After the foofooraw over the LHC a few days ago, much has been said about some folks erroneously thinking the collider will destroy the Earth.
As usual, the wonderous and magnificent Jennifer Ouillette Ouellette has stepped up, pointing out that LHC has a web page up discussing these claims. This is far from the secret cabal of people at LHC refusing to discuss this.
The brilliant Clifford at Asymptotia makes some solid points as well. He was even more dismissive than I was. Kudos!
The effervescent (sorry, running out of adjectives) Gia pointed out in the comments of my original post that the LHC folks have indeed made environmental impact statements.
This lawsuit looks more and more like someone is chasing the sound of an ambulance.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Excellent Phil! You’ve made my day.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
It’s Jennifer Ouellette, please.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:53 pm
And still no word on whether the LHC will make good toast or not.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:57 pm
This lawsuit looks more and more like someone is chasing the sound of an ambulance.
Hmmm. Not sure the analogy works. No actual injury here. But anyway…
I sometimes wonder if people like the ones filing the suit are just looking for attention.
Some grandiose version of Münchhausen Syndrome, you know? Or rather Münchhausen By Proxy where the whole Earth is the proxy.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:58 pm
And still no word on whether the LHC will make good toast or not.
It will make the best toast in the world, but only one particle at a time.
Oh, and it’s $23,000,000 per slice. And it’s still BYO butter and jam.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:01 pm
A nice tub of “I can’t believe it’s not boson”
April 1st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
On another thread some crackpot said:
Please.
I’ve made facetious remarks about the LHC in the past as a joke but for FSMs sake the kooks are coming home to roost now and I regret making any comment.
When the experiment occurs the only external indication that something has happened will be a blip on some recording instrument that will generate a whole bunch of numbers and a few Nobel prizes.
The “we’re doomed” concern trolling about the LHC is getting… tiresome. Thank the FSM for voice of reason from people like Jennifer Ouellette and that BA bloke.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 am
Yes, but think of the mosquitoes!!!
Anyway, thanks for linking to the official statements from CERN.
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:07 am
I’ve just discovered that Brian Cox has been doing a series of podcasts on the LHC, mostly featuring him showing around various UK celebrities and explaining what they hope to achieve at CERN. Good stuff, and you can find it on iTunes (CERN podcast) or here.
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:25 am
Shane,
“Stop this madness now” sounds like very sensible advice. Unfortunately, the chicken littles of the world won’t heed it.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
Causing the instantaneous destruction of the earth as it collapses into a black hole then evaporates in a burst of Hawking radiation means never having to say you’re sorry.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:10 am
i don’t know if we should brush off the doomsday scenario so haphazardly. it could be a mistake to act so rashly.
i vaguely recall reading something about a new fusion power plant coming online. the high powered lasers compressed deuterium pellets to high enough density to cause a fusion reaction. seems though, that the lasers compressed too well and created lots of black holes, which then fell through the earth, orbited around, sucked in everything in their path, and eventually destroyed the earth. they may have gotten the moon too. luckily some researchers began receiving strange messages from the future via some backward time tachyon beam thingy. the message was heeded and they stopped the power plant from going online and everyone was was saved, except, possibly the alternate timeline where the message came from.
so, i say instead we start listening for tachyon communications from the future to tell us when it is safe to turn on the LHC. if we are lucky the future will also send us blue prints for FTL drives, winning lottery numbers and some future season of Dr. Who.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:41 am
Believe me, I am all for the LHC…the potential risks being infinitesimally small. But to me it does beg the question: what level of risk for destroying the earth is too high? The scientists of the Manhattan Project took bets on whether or not they were about to ignite the atmosphere.
So…1 in 1,000,000? 100,000? 1,000? What? And who decides?
As technology advances I think this will become a non-trivial question. Maybe now is the time to put some thought to it, before the potential is realistic?
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Spekaing as someone who won’t be making that sort of decision, I’m not too bothered what the odds are, as long as they’re very small and the destruction is more or less instantaneous. The moral and practical equation changes significantly when we’re talking about a global nuclear winter or some such drawn out catastrophe.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:42 am
I wonder, can’t people read, or do they not understand what they read? Large Hadron Collider is what the Americans wouldn’t do over 20 years ago because of political interference and Supercollider was stopped, but on a larger scale. The danger of creating in a particle that destroys the earth is one to 10e-43. We’re looking for the Higgs-boson, not the end of the world. It’s not going to happen even if we have energy to find even one Higgs-boson, or any of the particles in new theoretical fysics. CERN, still the birthplace of the World Wide Web internet protocol you read today, they just want to use huge energy to find out if you can create a particle that should have existed in the early universe.
