Actually, that one in a trillion chance is the assumption that they’re wrong about some of the key factors of the Standard Model which is so exhaustive, it covers all we know about the behavior and interaction of particles.

The problem with the strangelet hypothesis is that it assumed that strange matter would create more strange matter and it would have a negative charge in massive collisions. But the LHC is not even powerful enough to recreate the energy of cosmic ray collisions, much less create the negatively charged strange matter which is not repelled by what we know as normal matter.

On top of that, we don’t know if negative strange matter would actually convert normal matter so the ice-nine scenario is making two assumptions, one of which needs a much more powerful collider then we have on this planet.

What is completely unscientific are when physicists give probabilities like “one in a trillion” of a stable strangelet destroying the Earth. They are failing to take into account the prior probability that they are wrong due to unknown unknowns, which is a heck of a lot larger than one in a trillion.

For instance, this particular weirdo is publishing a sci-fi books on wormholes, totally raping the physics and physics history involved, and promoting the book via his blog. And his readers are lapping it up! Of course he is trying to promote Christianity from a physics standpoint… so you can see the futility in getting the guy to see reason.

http://stephentremp.blogspot.com/2009/11/emc2.html

But it is easy to see what scientists are up against. They spend their time doing science, while a larger number of people with much more time on their hands mis-represent science. Sometimes I pessimistically feel that scientists are facing a losing battle.

In one breath you say “..or overturn much of what we know about quantum mechanics…”. Then you state that mini black holes could not be created “…unless we’re completely way off base about the quantum world…”. So is it not possible if the LHC overturns much about what we know about quantum mechanics, this could mean we were “way off base” in our understanding of QM?

http://www.gumballs.com/vortex.html
http://www.funnelworks.com/

Any created nano-black hole will have gonzo “rapidity.” It will be traveling at a goodly fraction of lightspeed in the lab frame. Car crashes are messy with flung parts. A drain hole smaller than the diameter of an atomic nucleus will be through the Earth and gone before it swallows anything. The mean diameter of the Earth is 0.0425 light-seconds and its escape velocity a mere11.186 km/s.

God save us from the congenitally inconsequential.