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<br />
The cool and colourful Indian spring is nearly over and the hot summer days will be here soon. Still, it is a relief that the long and cold winter nights have finally faded away. Spring-summer is the season for rejuvenation and rebirth – it calls for joyous celebrations and new beginnings. And we, too, are back with our new bouquet of books – diverse in approach, but intensely captivating in their appeal. Although some of these books are penned by best-selling authors, we don’t know yet how these will be received by readers in general. Yet, many of them are truth-tellers, conveying courage, comprehension and a deep sense of social justice that make them interesting reading.<br />
<br /> <keyword id="2177237" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Spring-reading">Spring reading</keyword> should be all about shedding the old and donning the new, letting go of the past and welcoming the future. So what better to read right now than books that have a brand new way of looking at things – be it an established theory, an old dictum or a traditional social norm? Here is a collection of 6 fantastic books that will help you look beyond the obvious and tune up with the new. Just like the spring, they offer a whole lot of possibilities for you to explore and fall in love with. Bon voyage to a whole new <keyword id="2037894" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="World-of-books">world of books</keyword>!<br />
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<strong>Image credit:</strong> Thinkstock Photos/Getty Images<br />

March Mavericks: 6 Wonderful
Books That Will Tune Up Your Life

<p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Marie Curie, known as the "mother of modern physics," died from&#xa0;</span><a href="http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/aplastic-anemia/basics/definition/con-20019296" target="_blank">aplastic anemia</a><span>, a rare condition linked to high levels of exposure to her famed discoveries, the radioactive elements polonium and radium.</span></p><p>Curie, the first and only woman to win a&#xa0;<a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-bio.html" target="_blank">Nobel Prize</a>&#xa0;in&#xa0;<span>two different fields (physics and chemistry), furthered the research&#xa0;of French physicist</span><span><span> <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/becquerel-bio.html" target="_blank">Henri Becquerel</a>,&#xa0;who in 1896 discovered that the element uranium emits rays.</span></span></p><p><span><span><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Alongside her French physicist husband, Pierre Curie, the brilliant scientific pair discovered <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/themes/physics/curie/" target="_blank">a new radioactive element</a></span></span></span><span><span><span><span>&#xa0;in 1898. </span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span>The duo named the element polonium, after Poland, Marie's native country.</span></span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span><span><span>Still, after more than 100 years, much of Curie's personal effects including her clothes, furniture, cookbooks, and laboratory notes are still radioactive, the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2011/1107/Marie-Curie-Why-her-papers-are-still-radioactive" target="_blank">Christian Science Monitor reports</a>.&#xa0;</span></span></span></span></span></p><p>Regarded as national and scientific treasures,&#xa0;Curie's laboratory notebooks are stored&#xa0;in&#xa0;<span>lead-lined boxes at&#xa0;</span><span>France's Bibliotheque National in Paris.&#xa0;</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p>While the library grants access to visitors to view&#xa0;Curie's manuscripts, all guests are expected to sign a liability waiver and wear protective gear as the items are contaminated with&#xa0;<a href="https://6bisruedemessine.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/lhistoire-du-carnet-de-laboratoire-de-marie-curie-1867-1934-2/" target="_blank">radium 226</a>, which has a&#xa0;half life of about 1,600 years, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Horizons/2011/1107/Marie-Curie-Why-her-papers-are-still-radioactive" target="_blank">according to</a> Christian <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Monitor.</p><p class="p1">Since Curie's belongings are already about 100 years old, that means it will take another 1500 years until they are half as radioactive as they are now.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Her body is also radioactive and was therefore placed in a coffin lined with nearly an inch of lead.<p><span class="s1">The Curie's are buried in France's</span><span class="s1">&#xa0;Panthéon, a<span> </span>mausoleum in Paris which <span>contains the remains of distinguished French citizens - like philosophers&#xa0;Rousseau&#xa0;and Voltaire.</span></span></p><p><span class="s1"><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div> </span></span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/us-earths-ice-melted-animated-map-climate-change-2015-7">Here's what the US would look like if all the Earth's ice melted</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Z4dGwzdDrnZunZUB10-CqEUToYnAvsHw" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

