I am not a physicist but I love to read about new advances in science and specially particle physics. The new LHC was to me a new tool that would open new scientific planes of thought. But reading some of the comments at this link made me think in totally different direction putting LHC into realm of the doomsday machines What I am trying to say is that the first particle accelerators showed the way to the first A-Bomb then what is this machine will lead us to?

What I have understood is that
First we had atomic cannon that released the energy of the weak nuclear force with only about a pound of uranium.  A-Bomb

Now we are looking at the quark cannon with potential of havening only 10,000 quarks to start a chain reaction that will blow earth into pieces

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24611/

The Case of the Collider and the Great Black Hole
The physicists have had their say. Now a legal study asks how a court might handle a request to halt a multibillion-dollar particle-physics experiment. The analysis makes for startling reading.
For particle physicists, the Large Hadron Collider is a long-awaited dream that has finally come true. The LHC should supply a steady stream of data for the community to number crunch and that should lead to some fundamental new insights into the nature of the universe. It also guarantees jobs and careers for a generation of physicists around the world.

But there is another group who say that CERN, the organisation that has built and runs the collider, has not done enough to reassure the world that the work is safe. The fear is that the collider can produce black holes that might gobble up the Earth. Various legal actions have failed to halt the work, not because of the scientific or safety issues involved, but because of problems of jurisdiction. CERN has an immunity from court action in its member states and a US court action in Hawaii found that it did not have the jurisdiction to proceed.

Today, we get a fascinating new perspective on the issue from Eric Johnson, an assistant professor of law at the University of North Dakota School of Law in Grand Forks. Johnson asks what a court should do with a preliminary-injunction request to halt a multibillion-dollar particle-physics experiment that plaintiffs claim could create a black hole that will devour the planet.

This is a problem, he says, that has all the hallmarks of a law-school classic. And to give him his due, it's certainly a gripping read.

Johnson begins with an account of the history of the debate behind the science and its safety. This is worth a read by itself because Johnson writes with flare, clarity and an excellent grasp of the issues that scientists grapple with. He is not a physicist but uses his journey of understanding as a way of benchmarking how a court might come to grips with the issues involved.

Having set the scene, he then introduces the unique legal problems that this case presents. "The enormity of the alleged harm and the extreme complexity of the scientific factual issues combine to create seemingly irreducible puzzles of jurisprudence," says Johnson.

For example, one problem that a court might have to deal with is the expert witness. The problem here is one of independence. There is a huge amount at stake for these witnesses. On the one hand, an injunction would threaten the career of almost any particle physicist who gave evidence. On the other hand, there is the threat to the Earth.

"The experts are either afraid for their livelihoods or afraid for their lives," writes Johnson.

One way round this is to carry out a cost-benefit analysis but this soon runs into problems too. How do you value the future of entire planet? You could argue that it is infinite in which case any risk that it will be destroyed, no matter how tiny, is too much. Another argument, well established in law, is that there can be no award to a dead person's estate. "Death is simply not a redressable injury under American tort law," says Johnson.

By this argument, the downside of a particle-accelerator disaster that destroys the planet--assuming it is quick--is nothing. The cost-benefit analysis simply blows up in our faces.

There is a way out of these legal conundrums, however. Johnson describes four categories of meta-analysis that could be used to address the black hole case.

One line of analysis focuses on the possibility that the scientific theory upon which the safety assurances are based may be defective. He points out that these safety assurances have not yet stood the test of time. In fact, the various safety assurances that CERN has given over the last ten years or so have changed several times as new ideas and challenges have arisen. That's worrying.

And in any case, there is a more general point. Many scientists, even particle physicists, would surely agree that a scientific theory that seems unassailable in one era may seem naïve in the next.

This raises the important question of whether state-of-the-art theoretical physics is up to the task of making a trustworthy prediction that the LHC is safe.

Then there is the possibility that the scientists at CERN who have given the safety assurances have simply made a mistake in their thinking. Is it really possible that a team of world class scientists could make such an error?

Well, yes. One fatal example is the 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test which was supposed to yield 5 megatons but actually yielded 15 megatons because of flawed calculations. In this case, a Japanese trawler fishing outside the exclusion zone was engulfed by fallout killing one of the crew.

Then there were the calculations that physicists used to reassure the public that another accelerator called RHIC was safe. These too turned out to be seriously flawed.

