Mar 29 2008
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No, the LHC won’t destroy the Earth
I linked to this subtly in my post about my trip to the UK next month to visit Europe’s new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but it deserves more attention.
Two men are suing to stop the LHC from being switched on, saying it may be dangerous and might even destroy the Earth:
But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.
[…]
The lawsuit, filed March 21 in Federal District Court, in Honolulu, seeks a temporary restraining order prohibiting CERN from proceeding with the accelerator until it has produced a safety report and an environmental assessment. It names the federal Department of Energy, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Science Foundation and CERN as defendants.
First off the bat, this sounds nuts, but really it’s not so nuts that we shouldn’t look into it. There are two causes for some concern: one is that LHC might create a black hole which would eat the Earth, and the other is that a very odd quantum entity called a strangelet might be created, with equally devastating results.
However, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. I want to make that clear up front.
The LHC will slam subatomic particles together at fantastic speeds. The collision in a sense shatters the particles and all sorts of weird beasties are created in the aftermath. This give physicists insight into the basic quantum nature of the Universe. The higher the energy of the collision, the more interesting stuff you get. LHC will be the most powerful collider ever built, and is expected to provide really new looks at the quantum world.
That’s what has the two litigators worried.
If two subatomic particles collide at high enough speed, it’s possible that they will collapse into a black hole. If that happens, it would fall through the Earth and, well, you can guess what bad things would happen then*.
However, studies done by CERN show that the energies generated will be too low to make black holes. Also, due to a weird effect called Hawking radiation, the tiny black holes would evaporate instantly. The two litigants, however, say that Hawking radiation is not an established fact, and therefore we should be more careful. While that’s technically true, they forgot something important: the same rules of quantum physics that make a black hole in a subatomic collision also indicate they would evaporate. So if you’re worried they won’t evaporate, then you shouldn’t be worried they’d be created in the first place.
Same goes for the creation of a quantum strangelet. This is a weird conglomeration of particles called quarks, and if a strangelet comes into contact with normal matter can convert it into more strangelets. The idea is that these can cause a chain reaction that turns all available matter into strangelets. That would be bad.
However, first, strangelets are completely theoretical, and again even if they are real it’s incredibly unlikely they would be created even by LHC. And even if they were created, the chances of them being a danger are very small. A study a few years ago by physicists at MIT, Yale, and Princeton shows this to be the case; as they point out, higher energy particles hit the Moon all the time. If strangelets could be created in this way, the Moon would have converted to a big ball o’ strangelets billions of years ago.
So I think that considering things like this happening is good — after all, we’re walking into new territory here — but in this particular case the litigants are wrong. A lawsuit seems like overkill. In fact, it’s so odd that my skeptical gland was tweaked, and I decided to look into the litigants’ backgrounds.
Walter Wagner apparently has a physics background, but was involved in a similar lawsuit over the Brookhaven collider a few years back, which turned out to be completely baseless.
As for the other, Luis Sancho, he’s, well, how do I phrase this delicately? He’s a bit outside the mainstream. Actually, way outside the mainstream. In fact, totally and way way far outside the mainstream. I don’t think you can even see the mainstream from where he is.
While dismissing the idea of any danger from LHC due to these factors would be an ad hominem and therefore unfair, I think it adds a dimension to this case that’s good to keep in mind.
Again, I’m not worried. I don’t see any basis for their fears, and certainly not for their lawsuit.
So I’m still greatly looking forward to visiting the LHC in April. It’ll be a fantastic glimpse into the next generation of physics, and will open up new vistas for us to explore.
If the court agrees to let it run, of course.
*Or you can read all about it in my book Death from the Skies! which comes out in a few months.
I’m not worried of course… the fact that we get hit all the times with particles of enormous energy is quite reassuring that everything is almost 100% safe… almost.
Some time ago people were afraid that an H-bomb test would ignite the atmosphere… I don’t know the odds for that, but I think there are bigger than creating a strangelet / black hole capable of destroying the earth.
Another case of fear trying to overcome reason.
I hope someone can take what you said here Phil, or something akin to it, and show it to those that are making this lawsuit.
But then, they might not understand it, and still push the lawsuit anyway, just because they can.
Actually, after looking at this guy’s site, I think he lives in a parallel universe where there IS NO mainstream…wow.