These personal effects of 'the mother of modern physics' will be radioactive for another 1,500 years

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The world's largest, most powerful particle accelerator - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - is scheduled to turn back on in the next few days, according to a report in <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/lhc-expects-to-restart-within-days-1.17241">Nature</a> on March 31.</p><p>Although this event is highly-anticipated around the world, there are two men who have remained silent: now-retired nuclear safety office, Walter Wagner, and Spanish journalist, Luis Sancho.</p><p>They have a history with the LHC.</p><p>Months before the particle collider was scheduled to turn on for the first time in 2008, <a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/lhc_legal.php">Wagner and Sancho filed a lawsuit</a> against the organizations behind the monster machine. The plaintiffs were:</p><ul><li>U.S. Department of Energy</li><li>Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory</li><li>National <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Foundation</li><li>European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).</li></ul><p>Needless to say, it takes a lot of guts, and perhaps a little insanity, to try and sue any one of those organizations, which are brimming with some of humanity's brightest intellectuals, let alone all of them. Especially right before they finished a $6 billion, 30-year project. In the two men's defense, <strong>Wagner and Sancho were trying to save the world from, what they thought, was almost-certain annihilation.</strong></p><p><a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/pdf/Sancho%20v%20Doe%20-%20Complaint.pdf">Among their concerns</a> was that the LHC had the power to produce a mini black hole that would, quite literally, swallow Earth. In their lawsuit they state:</p><p>"Eventually, all of Earth would fall into such growing micro-black-hole, converting Earth into a medium-sized black hole, around which would continue to orbit the moon, satellites, the ISS, etc."</p><p><a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/lhc_legal.php">Ultimately, the lawsuit was dismissed</a> because the men failed to prove a "<a href="http://phys.org/news203573289.html">credible threat to harm.</a>" While the men's fears were clearly misguided - Earth is still here after the LHC has run for multiple consecutive years - it's <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">important to understand why</a> using the LHC for science is safe.</p><p>Below are the three concerns Wagner and Sachos proposed in their lawsuit and why none of these should worry you.</p><h2>Death by black hole</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Black holes are extremely dense compact objects with a mass range anywhere between 4 to 170 million times the mass of our sun. While black holes are generally huge, it's completely possible, at least in theory, that a small amount of matter, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole">on the order of tens of micrograms</a>, could be packed densely enough to make a black hole. This would be an example a microscopic black hole.</p><p>So far, no one has made or observed a microscopic black hole - not even the LHC. But before it was turned on for the first time in 2008, Wagner and Sancho feared that by accelerating subatomic particles to 99.99% the speed of light and then smashing them together, it would create a particle mash-up so dense as to spawn a black hole.</p><p>The physicists at CERN report that Einstein's theory of relativity predicts that it's impossible for the LHC to produce such exotic phenomena. But, Wagner and Sancho argued, what if Einstein was wrong?</p><p>Even so, another theory, developed by world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, predicts that even if a a microscopic black hole formed inside of the LHC , it would instantly disintegrate, posing no threat to Earth's existence.</p><p>In 1974, Hawking predicted that black holes don't just gobble stuff up, they also spit it out in the form of extremely high-energy radiation, now known as Hawking radiation. According to the theory, the smaller the black hole, the more Hawking radiation it expels into space, eventually wasting away to nothing. Therefore, a microscopic black hole, being the smallest kind, would disappear before it could wreak havoc and destruction. This could also by why we've never seen a micro black hole.</p><h2>Death by strange matter</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Strange matter is made up of individual, hypothetical particles, called strangelets, which are different from the normal matter that make up everything we see around us.</p><p>Wagner and Sancho worried that this strange matter could fuse with normal matter "eventually converting all of Earth into a single large 'strangelet' of huge size," <a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/pdf/Sancho%20v%20Doe%20-%20Complaint.pdf">they write in their lawsuit</a>.</p><p>However, the precise behavior of strange matter, or even a single strangelet, is unclear, which is partly why these particles have been suggested as candidates for the mysterious material called dark matter the permeates the universe.