Abstract
Did you know that when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) comes online at CERN next spring, it could end up creating mini black holes that destroy the Earth? This is not something from a Dan Brown novel, but from a TV documentary broadcast as part of the BBC's Horizon series in the UK on 1May – a programme that has been running for 40 years and is supposedly the flagship of TV science in the country. Although the documentary itself was fairly measured, the producers began the programme with the black-hole claim and used it in their publicity for the show.