The link for the Luis Sancho/ Unification theory page is really entertaining… but I’m not quite ready to throw everything to the garbage. (* even if some of that stuff is ridiculous)
It’s the kind of (way too) lateral thinking that may be on to something… not “seminal rays” and such…
Heck, I too want to know what happens when they fire up that bad boy. However, correct me if I’m wrong, but does anyone know with certainty what will happen when you turn on the LHC?
“….even if [strangelets] are real it’s incredibly unlikely they would be created even by LHC. And even if they were created, the chances of them being a danger are very small.”
So, you are saying it is possible (?) but the probabilities involved are infentesimally small. Regardless of whether the plaintiffs are right or wrong, if the court finds that the LHC did not do an adequate public safety evaluation: What would be the damage that a revised safety study with SOTA physics knowledge would cause? None, I would say, except a delay during which LHC could debug their software for instance.
Parting volley: Was Galileo himself not outside the mainstream in his day?
But… but… if there’s no chance of the LHC destroying the Earth then the good Doctor won’t be coming here to save us from ourselves. Not fair.
If two subatomic particles collide at high enough speed, it’s possible that they will collapse into a black hole. If that happens, it would fall through the Earth and, well, you can guess what bad things would happen then
It would be tiny - it would have at most the mass-energy that the LHC had put into the experiment. I think it would oscillate back and forth more or less through the centre of the Earth (more precisely, it would orbit through the Earth but not on a Keplerian ellipse as mass above it wouldn’t count). Very occasionally, it might directly hit a nucleus and swallow it, or part of it. Who knows, it might have a mass of, ooh, several grams by the time the Sun frazzles the Earth.
On the other hand, does your book have a chapter on dimwit litigators, know-nothing film producers, and obscurantist Floridians?
It won’t? Awww….
On a side note: I’ve now got this urge to play the original Half Life…
Would the event horizon of such a black hole be smaller then a atom therefore the particles have to be small enough to fit completely inside the event horizon.
I also can’t think any reason why French scientists should be worried about the rulings of a Honolulu court. Or has Hawaii become French recently?
I’ve heard the following from a scientist, whose name I cannot remember:
“The odds of the LHC causing something bad are lower than winning the lottery big prize 3 WEEKS IN A ROW. The thing is, people actually think that they can win the lottery big prize 3 weeks in a row”.
From the Unification Theory Website:Energy is bend into species of gravitational information that we call masses.
Those are a lot of big words from someone who doesn’t spellcheck.
Diederick: if the litigants aren’t careful, their suit will be thrown out on jurisdictional grounds for the reason you stated. However, they might still attempt to force the US to withdraw all official support for the project.
Maybe they think France is a county in Hawaii. I think they believe all the sensationalist press. Reporters ask the scientists about what happens, find out it a lot of science that is over their heads and tune out. Then they ask what happens if something goes really really wrong. Scientist goes “Oh we destroy the world, but the chances of that are so small that it is negligible”. Reporter goes and prints the first part and ignores the second because it won’t make for a sensational story, so we get a public panic like this by people who do not know any better.
When I started reading the post, images from the people manifestating near the machine in Contact suddenly came to my mind.
I like my subconscious
And surely LHC won’t destroy the Earth, but think about the pigeons!
Yoshi_3up: many people don’t make a distinction between the improbable and that which is possible, especially in domains in which they lack familiarity, such as lottery math or particle physics or vaccination.
Thus, I’d hope that scientists in the public eye would be very careful about saying something is in principle possible.
ps, BA may recall that it was I who had the presence of mind to ask him about this very issue at one of his recent ‘Black Hole’ talks in Boulder.
We’ve seen this same fear of existential catastrophy replay over for a while now without any credible basis. Surely there’s a higher chance of an asteroid flying from the other end of the universe and hitting Central Park.
As far as the Unification Theory goes, it’s very…erm…special. Although I must say that Nospam raised a nice point with his Galileo argument.
Bring on the LHC, besides, we’re not going to know if we’re turned into strange matter so what’s the harm?
People were paranoid about Brookhaven Natl Lab in Long Island years ago. See here - NY Times.
Wondered if BA saw this one today. It’s not high on my list of worries - OK, so it’s probably at the very bottom. Still, a very remote probability is not the same as no probability. Then again, in 1952 some thought there was a small possibility that an hydrogen bomb might destroy the earth’s atmosphere.
Adnan Ahmed said, “On a side note: I’ve now got this urge to play the original Half Life…”
Me too!!