</p><p>To support that theory, physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, have been trying to create a strangelet particle with Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider since the turn of the century. So far, nothing that resembles a strangelet has popped up. And because of the energies and types of particles that the LHC collides, Brookhaven has a better chance of making this strange matter.</p><p>If it succeeded, the concern is that the strangelets would bind with normal matter in a runaway reaction that would transform you, me, and everything on Earth into a clump of strange matter. Whether we would survive such a transformation and how that would change things is anyone's guess. But that unknown is scary enough.</p><p>Physicists at CERN, however, say that if Brookhaven succeeded in making a strangelet, its chances of interacting and binding with normal matter are slim:</p><p>"It is difficult for strange matter to stick together in the high temperatures produced by such colliders, rather as ice does not form in hot water," <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">they explain on their website</a>.</p><h2>Death by magnetic monopoles</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>In nature, magnets come with two ends - a north pole and a south pole. But in the late 19th Century physicist Pierre Curie, husband to Marie Curie, predicted that there's no reason why a particle with just one magnetic pole could not exist.</p><p>More than a century later, however, this particle, called a magnetic monopole, has never been made in the lab or observed in nature. So, it's purely hypothetical. But that didn't stop Wagner from suggesting that a powerful machine like the LHC could make history by creating the first ever magnetic monopole that could destroy Earth.</p><p>"Such particle might have the ability to catalyze the decay of protons and atoms, causing them to convert into other types of matter in a runaway reaction," <a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/pdf/Sancho%20v%20Doe%20-%20Complaint.pdf">he and Sancho wrote</a>.</p><p>The theory that a monopole could destroy protons - the subatomic building blocks of all matter in the universe - is speculative at best, CERN physicists explain. But let's say that theory is right. Well, these theories also predict that such a particle would have a certain mass, which happens to be too heavy for anything the LHC would create.</p><p>So, suffice it say: We're safe.</p><p>"The continued existence of the Earth and other astronomical bodies therefore rules out dangerous proton-eating magnetic monopoles light enough to be produced at the LHC," <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">CERN physicists explain</a>.</p><p>Once the LHC is turned back on, physicists will spend the next few months ramping it up to maximum power, which will be <a href="http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/06/cern-announces-lhc-restart-schedule">about twice the energy</a> it had during its first run. That's not going to change the fact that the chances of the LHC cooking up Earth-destroying mini black holes, strangelets, or magnetic monopoles are next-to-nothing.</p><p>If you're still not convinced, or the slightest bit worried, check out CERN's website regarding <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">"The Safety of the LHC"</a> where experts in astrophysics, cosmology, general relativity, mathematics, particle physics, and risk analysis have expressed their opinions on the machine's safety.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-earth-would-look-like-if-ice-melted-world-map-animation-2015-2">Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="5xam5iczrSx4Ibx8MvarDsu3zOG88omE" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Here's the truth behind the strange phenomena that caused 2 men to sue the world's largest particle lab

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>YouTube/Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain</span></p><p class="caption">Famous maths professor Nicole El Karoui.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Mathematical whizkids and former physicists-turned bankers are almost becoming dime a dozen in the financial world.</p><p>But there's a truism that's been rife in the banking sector for decades - France turns out a high number of quantitative analysts.</p><p><a href="http://wilmott.com/messageview.cfm?catid=3&amp;threadid=49364&amp;FTVAR_MSGDBTABLE=">Financiers take to the forums to ask why</a> and associations have been set up to highlight and help France's deluge of quants to network. <a href="http://www.quantvalley.org/home.aspx">This association "Quant Valley" is even subtitled "Paris the City of Quants."</a></p><p>And it can all be traced back to one maths genius -<a href="http://www.cmapx.polytechnique.fr/~elkaroui/">Nicole El Karoui</a>.</p><p>On a basic level, quants - what they're more commonly known as in banking - use <span>computers to tell them what to buy and sell. However, the programmes and analysis require a deep level of pure mathematics and algorithms that only a very neat pool of professionals would understand. </span></p><p><span>French-Tunisian <span>El Karoui is an architect in this field and has been instrumental in shaping France's academic institutions in the way they teach quantitative finance.