It will lead to experimental proof to many or none of the theories of our universe, and more knowledge to do what you can’t imagine yet. Recently there’s been cropping up alternative theories of physics to Einstein’s 100 year old two theories, and the over 70 year old theory of quantum mechanics. LHC will either prove, disprove, or be just another step on finding out what really makes everything… well, everything.
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:02 am
People should think about scales. The scale of the LHC is minuscule. It’s in the order of kilometers. You can create antimatter there, yes, it doesn’t blow up the earth. If you create a single particle of the Higgs-boson, that will be a breakthrough, but it’s just a _single particle_. Just like anti-matter, that’s commonplace now. Anti-protons and positrons, why would you fear them any more than any other particles?
There was a (then well-founded) fear that the nuclear bomb would ignite the atmosphere and burn us all to kingdom come. Trinity bomb proved that fear wrong (no precautions), but I don’t condone it, as people should have known a lot more about nuclear bombs before blowing one on people (Hiroshima)… and like the first hydrogen bomb US blew in Bikini… huge fallout, people died. The Soviet Union did likewise, what’s called Tsar Bomb, the larged nuclear detonation ever, was 50 megatons, only because Hruschev thought that the 100 megaton version would be detrimental to their politics, as Novaja Zemla lies only 1000 kilometers from Norway, Finland and Sweden. They never paid for the broken glass or the fallout in Norway or Finland.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Perhaps, but the previous thread provides ample evidence that there are plenty of people stupid enough to sincerely object.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
The story about fear of igniting the atmosphere with an H-bomb is completely blown out of proportion. The question was asked and answered during a meeting (I believe Teller was involved). The fear was well-founded for about a few minutes, after which a back-of-the-envelope calculation showed it could not happen. Also, Trinity did not prove anything, because it was an A-bomb, not an H-bomb. Fermi was most likely joking when he offered his wager.
I would give references, but I’m at home, and the books are in my office.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Colliders have to input a tremendous amount of energy just to create individual particles from colliding other particles. They’re not going to create anything massive enough to become a black hole, and if they did, a black hole that tiny would immediately disintegrate from Hawking radiation.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
BPL,
Yes that has been stated over and over again, in this thread and the last, but some posters here just don’t get it. They continue to spout nonsense regardless, like they actually know better than the scientists conducting the experiments. I for one think that any self respecting particle physicist would have weighed up the risks and is probably not too keen on destroying himself, his colleagues or the world for that matter. And for all the naysayers out there that think they know more than the scientists conducting the experiments, you don’t.
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Doug, you’ve forgotten to use the appropriate adjective when referring to scientists. It’s either mad, crazy or EVIL scientist. In that context there is no telling what a scientist would do to implement their mad, crazy EVIL plans.
For the sarcastically challenged… meh.
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:44 am
Shane, perhaps the crazy evil scientists will refrain from switching on the LHC if we give them [Dr Evil] one . . . million . . . dollars! [/Dr Evil]
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:04 am
Did I mention that the scientists live in a dormant volcano! Maybe you are on to something there Shane and Nigel.
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
You know, I was all on board with the idea that these folks were fear-mongering, and that the science community understood the issue.
But to be fair, I went to the linked website to read what they have to say. Oddly enough, they have cites to peer-reviewed published articles that contradict statements being made here. Things like “mini-black holes cannot be formed” and “Hawking radiation will immediately make them evaporate”.
http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/links.htm
Now there certainly seems like a large amount of fear-mongering in a lot of writing on this topic, but there seems to be a valid point buried under all the noise. Namely, recent scientific discoveries that post-date the safety assessments support the notion that mini-black holes will be created, that Hawking radiation may not exist, and that strangelets could form with negative surface energy – exactly opposite the controls argued in the safety assessments.
Furthermore, I looked at both the linked papers for the safety assessments (one for RHIC, one for CERN), and neither showed probability assessments or traditional risk management evaluations. Given that I’m not an expert on colliders and such, some of the material was a little opaque. (For instance, the calculation that in order for a black hole to be stable it would require creating 10E23 nucleons at 1 TeV. Then the declaration that is beyond the capability of any collider, without mentioning what is within the expected performance of said collider.)
What I read seemed reasonable, but those two reports came before relevant scientific discoveries that are being argued in the field right now. Might that not suggest a reason for closer scrutiny?
