Monday, 03.31.08
Science of the Apocalypse
Photo by flickr User cyclequark under a Creative Commons license.
The L.H.C. could reveal the nature of matter and confirm physicists' best guesses about the validity of string theory. These would be advances comparable to Einstein's or Newton's -- but they are possibilities only because we do not know what will happen when we switch the contraption on. Scientists protest that the probability of their experiments' causing the end of the universe is astronomically low, and they are telling the truth. But tinkering with the unknown is what experimental science is all about, and even the scientists must admit that there is a chance of doomsday (and, indeed, a chance of many other things) in any project like this.
Is it worth the risk? Absolutely. This is not the first time scientists have wondered whether their experiments might cause the world to end. Late-medieval bioethicists frowned on a branch of alchemy that involved isolating semen in flasks. Alonso Tostado (bishop of Avila and a sort of Leon Kass of his day) thought semen, if not tempered with menses, could grow into an army of demonic beings with supernatural gifts. He hypothesized that the wizard Merlin, as well as the entire fearsome race of Huns, had been products of exactly this diabolical tinkering, and that further exploration could be cataclysmic. Five centuries later, Edward Teller worried that heat from the first atomic bomb test would ignite the atmosphere and send a wall of fire racing across the earth, reducing to cinders every man, woman, and child. (Teller's report, declassified in 1973, declared that a world-engulfing chain reaction was "not likely.")
During the construction of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Long Island, physicists considered many of the same armageddon scenarios that dog the LHC today. In addition to black-hole fears, they entertained the possibility that it could create a "strangelet" -- a Midas-material that converts everything it touches into hyper-dense "strange matter," rapidly shrinking the planet into a heavy sphere about 100 meters across. Worse still, some thought the RHIC could spark a chain reaction that catalyzes the decay of all protons in the universe, starting with the Earth and radiating outward at the speed of light. The laboratory concluded that they had excluded the possibility of destroying the earth with "a very high level of confidence." The RHIC has been operating without incident for nearly eight years.
There is a philosophically dense issue of observational selection bias at work here. (We wouldn't be around in 2008 to observe a world that ended in a firestorm in 1945, or with a black hole in 2000.) That nontrivial caveat aside, though, we can say with total confidence that the history of doomsday prophecy in science has, so far, been a history of false prophecy. So far.
A real concernThis statement from LHC Concerns explains why some people fear a man-made apocalypse. |
Bayesian fallacyMark Greenberg discusses randomness and the "Doomsday Argument" -- the theory that human extinction is mathematically more probable than we think. |
Last resortElizabeth Kolbert reports for the New Yorker on the importance of the LHC for particle physics. |
A problem of hypeThomas D. Gutierrez explains why similar doomsday fears surrounding a collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory proved false. |
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2nd try:
CERNs web site states that we have not been destroyed by effects of cosmic rays and micro black holes will evaporate.
However, cosmic rays travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, and Hawking Radiation is disputed (http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0304042) and contradicts Einsteins highly successful relativity theory. Collider particles smash head on like a car collision and can be captured by Earths gravity, and relativity predicts micro black holes will not decay (Hawking called Einstein doubly wrong, yet it is Einstein who is repeatedly found to have been correct in his theories). There is currently no reasonable proof of LHC safety, LSAG (LHC Safety Assessment Group) has been trying for months to prove safety without success. I hold the minority opinion that it may not be possible because it may in fact not be safe.
Cosmic Rays from the legal complaint. any such novel particle created in nature by cosmic ray impacts would be left with a velocity at nearly the speed of light, relative to earth. At such speeds, , is believed by most theorists to simply pass harmlessly through our planet with nary an impact, safely exiting on the other side. Conversely, any such novel particle that might be created at the LHC would be at slow speed relative to earth, a goodly percentage would then be captured by Earths gravity, and could possibly grow larger [accrete matter] with disastrous consequences of the earth turning into a large black hole.
If this thing is so safe, why aren't CERN scientists allowed to express any personal fears they might have about this Collider?
Alleged in the legal action: Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Engelen passed an internal memorandum to workers at CERN, asking them, regardless of personal opinion, to affirm in all interviews that there were no risks involved in the experiments, changing the previous assertion of minimal risk.
(Statisticians generally consider minimal risk as 1-10%).
