The Physics of Baseball

Exciting news from Geneva this morning, as the world's largest particle collider successfully conducted its first major test firing. As is always the case with potentially world-altering scientific developments, fear rules the day in some quarters, with many believing that the collider could create a black hole that could swallow the Earth.

This is poppycock, of course. Any black hole that the collider would create would be hyperlocalized, and would evaporate in less than a nanosecond. Far from devouring the Earth, such a black hole could only devour the smallest of things, like fermions, leptons, bosons, and the Arizona Diamondbacks' increasingly microscopic playoff possibilities.