But perhaps the most worrying problem is the possibility of groupthink, that particle physicists have simply convinced themselves that the LHC is not dangerous and will brook no alternative view. There are some other examples of this in science, perhaps the most high profile one being the Columbia space shuttle tragedy.

Johnson says this: "The report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board ("CAIB") found that decision makers focused on information that tended to support their expected or desired result--that the foam strike that ultimately doomed Columbia did not represent a safety of flight issue."

Indeed CAIB said: "In our view, the NASA organizational culture had as much to do with this accident as the foam."

It would be hard to rule out the possibility that a similar form of groupthink infects the particle physics community. On the contrary, there is evidence that physicists have little time for anyone who questions their safety assurances. Johnson quotes the British physicist Brian Cox who is reported to have said: "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."

That is not an encouraging sign.

But perhaps the most powerful argument that all is not well with CERN's safety assurances is the fact that the organisation has carried out the safety studies itself. Here is Johnson's take:

"It is remarkable to think for a moment how CERN's situation might be viewed if, instead of operating a particle accelerator, CERN was a developer of pharmaceuticals. If a pharmaceutical firm attempted to take a drug to market based on the safety assessment of a panel of five of its employees, who in turn relied on the scientific work of one employee and one other scientist with a pending visiting position with the firm--it would be a scandal of epic proportions."

Having presented the case, Johnson himself is remarkably relaxed about the issue. "My motivation in writing is certainly not to engender fear. I have no apprehension to share. Nor is it my intent or my desire to shut down the LHC. ... My argument is one of law," he says. He does not not predict how such a legal case might pan out. Instead, he says it would be a matter for a court decide (presuming one could be found with the necessary authority to hear it).

Nevertheless, it is hard to come away from Johnson's analysis with the impression that the global public interest has been well served in this matter.

Johnson says this:

"While it seems absurd, in the abstract, that a group of apparently normal people could risk the entire planet in the course of carrying out a science experiment, the prospect does seem distinctly plausible once one takes a look at the details. Such a disaster is not likely, to be sure, but it does appear plausible enough to give one pause."

Johnson is well aware that this case may never come to court (although he points out that one like it that raises the same issues may well come about in the future).

So the real test will be how the particle physics community responds, whether with spittle-flecked ire or reasoned argument.

There is another possibility of course; that they'll simply attempt to ignore it.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0912.5480: The Black Hole Case: The Injunction Against the End of the World

