Romania's small but influential Conservative Party (PC) says it is worried with the possibility that tiny black holes appear on earth once the LHC particle accelerator is put to work in the world famous "Big Bang" scientific experiment by the European organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on Wednesday. Statements made by PC representatives have sparked mockery in Romanian media.
The party announced earlier on Tuesday it would protest before the European Commission mission to Bucharest starting at noon today, calling that the experiment be halted.
PC Senator Marius Marinescu sent an open letter to the embassies of CERN member countries and other European bodies in Bucharest, saying the party was worried that CERN reports said there was a very slight possibility that LHC create "tiny black holes with a short lifespan or magnetic monopolies destroying protons in atoms".
That is why, he says, the experiment was extremely risky for the "safety of our planet".
The comments sparked a wave of mockery across Romanian media on Tuesday, which compared the "tiny black holes" with the small size of the Conservative Party, led by an influential businessman, Dan Voiculescu, allegedly linked to the Communist-era political police, the Securitate. The party, which is linked to Voiculescu's family-owned major media group Intact, reached Parliament in the last elections by allying with the major Social Democratic Party (PSD) and running its own candidates on PSD lists. The move is expected to repeat again in general elections later this fall.
The major scientific experiment attempting to establish what happened at the time of the Big Bang more than 13 billion years ago is to take place using a gigantic particle accelerator at the French-Swiss border on Wednesday.
UPDATE: Showing up at the Tuesday protest, attended by some 30 people, PC vice-president Codrin Stefanescu explained how the CERN experiment may lead to the end of the world: "As far as I understood, as I have read and considering what some scientists say, the experiment will fail and will create a black hole. Scientists say that once opened, this black whole will absorb everything around and cannot be closed. So it's possible that the whole Earth be sucked in".
Stefanescu said such experiments should not take place on Earth and even offered a solution: "There should be no such experiments until they have the technology to reach the Moon".
His party mate Marius Marinescu compared the experiment with the creation of the atomic bomb. In his opinion, it will lead to an explosion that will destroy Earth. "This kind of experiments may generate a disaster at planetary level", he claimed.
As the protest ended, the area before the European Commission mission to Bucharest is crossed by an elderly couple. Learning what all the fuss was about, the man urges his wife: "Let's go, dear, to see our cats, since the end of the world is coming".
