Some fear debut of pow­er­ful atom-smasher — CNN.com

Let me take the minor­ity view on this one.  So… what if we do actu­ally destroy the earth by build­ing a machine of this power? Per­haps every intel­li­gent species has had the tech­nol­ogy to build such a thing with­out the cor­re­spond­ing abil­ity to accu­rately model what it will do when they turn it on. Maybe we’re about there’s a cos­mic cor­ner that you just can’t peek around with­out tak­ing a leap of ill-founded faith. There could be a point that all civ­i­liza­tions reach where they self-destruct because the laws of physics are bent too far by inex­pe­ri­enced hands, turn­ing curi­ous soci­eties into a tragic stream of dead worlds. Maybe that’s why we’re “alone;” it’s because every­one else com­mit­ted technocide.

I can’t wait for them to turn it on! I’ll throw a party!