Phew: Harvard physicist explains why a black hole isn't about to kill us all

Lubos Motl explains why a particle accelerator under construction in Switzerland won't generate a black hole that will swallow the earth the instant it's turned on next year.

In any event (whether horizontal or not), if you find 32 years' worth of string theory and theoretical physics too dense to follow, he gives a more general theory for dismissing the gravity of the claim and not blowing your retirement fund over the next six months, in words you don't have to be an Einstein to understand:

... [T]he Earth is bombed by a lot of very high-energy cosmic rays and the center-of-mass energy of the collisions is comparable to the LHC energies. So far, these collisions haven't destroyed the Earth, so it is reasonable that some additional collisions we create won't be able to do so either. ...