</span></span></p><p><span>French universities now rank amongst the top in the world for churning out the high-calibre and highest-paid finance graduates. For example, the a<span>verage finance graduate from <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/best-paid-finance-graduates-universities-2015-8#ixzz3jAfW8ps5">Ecole Polytechnique in France will earn around £74,000 ($115,000)</a></span></span><span><span>. </span></span><span><span>In fact, there are seven French universities in the top 15 for best paid financial graduates in the world. </span></span></p><p>Famously, some of world's famous quants, and rogue traders, hail from a number of these universities.</p><p><strong>The woman that shaped France's reputation for quants</strong></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>YouTube/Vi?n Nghiên c?u cao c?p v? Toán</span></p><p class="caption">Introduction to Credit Risk - Prof. Nicole El Karoui teaching. Documented on YouTube from this year.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Those under the tutelage of professor El Karoui <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">are famously sought after in London's Square Mile and New York's Wall Street. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Paris-based maths professor</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, who teaches the niche art of creating and pricing complex financial instruments linked to stocks, bonds and loans - derivatives, is the </span><span>co-director, with Marc Yor and Gilles Pagès, of the Master of Advanced Studies programme Probability &amp; Finance (more commonly known as <span>"DEA El Karoui")</span>. The programme is</span><span> currently jointly operated by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique" title="École Polytechnique">École Polytechnique</a><span> and the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_and_Marie_Curie_University" title="Pierre and Marie Curie University">Pierre and Marie Curie University</a>.<span></span></p><p>It also is now one of the <span>most prestigious programmes in quantitative finance in the world. </span></p><p>In 2006, just before the shine was taken off those trading in complex derivatives by the credit crisis, the media like The Wall Street Journal highlighted what a huge deal it was for finance students to study under the famous French quant expert. </p><p><span>"<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114187184703793317">When I talk about El Karoui's master's, everyone knows</a>," said a French student at the time <span>Xavier Charvet to the WSJ.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Rama Cont, a former student and now <span>Professor of Mathematics and Chair in Mathematical Finance at </span><a href="http://imperial.ac.uk/">Imperial College London</a>, said <span>El Karoui's name was "<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114187184703793317">the magic word that opened doors for young people.</a>"</span></span></span></p><p>At the time, the WSJ reported that banking headhunters sought after the 75 or so students that were being tutored in <span>El Karoui's "Probability and Finance" course. </span></p><p><span>In the same report, <span>head of BNP Paribas's US equity and derivatives department in New York, </span></span>Amine Belhadj, even said that El Karoui "played a crucial role in finding interns when the bank began handling derivatives for clients in 1989."</p><h2>Rise and fall of French quants</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Getty</span></p><p class="caption">Fabrice Tourre (L), executive director of the structured products group trading for The Goldman Sachs Group (at the time), is sworn in while testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Investigations Subcommittee on Capitol Hill on April 27, 2010 in Washington, DC.</p></div><p></p></div></div>El <span>Karoui shaped the banking world from the outside-in, and with this, a plethora of French quants would flood the shores of the US and the <keyword id="6354868" type="COUNTRY" weightage="60" keywordseo="UK">UK</keyword>.</span></p><p>Immediately following her help in the late 1980s for banks finding the right talent in the derivatives sector, French universities were developing programmes that used her teachings and methods to focus on "<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/quants-derivatives-and-myth-rogue-trader-64883">the very, very complex modeling of derivatives</a>," reported Newsweek. British or other European universities were not on the same page.</p><p>Instead UK and European banks would siphon in French talent.</p><p>But the French talent did come at a price - like Frankenstein's monster, <span>El Karoui's theories and methods, which were taught in all the major French universities, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/every-time-a-few-billion-dollars-evaporate-someone-french-seems-to-wind-up-in-the-headlines-2012-5#ixzz3jFYcapNr">were being misused</a>.</span><span><br /><br /></span>The traders that lost a ridiculous amount of money (legally or illegally) and became household names for it were often French and hailed from French university derivatives tutelage.</p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Goldman Sachs' one time wonder kid, Fabrice "Fabulous" Tourre, came from the elite </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">École Centrale Paris. Unfortunately, he was dubbed the "face of Wall Street greed" by US regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was fined £391,000 ($650,000) and told to hand back a £112,000 ($175,000) bonus for defrauding investors in the run up to the credit crisis.