Comments The Quark Cannon
The company tells us that the quark cannon will produce the quark-gluon soup responsible for the biggest explosion in the Universe, the big-bang, when a quark -gluon soup exploded with such amazing power that it blew up the space-time of the Cosmos to the size it is now. We discovered in the last decade, when the machine was already commisioned and could not be stopped without shutting down CERN, that a quark condensate is the cause of Nova and Supernova explosions that create pulsars, before thought to be made of neutrons, now known to have a quark-gluon soup in its center. Thus,  if a quark-gluon soup exploded with such force as to dillate space-time to the limits of the Universe and a tiny quantity of it starts a Nova reaction, it is obvious that the same quark soup will blow up of the Earth. Let us explain why:
The Universe of matter and energy is built as a Russian doll: each time we perforate further into the doll we uncover new, smaller layers of increasing energy/mass. Since a weapon is an instrument that kills by releasing an overdrive of energy that erases the information of life, the best weapons are cannons and bombs that break with an explosion a deep layer of the Russian Doll of the Universe, releasing its inner energy that erases the information of life.
In that regard, the evolution of artillery is dual. On one side cannons have increased their precision in order to perforate and release the energy accumulated in ever tinier bits of matter. On the other side, bombs have increased the quantity of the explosive material they carry, increasing their destructive power. Thus, the first cannons and bombs released gunpowder energy - the physical, outer cover of lesser energy - with limited precision. In the XVII century Galileo improved that precision, studying cannonball trajectories and setting the foundation of the science of ballistics, soon a fundamental part of physics. Then, in the XIX century, Nobel discovered chemical explosives that released the next, molecular, chemical cover. So bombs and cannons improved in explosive power. And the Nobel Prize was set up with the benefits of war...
It was only left to explode the atom, which is made of an electroweak cover and a strong nuclei of quarks. Thus, the final horizon on the evolution of artillery was the atomic cannon. It first perforated the atom in 1936, in Nazi Germany, causing its fission. Soon the atomic bomb released the energy of that 'electroweak' cover of the atom. Then cyclical cannons were discovered; and so the bullet could turn around the barrel as many times as needed to perforate further the atom, allowing the fusion processes that gave birth to the Hydrogen Bomb. Now in its 3rd evolutionary age, the atomic cannon will explore the next 'russian doll' of energy/mass - the quark. So in the XXI century the Quark cannon will open the final, 'solid' russian doll of 'strong' quarks, which accumulate 99% of the mass-energy of the Universe, provoking a big 'bang' so enormous that it could blow up the entire Earth.
It is the culmination of a long evolution of Atomic cannons that dates back to the age of the Manhattan project that created the first atomic bombs in the 1940s. Indeed,  the 1st Atomic Bomb was intended to be also an Atomic Cannon that would shoot 2 halves of a critical mass of plutonium, but due to its enormous size, physicists opted out for a smaller Bomb, which was detonated with chemical explosives (dynamite), instead of using a cannon barrel that had to be transported in a super-carrier ship. 
All those atomic cannons were funded to study nuclear reactions that could be use latter to create bombs. The study of particles became then a collateral benefit of the study of future Nuclear Weapons with atomic cannons. And so a natural synergy occurred: the first 'tiny' bombs were explored in the atomic cannon. And those reactions which were susceptible of further military use, would be studied in more detail and if suitable, a larger 'critical mass' would be built and a Nuclear Bomb exploded.
Now, unfortunately the 'detonator substance' of the quark bomb, are a mere thousands of quarks, which weighs so little that the quark cannon can do the job of starting the mass-reaction, without the need to evolve further a quark bomb. This happens precisely because the Russian dolls become smaller and more attractive when we perforate the Universe. So the final doll is very attractive and very small. If a few quarks can hold together all the mass of your body, when we pack them their attractive power is awesome - 100up to3 stronger than our electroweak atoms. So calculations by the Shanghai National Center for Nuclear Research on China have shown that a quark condensate of only 10.000 quarks could start the chain-reaction that will devour the Earth. By 2012, when it reaches its maximal power, CERN, the 'European Company of Nuclear Research' that has built the cannon, will be deconfining millions of quarks per second, enough quarks to detonate 100 Earths.
Thus, the quark cannon/bomb means a growth of explosive power similar to the jump that happened between atomic weapons and dynamite, but far more dangerous, for 2 reasons:
- The quark cannon will cross for the first time in history the 1 teravolt barrier of energy that causes the death of our electroweak matter - what physicists call the 'breaking of electroweak symmetry'. Symmetry is a property of all entities of Nature. For example, humans have bilateral symmetry, meaning we have 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 legs, and if our symmetry breaks because we are axed in half, we die. So happens to our electroweak matter when it 'breaks its symmetry'. It dies.
- The explosion a quark bomb produces is similar to a fire in the sense that once the fire/quark bomb starts it is self-sustained mass-bomb (M=e/c2), as the combustible is all the matter of the Earth – all the wood of the forest, converted into ashes - till it becomes a small, ultra-dense lump of quark matter, a strangelet, quark star, pulsar or black hole.