Which doesn’t mean I’m sending any money to the lawsuit.
April 4th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Hey Phil…are you going to be in the vicinity when they switch on the LHR? Will you be standing anywhere near its ‘beam’?
Just a thought! ;-0
April 4th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Irishman writes:
[[Oddly enough, they have cites to peer-reviewed published articles that contradict statements being made here. Things like “mini-black holes cannot be formed” and “Hawking radiation will immediately make them evaporate”.]]
Constants (latest NIST CODATA figures):
c = 299792458 m s^-1 (speed of light)
ev = 1.782661758e-36 kg (mass equivalent of 1 electron volt)
G = 6.67428e-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2 (Newtonian gravitational constant)
hbar = 1.054571628e-34 J s (Planck constant over 2 pi)
pi = 3.141592653589793 (+)
The LHC is said to be able to create particles of mass 10^17 eV. Colliding two together inelastically, the new particle has a mass of 3.5653235e-19 kg.
The evaporation time from Hawking radiation of a black hole is
T = 5,120 pi G^2 M^3 / (hbar c^4)
For a black hole of mass 3.5653235e-19 kg, the time until evaporation is 3.8121205e-72 seconds.
This is smaller than the Planck time (tp = 5.39124e-44 s). Therefore the LHC cannot form a black hole, as Hawking radiation would make it immediately evaporate.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Perhaps you missed the part doubting the existence of Hawking radiation.
April 5th, 2008 at 4:19 am
Irishman:
For reference, the rest mass of a nucleon is roughly 938 MeV. So 10^23 nucleons have a combined rest mass of around 10^20 TeV. Protons in the LHC beams have about 7 TeV. The beam consists of 2808 bunches of protons, with 1.15e11 protons in each bunch. That gives a total beam energy of around 10^15 TeV; nowhere near enough.
Barton:
Ah, but some stringy models have effective Planck mass on the order of a few TeV.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:12 am
If you say “Put it on (around?) the moon” (and would that be any safer – leaving out the general unsafeness of space flight), at least we get to build a moon base to put it in. that’s worth it on its own for coolness. Although the guys who want to put a radio telescope on moon’s far side to exclude terrestrial interference will want to kill ya.
As it is, I think it’s “environmental impact in Honolulu when the planet disintegrates” that is allegedly not covered by impact statements filed. Other posters seem to be telling me that CERN or LHC is legally its own country and has diplomatic immunity. Which will be cold comfort when we all go, as I am told it will sound, “phwok”.
Hey, how do I know that cosmic rays have been duplicating this experiment on Earth and Moon with more energy than LHC for billions of years, without effect? How do I, personally, know that that’s true? And anyway, what -did- happen to Planet Five? And to the Lost Moon of Saturn? You know, where there are these suspicious heaps of space rubble. And Krypton, and Alderaan… sure, we know what they -said- had happened…
And don’t a bunch of folks think that Stephen Hawking is wrong about a whole bunch of stuff, he just has better image management and appearances in [Star Trek] and [Dilbert]?
Btw, this black hole thing got mentioned in [The Daily Show] lately in a session pushing exciting new book [When Science Goes Wrong]. (Again, buy it now, you may die.) I didn’t know about the strangelet angle, I thought Jon Stewart was confusing it with nanotechnology that eats us and converts us to grey goo, but he researches and is smarter than me and has his own show.
But one of the most dangerous things you can do on this planet is to have a child. Who knows what they’ll get up to! Anything! For instance, they may one day build an LHC…
April 6th, 2008 at 2:50 am
The Lawsuit should win, even if theres a .000001% chance of this creating blackholes i dont think we should even come near taking the chance, its not worth it. No matter what.
April 6th, 2008 at 3:06 am
I must admit that with my lack of knowledge I as well got scared a little when I first heard about this ‘evil satanic machine that will destroy the earth’. Lack of knowledge usually does that, turn to fear that is. When I started reading up on the subject, I wasn’t really put at ease since with every question answered, new ones would arise. I read that these collisions happen in nature as well and considering the fact we are all still here, nothing should happen this time…but as soon as I read that, some other person steps up claiming that the conditions in the LHC are not the same as in nature..and doubt (and with that fear) comes again. Their claim is that particles in nature hit a object that is standing still and in the LHC both particles will travel close to the speed of light. Is this true?
At this point I don’t know who to believe, but hey…with all the amount of effort (and money) put in this project I know they are going to turn this thing on, no matter what I think of it. If it does cause the destruction of the earth, it will happen so fast I won’t even realize it. The best way to go imho.