JTankers, LHCConcerns.com
Professor Dr. Otto E. Roessler estimates 50 months Earth accretion time from a single micro black hole captured by Earth's gravity (www.golem.de/0802/57477-4.html, translation at www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=52)
32 days left.
Status: 19.04.08 - 32 days left. www.notepad.ch Save the universe.
Timeline
ISSUE Large explosion: 2005 ISSUE Magnet failure: 2007 TEST Test Sector warmup/coopdown cycle: 2007 QA ISSUE 7 of 8 segments failed cool-down tests CANCELLED Complete warmup/cooldown cycle, Low power runs INIT System init (1. Time Beam injection): 21. May 2008 INIT Cold Date: 1. June 2008 INIT (1. Time Protons used): 15. June 2008 DOCU New safety report not released START System activation (1. Time Circulating beams): July 2008 RISK Black hole (First collisions: August 2008 PROD System ready: October 2008 HIGH RISK EXPERIMENT Elevated black hole risk: 21. December 1212
Important note: These are not official dates. No official dates where available to us yet. CERN should publish them. These dates are based on news, opinions and insider info. Additionally, I try my best. I am not a scientist - just a citizen. I will update this information and all information on www.notepad.ch as soon as new information becomes available. The blogs at www.notepad. have been created on the 14 of April, that is the date I realized that the black hole danger at the CERN's LHC is for real. My goal is to let you decide if there is an issue with the 'go to prod' of the LHC - or not. That is the reason this site consists just of News, opinions, forum messages etc. I always named the source of the quote, did mention in each article that this is a quote from etc. My assumption is that this is the legal and fair way to quote without changing the context. Please tell me if I am wrong and I will immediately correct it. Thank you.
XX days refers to the initialisation of the LHC. This is the date I currently think is right, but may be corrected at any time. It was pointed out that at this date the risk of black hole creation will not be elevated yet, which is through. In XX days I'm referring to the start date of the potential risk to create a black hole. I also wanted to have a real date, in order to put some urgency on the issue. Which it has.
www.notepad.ch
these are the same people who protested the last collider upgrade and nothing bad happened.
also "A suit filed in District Court in Hawaii demands that the U.S. halt construction of the Large Hadron Collider (L.H.C.), "
The U.S. isn't building the LHC
I am no scientist and won't even pretend to know very much about the subject of black holes. Those in the know have a 1% to a 10% worry factor about the collider causing big time problems to Our planet and even the Solar system, as long as there is even a 1% chance of messing up the place where We live, they should not go through with this experiment, the price is just to high if they are wrong and they create a black hole that doesn't evaporate in a micro second. This is just My opinion of course, but as a lifelong mechanic, machinist and race car builder, My first concerns were, not to build anything that would blow up in My face or injure any of My crew. Art T.
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CERN�s web site states that we have not been destroyed by effects of cosmic rays and micro black holes will evaporate.
However, cosmic rays travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, and Hawking Radiation is disputed (http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0304042) and contradicts Einstein�s highly successful relativity theory. Collider particles smash head on like a car collision and can be captured by Earth�s gravity, and relativity predicts micro black holes will not decay (Hawking called Einstein doubly wrong, yet it is Einstein who is repeatedly found to have been correct in his theories). There is currently no reasonable proof of LHC safety, LSAG (LHC Safety Assessment Group) has been trying for months to prove safety without success. I hold the minority opinion that it may not be possible because it may in fact not be safe.
Cosmic Rays from the legal complaint.
�any such novel particle created in nature by cosmic ray impacts would be left with a velocity at nearly the speed of light, relative to earth. At such speeds, �, is believed by most theorists to simply pass harmlessly through our planet with nary an impact, safely exiting on the other side. � Conversely, any such novel particle that might be created at the LHC would be at slow speed relative to earth, a goodly percentage would then be captured by earth�s gravity, and could possibly grow larger [accrete matter] with disastrous consequences of the earth turning into a large black hole.
If this thing is so safe, why aren't CERN scientists allowed to express any personal fears they might have about this Collider?
Alleged in the legal action: Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Engelen passed an internal memorandum to workers at CERN, asking them, regardless of personal opinion, to affirm in all interviews that there were no risks involved in the experiments, changing the previous assertion of �minimal risk�.
(Statistitions generally consider minimal risk as 1-10%).
Posted by JTankers | April 1, 2008 2:56 AM