</span></p><p>Former trader Bruno Iksil - dubbed "The London Whale" for his massive legal market bets - was also a derivatives wizard that reportedly went to <span>École Centrale. While he was at the centre of the $6.2 billion (£4 billion) JP Morgan legal trading loss of 2012, when massive derivatives bets went sour, he was a massive profit generator for the bank previously.</span></p><p>Critics say that traders that don't come from the same calibre of university, such as Jerome Kerviel, also make huge mistakes like financial wizards, such as Iksil and Tourre, to prove their worth. </p><p><span>Kerviel, a former trader at Societe Generale's </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jerome-kerviel-gets-out-of-jail-early-2014-9?IR=T">lost $5.8 billion (£3.7 billion) in rogue trades</a> and graduated from the <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/quants-derivatives-and-myth-rogue-trader-64883">less prestigious and "provincial" university</a> (<span>University of Lyon). </span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/50-cent-files-bankruptcy-lawsuit-rise-fall-2015-7">This is how rapper 50 Cent made millions and then lost it</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="VlbnI2djrZXIh9tIkLc68cC984sL8GSb" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

France is famous for its quants because of this one woman

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Easter Sunday was a very happy day for scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research because - after two long years of maintenance - the moment they've all been waiting for arrived: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-lhc-is-running-again-2015-4">the restart</a> of the world's largest, most powerful particle accelerator: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).</p><p>The LHC is a monster machine made of a long tunnel wrapped around in the shape of a 17-mile-wide underground circle. When it was completed in 2008, the scientific community saw it as a marvelous feat of engineering, but some saw it not as a miraculous achievement but a dangerous threat.</p><p>Months before the particle collider was scheduled to turn on for the first time in 2008, now-retired nuclear safety officer, <a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/lhc_legal.php">Walter Wagner and Spanish journalist Luis Sancho filed a lawsuit</a> against the organizations behind the monster machine. The plaintiffs were:</p><ul><li>U.S. Department of Energy</li><li>Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory</li><li>National <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword> Foundation</li><li>European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).</li></ul><p>Needless to say, it takes a lot of guts, and perhaps a little insanity, to try and sue any one of those organizations, which are brimming with some of humanity's brightest intellectuals, let alone all of them. Especially right before they finished a $6 billion, 30-year project. <strong>In the two men's defense, Wagner and Sancho were trying to save the world from, what they thought, was almost-certain annihilation.</strong></p><p><a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/pdf/Sancho%20v%20Doe%20-%20Complaint.pdf">Among their concerns</a> was that the LHC had the power to produce a mini black hole that would, quite literally, swallow Earth. In their lawsuit they state:</p><p>"Eventually, all of Earth would fall into such growing micro-black-hole, converting Earth into a medium-sized black hole, around which would continue to orbit the moon, satellites, the ISS, etc."</p><p><a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/lhc_legal.php">Ultimately, the lawsuit was dismissed</a> because the men failed to prove a "<a href="http://phys.org/news203573289.html">credible threat to harm.</a>" While the men's fears were clearly misguided - Earth is still here after the LHC has run for multiple consecutive years - it's <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">important to understand why</a> using the LHC for science is safe.</p><p><strong>They have not spoken up since the lawsuit was dismissed in 2010.</strong></p><p>Below are the three concerns Wagner and Sachos proposed in their lawsuit and why none of these should worry you.</p><h2>Death by black hole</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Black holes are extremely dense compact objects with a mass range anywhere between 4 to 170 million times the mass of our sun. While black holes are generally huge, it's completely possible, at least in theory, that a small amount of matter, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_hole">on the order of tens of micrograms</a>, could be packed densely enough to make a black hole. This would be an example a microscopic black hole.</p><p>So far, no one has made or observed a microscopic black hole - not even the LHC. But before it was turned on for the first time in 2008, Wagner and Sancho feared that by accelerating subatomic particles to 99.99% the speed of light and then smashing them together, it would create a particle mash-up so dense as to spawn a black hole.</p><p>The physicists at CERN report that Einstein's theory of relativity predicts that it's impossible for the LHC to produce such exotic phenomena. But, Wagner and Sancho argued, what if Einstein was wrong?