I will not lose any sleep over this, the fact that over 7000 CERN scientists (probably most with family) are working on this machine and the fact they are being double-checked by thousands of scientists (probably most with a family as well) who are not in any way connected to CERN, makes me confident enough that at least one of them should not be suffering from tunnel vision and thinks of his family before scientific results.
I think it’s foolish that people with very little knowledge about this machine can cause so much distress with unknowing people like me. Now I know how people must have felt in medieval times, constantly fearing the wrath of God. The only change is that this time, we all fear the wrath of the god-particle.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I point you all to this cartoon by the Daily Static…
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080406
April 7th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Mike, even if there is a 100% chance of creating mini black holes, there is 0 risk if Hawking radiation is correct.
That said, what level of risk is acceptable to you? .000,000,000,000,000,000,001%? At some point, there’s a greater chance you will be struck by lighting, die, then a week later be raised from the dead, than the chance the mini-black hole will be created and grow out of control to destroy the Earth. Is that too great a risk?
April 8th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Irishman,
When Hawking radiation is no longer the consensus, I will take those papers seriously.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Barton, we’re not talking about some internet blog postings passing as “technical articles” because it fits some ideology. These appear to me to be legitimate technical papers in legitimate peer-reviewed technical journals that deal with cosmology. This appears to me to be a legitimate technically unresolved point that is on the cutting edge of research, not some long demonstrated detail that some people just don’t want to accept. So if there is cutting edge research results that were discovered after the safety statements were written, it seems to me those results affect the justifications used in the reports. Ergo, those reports need a new look in light of the new evidence. Isn’t that the scientific process? New information means reevaluating previous conclusions?
I’m certainly not an expert. I’m fairly confident the scientists and CERN and RHIC and elsewhere are not intentionally omitting data or taking any kind of risk they feel is credible. My concern is only that new results are outpacing existing plans and that the folks implementing existing plans need to be aware of the impacts of the new results and possibly reevaluate said plans in light of said results. That’s my only concern.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Irishman,
Yes, I know the difference between peer-reviewed journal articles and blog postings. And the fact that an idea appears in a journal article does not immediately make it part of the consensus. I can show you articles in peer-reviewed physics journals — recent articles — that take issue with the cosmological red shift and with dark matter.
April 9th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
No ambulance chasing here. The lawsuit was filed pro se, i.e., without lawyers. Amazing that with more than a million lawyers in the U.S., they couldn’t get even one to sign their complaint. Never mind the physics–these guys will botch the litigation so badly they’ll never get to square one. (It would be ironic, wouldn’t it, if they were right (I know, I said IF), and the whole world got sucked into a strangelet because these clowns couldn’t handle federal court procedure?)
April 16th, 2008 at 9:03 am
35 days left
It is possible that this Universe in 35 days does not exist anymore. And these are not esoterists these are scientists who think so.
Safety of this project should be reviewed or our Universe may be gone. Sucked up into a black hole actually.
CERN LHC will be in production mode on the 21. of May 2008
http://www.notepad.ch
April 16th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Um… referring to Notepad… isn’t there so many things wrong with your statements it’s not even funny? Such as the turn on date… the fact he’s saying the “Universe” will get sucked into a single black hole and etc?
April 17th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
C. Carpenter. Thank you a lot, you´ve made my day
. I am not being ironic, I mean it. You sound sensible and critic, and that´s the way to take science. 
And on your question:
Yes, in general, normal astroparticles do not take in consideration the fact that cosmic rays may collide between them. It would be rare, it is much more likely that they collide with (to cite the original source) the moon.
But if we are talking about things as improbable as the ones we are talking about, then the possibility of two cosmic rays of much, much, much, more energy than the LHC-ray colliding, turns Real. Not only real, but frequent in comparison. So frequent, that it has to have happened many times near the earth.
So, if the improbable exists, and the theory of the creation of Black-Holes via collision is true, the creation of a tiny-black hole has already happened near our planet. In a non-controlled environment. As we obviously have not noticed it yet, they must disintegrate – or not be dangerous at all.
The other option for not having noticed them, is the theory being wrong, so they are not dangerous again – they do not exist.
All of this cosmic-ray colliding stuff is really really really improbable, so much that i´d say impossible. But it is still MUCH more possible that the black hole being produced in the tunnel (also less interesting. But that is not the point being discussed here, I kinda understand people not finding particle physics as absorbing as they are for me)
Notepad- at least keep the apocalypsis up to date, right? Dunno, one must feel very silly celebrating the end of the world two months in advance…
The current schedule of the LHC has postponed the start til ~August.
