I always thought that the LHC "nightmare scenario" referred to accidential creation of a black hole... Well, looks like different people have different ideas of what a "catastrophe" means :)
By contrast, the nightmare scenario here is really the worst kind scenario under the assumption that we have a good idea about physics at the TeV scale. We do not learn anything, and even worse the LHC is the wrong machine. With a light Higgs and no additional particles, a slight upgrade to the LEP, the predecessor of the LHC, would have found the Higgs in 2005 and would be a much better machine to study it in detail.
^1 Hawking radiation (and its close relative Unruh radiation) are basically the only two effects which involve both gravity and quantum field theory anybody has any kind of believe in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
The more fun version would be where black holes do not evaporate, at which point it will still be a very long time before it's a problem, we need to worry about Andromeda crashing into our galaxy and the sun becoming a red giant first.
Or maybe they are the dark.
The Sun's dying and will become a red giant (about 5 billion years to go), but it's luminosity is currently increasing, so our rock will become a scorched Earth in around a billion years. Then there's the potential for meteors, climate-change, antibiotic resistance, or millions of tiny black holes to do us off first (how quickly do black holes grow, anyway?)
Colonising other planets and other solar systems seems the only viable solution to the long-term survival of the human race.
Personally, I'm in the it's all good unless you create a black hole, explosion, or gateway to someplace we don't want to visit or want visitors from.
This is an accurate characterization of the worst outcome (that doesn't involve space aliens) that scientists were worried about when the LHC launched.
In this instance, however, I think it's more of a question of there being a big question as to "what is the nightmare scenario"; each part of the article is relevant to this question, explaining the state of the particle physics and the build up towards the apparent disappointment with the results from the LHC research.
Nightmare scenario is being fairly specific here; it's not really in the same field as "See what happens next" or "You won't believe what happens" in my mind since those have no substance or real connection to their content. This article headline is very attention grabbing, since we're not sure what the LHC Nightmare Scenario is. However, the article substantiates the title. It provides the author's reasons specifically why the current status of LHC research is in a nightmare scenario.
The title is provocative, yes, but I feel that conflating provocative with "Clickbait" is disingenuous. Some of the most famous headlines in history have arguably been clickbait by that metric, yet they're not held to the same scrutiny.
I disagree. I believe that the intended audience of this article, people familiar with what the LHC has been up to, what it's goals were, who are keeping up with current events, like knowing that the diphoton bump has vanished, would immediately recognize what the article would be about. I did at least. It seems completely unfair to say "This article doesn't cater to HN" and then accuse the author of engaging in sensationalistic clickbait, especially when HN doesn't trust submitters to provide more context in headlines.
This lack of context is because, it appears, most HN readers are more familiar with the actual clickbait headlines from media outlets proclaiming "Mini Blackholes may destroy the earth!", "Strangelets could destroy the earth!", "The LHC will start the Zombie Apocalypse!", than the actual concerns of scientists. Again, this seems monstrously unfair that actual clickbait has set the conversation, and people who actually are talking about the actual 'nightmare scenario' are now accused of clickbait.
Not all nightmares are about monsters chasing you. A lot of them are showing up to class in your underwear, or trying to find that report that you know should be on the table. I would not be surprised that several physicists have in fact had actual nightmares of this exact scenario.
I'm not sure where the idea of "this article doesn't cater to HN" and the following accusation comes from in relation to the thread that was being discussed.
I do agree with you that it's unfair to call it clickbait, that there's a large difference between a provocative headline and a clickbait headline. Personally I'm not familiar enough with the going-ons of the LHC to really comment intelligently on the research, so I have and will hold off on that.
The primary response to this article, given the comments, is "what do you mean you're not talking about black holes" rather than an actual discussion of the ideas of the article (the failure of "naturalness" and "beauty" to make predictions for the LHC). Which leads me to conclude that HN is not a good place to talk about this (since most people are complaining that the , as we're arguing about the most boring, superficial part of the article.
My statement that people are complaining about "This article doesn't cater to HN", is my summary of the idea that 'I am not familiar with the context associated with the headline, and to me it sounds sensationalistic, and therefore it is clickbait, and the author should have picked a better title'. You obviously, are not advocating that position.
The rest I believe you and I are in agreement over. :)
I thought it confirmed what we thought we knew (and is the only way to confirm it), so that doesn't seem like wasted money.
A black hole with the mass of a big chunk of equipment would be enormously deadly. Ten megatons per pound, assuming it evaporates. Most of the planet collapsing into it if it doesn't.