The quark cannon is plainly speaking a Damocles sword that will hang over all of mankind, as the Nuclear Company that manufactured it shoots every day protons and lead to make the most dangerous substance of the Universe, ‘quark matter condensates’.  During 2 years, with increasing power, we shall enter a region in which the most dangerous, attractive substance of the cosmos, quark matter condensates, could become stable and feed on Earth's electroweak matter. As in the Greek legend in which each day the sword hangs on a thinner thread over the throne of Damocles, the quark cannon will be each day more dangerous, as the Company ramps up its power during 2 years in which the cannon promises to reach finally over 1000 teravolt shots in lead to lead collisions in Christmas 2012…
If the existence of the Damocles Machine is bad enough, as in the legend, the nightmare becomes complete when we realize that only Damocles – only a few nuclear physicists – know the secrets of the quark cannon and they cannot reveal them to the rest of mankind, because they will loose their kingdom, their jobs and position of power as the 'high priests of science', who have never been made responsible for the enormous harm their weapons have caused to mankind. So none of them talks of the dangers of the quark cannon, only of the incredible discoveries it will bring to the human species...
Indeed, to understand while mankind has paid for the quark cannon, we must consider a historic overview of the ways in which the military-industrial system has evolved and markets today successfully its weapons to governments and public alike, brushing off any opposition with the usual tools of industrial marketing and political corruption.
It is a deja vu experience in the world of nuclear weapons. Physicists at CERN do not want to blow up the Earth; and so, as anyone in the military profession of making or using weapons, for decades they have found 'intellectual reasons' to justify the industry of atomic cannons. Already Teller convinced Truman of the need to make Hydrogen bombs, because they were needed to 'know better' the atom. Then he proposed a H-Bomb made with his company at stratospheric price to blow up THE WHOLE URSS, backed by the entire nuclear community. Eissenhower realized of this MAD strategy and called Krushev starting the process of disarmament. Again Lederman invented the Higgs hoax and sold it to Reagan as 'God's particle' to get 13 billion for the Texas quark cannon. Clinton far more intelligent realized of the dangers, uselesness and tag prize and cancelled. I suggest mr. obama to call sarkozy and do the same with this, the 3rd time, the nuclear industry tries to create a doomsday weapon.... Since as they say in spanish 'a la tercera va la vencida'(3rd time always happens). Indeed, the excuse of knowledge is weakened as the fundamental particles of the Universe are ALL discovered, diminishing the 'scientific returns' of those weapons; while on the other hand, the dangers increased, as the potency of atomic bombs and cannons increased. The quark cannon has definitely tilted the balance: the risk are far bigger than the knowledge we shall extract from it.
But the Nuclear company of Europe did not want to shut down, so it found 3 excuses to dilute the dangers: 'denial of dangers', 'excuses of knowledge', and 'ad hominem campaigns' against those who opposed them, paid by with the enormous 10 billion $ budget given to the company to build the machine.
- CERN diluted the dangers with false statements that portrayed the quark cannon as a harmless cosmic ray factory, when it is a fact of science that quarks and cosmic rays are completely different kind of particles. We have, in fact, excellent cosmic rays observatories and we never found quarks in cosmic rays. So we have in a surrealist twist a factory of a certain, dangerous substance, quarks, which is not mentioned in all its communiques, but substituted by a harmless one, cosmic rays. Imagine a factory of missiles that would systematically affirm, it produces only knives. But in an age in which research journalism is dead, it has been possible to pull out this kind of lie.
- Then, during all the years in which the company lobbied for money to construct the machine, it made marketing campaigns affirming that this machine will prove a series of fringe theories, pumped up as the ‘meaning of it all’:
The company said that the quark cannon would find 'God's particle', a hypothesized particle called the Higgs, which according to the company shall explain the meaning of mass. This again is false. The particle is self-similar to a well known quark, the top quark. It has the same mass and properties, and so it is very likely, since the Universe is efficient and not redundant, that the Higgs, which we haven't found in 30 years, does not exist at all but it is the already known top quark and the 'God's particle sting', just a trick to get funding for a 'new, stupendous discovery' that will never happen. Further on, even if it exists it is only useful to explain a reaction, the death of our matter, as neutrons and protons decay into 2 particles called W and Z, which are related to the Higgs=Top quark (the sum of their masses is that of a Higgs/Top: W+Z=T). So this hypothetical Higgs merely would be the catalyzer of the death of our matter. And a factory of Top/Higgs quarks means only a factory that will kill our matter, and if the reaction goes out of hand, all the matter of the planet Earth.
Apart from that, the Higgs/Top does not explain at all the meaning of mass, or gives mass to other particles. This is nonsense. It is just one more particle of the zoo of the Universe.
So all that marketing about the Higgs/Top, being 'God's particle' and the most important particle of the Universe is ludicrous.
