A U.S. District Court has thrown out the so-called “doomsday lawsuit” to shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The lawsuit was filed in March by Walter Wagner, a Hawaiian botanist-cum-physicist who himself was indicted in February on a charge of identity theft. Wagner claimed that colliding the LHC’s 7TeV proton beams could inadvertently destroy the world.

In a 26-page ruling (made public via Cosmic Log), federal district judge Helen Gilmore dismissed the suit. Basically the decision came down to an issue of jurisdiction: Wagner and a co-plantiff made their claim under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). But NEPA only applies to “major federal actions,” and the judge said that the US contribution to the LHC (US$531 million or about 10% of the overall cost) was too small to constitute a major federal project.

Judge Gilmore did believe that the debate was “of concern to more than just physicists”, but she punted the issue over to the US Congress. It seems unlikely that much will happen there: America’s economic meltdown means that Capitol Hill already has one end of the world to worry about. It won’t have time to debate another.

Image: CERN