For a lighthearted piece on the Dec. 21 doomsday being predicted by some readers of the Mayan calendar, the Chicago Tribune recently gathered ten “bet you didn’t know” facts about the Apocalypse, including observations from Bruce B. Benson ’43 Professor of Physics Kannan “Jagu” Jagannathan on the possibility of this planet being sucked into a black hole.
“The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, went into operation in 2008, accelerating atomic particles and agitating people who were worried it could create a black hole that would swallow the Earth. Scientists downplay such concerns but, as Amherst College physicist Kannan Jagannathan explained, they are opposed to saying there's zero chance. Jagannathan did say the odds of the collider ending life on this planet were no better than the odds of his college president opening a kitchen faucet and a dragon popping out,” the Tribune reported.
You can read the original interview with Jagannathan here.