If the Higgs Hoax is not widely recognized among nuclear physicists it has to do with the confrontation between quantum, nuclear physicists and Einstein, the pacifist scientist who worked out a theory of gravitation and mass, which still stands. In essence, Einstein defined masses as 'whirls of space-time', attractive tornado-like vortices that followed his principle of equivalence between mass and acceleration. So as a hurricane accelerates towards its center, attracting all what surrounds it, a mass is an attractive whirl of space-time.  Unlike the Higgs, a particle with a limited use, such definition of mass, taken to its ultimate consequences, illuminates the understanding of the Universe as nothing else has done since Darwin, reason why those 2 colossus stand as the key figures of XIX and XX century science, while Higgs is still an unrecognized, retired, Edinburgh professor without a Nobel Prize. Why Einstein's mass theory is so important? Because it means among other facts:
-The existence of a spiritual universe based in 'motions', in 'time events' more than in substances, in space. Indeed, if mass is a cyclical, accelerated motion and energy is a lineal motion, then the Universe is an eternal game of two motions in constant transformation. What we call energy or entropy and what we call in/form/ation, or cyclical form (masses and charges).
-It explains easily how mass becomes energy and vice-versa. Indeed, in Einstein's model of mass, E=Mc2 means just that when energy approaches the c-limit of speed of our spacetime, as it cannot go faster, it 'deflects' its energy that curls into cyclical motion, into mass.
-The duality and constant transformation of energy into information (masses and particles) applies also to other sciences, as biologists well know. Since they also describe biological beings as a series of cycles of transformation of energy into information. Thus Einstein's theory gives science the possibility to relate naturally all disciplines and species as systems of energy (fields of forces in physics, bodies in biology) and information (cyclical particles and spherical heads). This is in fact recognized even by quantum physicists as the fundamental law of their science, called the Principle of Complementarity: 'all particles need an energetic field and an informative particle to exist.'
For all those reasons, the 2 most important physicists alive, laugh at the Higgs. Mr. Weinberg, the Nobel Prize, discoverer of the weak force, called it 'the toilet particle' to flush in a vortex of mass of Dr. Einstein. Mr. Wilczek, discoverer of the strong force, says that masses are the frequencies of a whirl of space-time; and that is the only explanation of mass there is. Obviously the discoverer of the modern laws of gravitation, the 3rd force of the Universe, Mr. Einstein would disagree also with Higgs theory. The 4th fundamental physicist of the modern age, Mr. Maxwell, discoverer of the laws of the 4th force of Nature, electromagnetism, lived in the XIX c. So we do not know what he thinks. Perhaps for that reason Mr. Higgs likes to compare himself with this 'other' Scottish genius, as he does in the documentary provided by CERN.
- Finally, when the dangers of the Large Hadron Cannon were known, as scientists sued CERN for genocide in different Courts of Europe and America, the Nuclear Company put the 'system' of defamation, so useful in those cases, at work. First it voiced out 'ad hominem' campaigns against those scientists who denounced the crime.
Let us follow the account of those facts, according to Eric Johnson in the paper that prompted this article:
'Brian Cox, spokesman for CERN, said in public: “Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world,” he said, “is a twat.” John Ellis, chief theorist at CERN referred to LHC detractors as “nuts” and insinuated that one of them, Walter Wagner, was only pursuing a lawsuit against CERN to make money. Yet Wagner was suing for an injunction, not damages.'
On the other side, none of the scientists who denounced the quark cannon were able to explain themselves in the press (reasons why we have to do this kind of long posts to give an information which is vial to mankind). Thus by monopolizing all the information about the suits, CERN soon convinced mankind that all those scientists who were not in favor of CERN, were 'crazy people' for suing CERN - as another CERN physicist put it.
Let us quote again jonson:  John Ellis, gave a talk in the CERN auditorium in which he sought “to provide  the ammunition” that CERN people could use to convince others that the quark cannon poses no danger. After reviewing the scientific arguments that the LHC is safe, Ellis explained that a question that worried him more than whether humanity was safe from the LHC, was the opposite—whether the LHC was safe from Humanity. Ellis then briefed the audience on unfavorable press reports, the various lawsuits filed to stop the LHC, and a public opinion poll indicating that most people thought the LHC was not worth the risk. Ellis also introduced the audience to Richard Posner, whom Ellis said he found “really worrying” for considering that society and judges should have a telling in an experiment that could cause our demise.  Wrapping up, Ellis came to what his presentations slides labeled “The Best answer.” “So, to finish,” Ellis said, “the way to stop all this argument about whether the LHC is going to destroy the planet is to get the LHC working.” “Within a few weeks time, we will know that LSAG was right.” Of course, in making such a statement, Ellis either showed that he  misapprehends the relevant physics, which seems highly doubtful,  and accepted as a way of 'doing science' , wishful thinking.
is John Ellis right? Shall we, human beings, mankind at large and our institutions and courts, let scientists invent all kind of machines, even those who can destroy us? Obviously not. Consider for example, a factory of Ebola Virus that would study different mutations of the Virus for knowledge. We would not allow crazy scientists to create such factory. So why we allow a factory of dark, quark matter, the physical equivalent of the Ebola Virus? i suggest NATO closes down this disguised weapon, as we asked in our suits, using the provisions of the Patriot Act that allow governments to seize any nuclear substance that endangers the life of Americans and citizens of allied countries. In that regard, there is a law that allows to close CERN despite its diplomatic immunity.
Luis Sancho, Plaintiff on Sancho Vs. Doe&CERN