G&M on page 26 provide a conservative, lower bound on accretion time of 3 x 10⁵ years. Enough time to evacuate the planet's population to Mars, thankfully!

I wouldn't call it Terror; it's more like Prudence. What's the big hurry? It's like the whole mBH issue is driving the LHC's schedule. Dr. John Ellis admitted as much in the recent CERN colloquium when he said that the best way to put an end to the safety debate was to get the LHC up and running as soon as possible. (The whole thing's on video. It's very interesting. I think you'd like it. If you watch it, tell me what the heck his T-shirt says.) I can't help but wonder if the recent mishaps were the result of being in too much of a hurry in order to make the LHC a fait accompli. If the thing is as safe as they say it, there should be no problem. (Well, actually, I confess that even if it is as safe as they say it is, that is not safe enough in my book--especially when there are practicable alternatives available, like single-beam colliders.)

Well, do you think that there might just possibly, potentially be a 1 in 1,000 chance that G&M's paper is so horribly wrong due to some oversight that we can't see now, but in hindsight will be so obvious that they will have to retract their paper from Physical Review Letters?