Last holiday before the end!!!
April 20th, 2008 at 2:26 am
‘Um… referring to Notepad… isn’t there so many things wrong with your statements it’s not even funny? Such as the turn on date… the fact he’s saying the “Universe” will get sucked into a single black hole and etc?’
Yes. Agree. Possibly the turn on date is wrong. I am aware that these are not official dates and I would be very pleased if the CERN could confirm these.
It could be later – or earlier.
But the possibility of black hole creation is real.
admin
http://www.notepad.ch
April 20th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
They had an OPEN day just now. If you so criticise them about not revealing information, why didnt you go there to ask them?
http://lhc2008.web.cern.ch/LHC2008/index-E.html
Instead of just writing in a random blog that they should answer you?
Good things about Scientific Communities (such as “the” CERN as you call it), is that they´re actually open.
And by the way: I wish your rumours about the 21th of May were right. They are not. No collisions til at least August.
And official inaguration, with heads of state and such, in october.
April 21st, 2008 at 12:55 am
Hello,
Yes, true I missed the open day. I’m sure that among the other 70000 visitors I could have asked them my questions.
FYI, I’m an accredited journalist. And no, I don’t get enough answers.
So please show me exactly at which stage what is happening at the CERN? The detail project plan for the whole of 2008.
No I don’t feel I get the information the public deserves.
admin
notepad.ch
April 21st, 2008 at 1:04 am
Hello,
And FYI, there are definitely ‘things’ happening until October, when the statesman come.
I have this information from sources inside.
admin
notepad.ch
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:29 am
Lol, I am “a source inside”. It is really funny how you make all this sound like a bad thriller, you know?
Last Schedule has collisions in September. And it keeps changing, that´s why probably your sources contradict.
Second, to ally some of your fears: even the catastrophists theories cannot allow for strangelets to be produced in p-p collisions, they need coalescence, therefore Pb-Pb collisions. So not a chance (and now really Prob=0) of strangelets being produced this year. You can check it if you want.
I still find it really funny that you call yourself accredited journalist and your way to research is just to lurk around in science forums and demand answers. What do you think theorist/top experimentalist at CERN do? Go hunting for alarmists to calm them? Baby-sitting the lot?
You lost your chance of asking. Yes, 70000 people, ok. But a journalist that does not take the chance of being answered in person, and relies on second – or even third or forth- testimonies… does not sound like a very proffesional journalist.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:40 am
>>Last Schedule has collisions in September. And it keeps changing, that´s why probably your sources contradict.
How nice that the schedule keeps changing. How about informing the public about this. But of course, you are a fantastic scientist, and you don’t need to care about the stupid humans on this earth. Great! Congratulations for your infinite arrogance! Einstein would have been very upset, you know?
>>You lost your chance of asking. Yes, 70000 people, ok. But a journalist that does not take the chance of being answered in person, and relies on second – or even third or forth- testimonies… does not sound like a very proffesional journalist.
Yes, and I journalist between 70000 people would ask what question,please? Are you joking? Provide me an interview with the CERN director about all this, and I will be a GOOD journalist, believe me.
Have fun.
And to all the others reading this, take care.
admin
http://www.notepad.ch
April 30th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Y’know, I almost marked the notepad messages as spam, because I thought they were a joke. But I will definitely leave them up, to show rational people just what we’re facing in today’s antiscience climate.
May 1st, 2008 at 6:05 am
I used to be scared of this thing as well, and then I figured that scientists actually know more than I do. The other thing that occured to me is the arrogance in thinking that we can destroy the world that nature has not destroyed yet.
I noticed some dates mentioned above about start up dates and such, could someone be kind enough to link me a site that actually keeps up with the changes of dates?
Thank you for your time.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Hello Devy,
I do not know of any confirmed dates the CERN released. I have some dates on my blog at http://www.notepad.ch but I choose currently not to update them. I do not want to rely on rumours I do want the CERN to make all dates public.
Would you like to contact the CERN?
http://www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=136
Regards
admin
notepad.ch
September 9th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
sorry but this may seem a bit obvious, but in all the movies and the books and stuff, all the scientists defend their research claiming it to be 100% fail proof, and then it always goes wrong. just some food for thought
September 28th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Sounds like doomsday is nearer than one could ever imagine!
Need to do all thats possible in prevention and start praying!