According to some researchers, strangelets could be created by the
Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator currently being built in
Switzerland and
France by
CERN. The Large Hadron Collider will accelerate particles at rates heretofore unaccomplished by researchers. Critics are concerned that it will create strangelets, which they argue would immediately destroy the planet by turning all particles they came in contact with into strangelets, which would then continue the conversion until the
Earth and everything on it were strangelets. Researchers counter that colliders will likely make positively charged strangelets, which would repel other particles nearby.
[Physics News Update: Strangelets are Strange but not Dangerous (November 15, 2000)]