scientists try to make an experiment work. Network specialists ensure the computers will do the job and are secure. I expect, given the project, their computer experts were not network specialists and instead of trying to keep various parts of the project secure, were working, instead, to make sure they worked. As a computer expert (and with a good understanding of the complexities of networking, but not the level of a 'network specialist') I understand that there are many ways to hack a system a specialist would know that an expert wouldn't. Given that the hackers in this case were 'white hats' in that they only wanted to expose the flaws (and I expect those flaws will be addressed immediately), they did more of a service than disservice. As for the safety of the world in this regard, with a much higher understanding of particle physics than the average person, the chances of anything dangerous happening to the planet by deliberate misuse of the LHC are so remote as to be nonexistent. We have about the same odds of being hit by an earth-busting asteroid in the next hour as being swallowed by a black hole of our own creation.cern