</p><p>Even so, another theory, developed by world-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, predicts that even if a a microscopic black hole formed inside of the LHC , it would instantly disintegrate, posing no threat to Earth's existence.</p><p>In 1974, Hawking predicted that black holes don't just gobble stuff up, they also spit it out in the form of extremely high-energy radiation, now known as Hawking radiation. According to the theory, the smaller the black hole, the more Hawking radiation it expels into space, eventually wasting away to nothing. Therefore, a microscopic black hole, being the smallest kind, would disappear before it could wreak havoc and destruction. This could also by why we've never seen a micro black hole.</p><h2>Death by strange matter</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Strange matter is made up of individual, hypothetical particles, called strangelets, which are different from the normal matter that make up everything we see around us.</p><p>Wagner and Sancho worried that this strange matter could fuse with normal matter "eventually converting all of Earth into a single large 'strangelet' of huge size," <a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/pdf/Sancho%20v%20Doe%20-%20Complaint.pdf">they write in their lawsuit</a>.</p><p>However, the precise behavior of strange matter, or even a single strangelet, is unclear, which is partly why these particles have been suggested as candidates for the mysterious material called dark matter the permeates the universe.</p><p>To support that theory, physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, have been trying to create a strangelet particle with Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider since the turn of the century. So far, nothing that resembles a strangelet has popped up. And because of the energies and types of particles that the LHC collides, Brookhaven has a better chance of making this strange matter.</p><p>If it succeeded, the concern is that the strangelets would bind with normal matter in a runaway reaction that would transform you, me, and everything on Earth into a clump of strange matter. Whether we would survive such a transformation and how that would change things is anyone's guess. But that unknown is scary enough.</p><p>Physicists at CERN, however, say that if Brookhaven succeeded in making a strangelet, its chances of interacting and binding with normal matter are slim:</p><p>"It is difficult for strange matter to stick together in the high temperatures produced by such colliders, rather as ice does not form in hot water," <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">they explain on their website</a>.</p><h2>Death by magnetic monopoles</h2><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>In nature, magnets come with two ends - a north pole and a south pole. But in the late 19th Century physicist Pierre Curie, husband to Marie Curie, predicted that there's no reason why a particle with just one magnetic pole could not exist.</p><p>More than a century later, however, this particle, called a magnetic monopole, has never been made in the lab or observed in nature. So, it's purely hypothetical. But that didn't stop Wagner from suggesting that a powerful machine like the LHC could make history by creating the first ever magnetic monopole that could destroy Earth.</p><p>"Such particle might have the ability to catalyze the decay of protons and atoms, causing them to convert into other types of matter in a runaway reaction," <a href="http://www.lhcdefense.org/pdf/Sancho%20v%20Doe%20-%20Complaint.pdf">he and Sancho wrote</a>.</p><p>The theory that a monopole could destroy protons - the subatomic building blocks of all matter in the universe - is speculative at best, CERN physicists explain. But let's say that theory is right. Well, these theories also predict that such a particle would have a certain mass, which happens to be too heavy for anything the LHC would create.</p><p>So, suffice it say: We're safe.</p><p>"The continued existence of the Earth and other astronomical bodies therefore rules out dangerous proton-eating magnetic monopoles light enough to be produced at the LHC," <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">CERN physicists explain</a>.</p><p>Once the LHC is turned back on, physicists will spend the next few months ramping it up to maximum power, which will be <a href="http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/06/cern-announces-lhc-restart-schedule">about twice the energy</a> it had during its first run. That's not going to change the fact that the chances of the LHC cooking up Earth-destroying mini black holes, strangelets, or magnetic monopoles are next-to-nothing.</p><p>If you're still not convinced, or the slightest bit worried, check out CERN's website regarding <a href="http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/safety-lhc">"The Safety of the LHC"</a> where experts in astrophysics, cosmology, general relativity, mathematics, particle physics, and risk analysis have expressed their opinions on the machine's safety.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-earth-would-look-like-if-ice-melted-world-map-animation-2015-2">Animated map of what Earth would look like if all the ice melted</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="5xam5iczrSx4Ibx8MvarDsu3zOG88omE" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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