Sometime this summer, physicists are expected to make their first attempt at recreating the energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, using the $8 billion Large Hadron Collider, buried deep underground near Geneva at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN).

This isn't your normal science experiment. The giant particle accelerator -- 14 years in the making -- has a circumference of 17 miles, which will allow researchers to smash atoms together at very high speeds. Scientists hope this will shed light on the origins of the universe.

Others think the experiment will have the unfortunate side effect of destroying the universe.

There's not much middle ground here, which makes the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. federal court so interesting. The suit, filed in Honolulu, seeks to stop the final phase of construction on the LHC. Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sanchon say CERN has not conducted a proper environmental impact statement as required under NEPA.

Oh, and they also allege that the experiment could open up a black hole that instantly consumes the entire planet, and possibly much more.

The U.S. Energy Department, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Science Foundation and CERN as listed as defendants in the lawsuit, which reads, in part, "compression of the two atoms colliding together at nearly light speed will cause an irreversible implosion, forming a miniature version of a giant black hole."

It's not just the possibility of black holes that concern the plaintiffs. MSNBC nicely recaps the other doomsday scenarios raised by Sancho and Wagner. They include:

• Strangelets: Smashing protons together at high enough energies could create new combinations of quarks, the particles that protons are made of. A nasty combination known as a stable, negatively charged strangelet could theoretically turn everything it touches into strangelets as well.
• Magnetic monopoles: One theory suggests that high-energy particle collisions might give rise to massive particles that have only one magnetic pole -- only north, or only south, but not the north-south magnetism that dominates nature. Sancho and Wagner worry that such particles could be created in the LHC and start a runaway reaction that converts atoms into other forms of matter.

The thousands of physicists working the project maintain that there is nothing to suggest the LNC is unsafe. CERN officials also wonder, as do we, how a district court in Hawaii has jurisdiction over an intergovernmental organization in Europe?

In any event, CERN plans to hold a public open house on April 6 to discuss concerns about the project. We wish we could be there for the milk and cookies as scientists field questions on the end of existence.

As for the lawsuit, the Justice Department, which is representing DOE, says a scheduling meeting has been scheduled for June 16, about six weeks before the before the first planned LHC experiment.