You know, of all the ways to go, I’d be happy watching the apocalypse caused by a black hole falling repeatedly through the center of our planet. I mean, at least compared to like, some massive plague or nuclear war…
Galileo was NOT out of the mainstream. A majority of scientists agreed that the Copernican model was better, but most scientists were not writing books implying that the pope was an idiot for disagreeing. The main thing that people often forget when invoking Galileo, was that he had DATA. The other side was busy spinning fanciful ideas trying to explain away the data, or simply ignoring it. Don’t make the mistake of comparing Galileo to the wrong side. My irony meter can’t take it. (Sorry. Pet peeve.)
Excuse me, but, where does it say that the U. S. Federal Court has anything to say about what happens in Europe? Maybe if the accelerator was in Waxahachie, where it ought to be, then this court could have some influence, but, since the thing is in Switzerland, U.S. courts have no say.
Childish, I know, but you can contact the man from the Unification Theory website at Homo@europe.com.
Sorry.
“Also, due to a weird effect called Hawking radiation, the tiny black holes would evaporate instantly.”
I suspect I’m not alone in hoping that the LHC does produce the occasional black hole so we can observe Hawking radiation - if it does exist. Hawking’s brilliant work needs experimental evidence and I think it would be wonderful if it could b provided. This would also provide evidence (perhaps circumstantial) for many other quantum vacuum phenomena.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Isaac Asimov:
“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.”
“CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.”
The rest of it is laughable, but this part isn’t. Ever tried to get anything big built without an environmental impact statement? If this is really the case then I’m amazed that they were even allowed to break ground on the project. And, considering that the supermagnets required to run CERN are made in America, then a successful lawsuit against Fermilab and the DoE and NSF would effectively kill the project, whether CERN officials show up in a Hawaii courtroom or not.
As Vagueofgodalming noted, there is an element of the stupidity here that you haven’t really emphasized. It doesn’t really matter if Hawking radiation doesn’t exist. The gravitational force of any black hole that the LHC would produce is many orders of magnitude smaller than the weak nuclear force. If the black hole has some electric charge it will collect some electrons or protons and become a funky sort of atom. It is unlikely, but perhaps possible that it might manage to swallow a charged particle and become neutral. But, then it would basically be a non-interacting particle. If it is neutral when it forms, then it isn’t likely to remain bound to the earth because there is very little chance of anything produced by the LHC moving slower than the Earth’s escape velocity.
A black hole out of subatomic matter. Do we even have math that can express how small that is? Do we even have math that can express how many times such a particle - could it even exist - would interact with any “normal” matter?
Only slightly kidding or course, but man, my mind can’t wrap around how small and totally, completly, utterly insignificant such a thing would be. Assuming we could even tell that it was there.
When you think of what it takes to marginally detect a neutrino, some sub-atomic “black hole” just sounds completely like the same thing as non-existence.
JC
Well then, the LHC strangelet/bh production offers inspiration for a completely new theory.
Our industrial/technological civilsation is only roughly 200years old.
At this age any civilisation switches on their LHCs,
and pooof, they’re gone.
So is this the age limit for a civilisation?
No wonder SETI hasn’t have any luck.
1. what those people are worrying about is of course the Fermi paradox.
2. They ask : “I suspect I’m not alone in hoping that the LHC does produce the occasional black hole so we can observe Hawking radiation - if it does exist.” - And what if it doesn’t?
I would feel a lot safer if the whole thing had been constructed in orbit.
The background of my latest SF opus has a Chinese super-collider essentially opening the door to parallel universes, with untold wealth and power accruing to the owners.
The consequences to various luddites who would not allow the west to have a similar machine are probably best left to the imagination, but I play them out onstage anyway. Buwahaahaa!
Don’t ask how this works in terms of nuts and bolts physics, btw. If I knew that, I would apply for a patent, take home the Nobel Prize and buy my own planet with the proceeds.
If we take into account the fact that black holes altogether are merely theoretical artifacts with no conclusive evidence of their existence, it makes the situation even less threatening…
JackC wrote: “If the black hole has some electric charge it will collect some electrons or protons and become a funky sort of atom.”
What a cool idea. Would that be called blackholium? Do we know enough about how charged black holes behave to know if such a thing could be done?
I’ll second that - or better yet a main belt asteroid (eg. Philplait?
) or even bettter a Kuiper Belt or Oort cloud asteroid / cometary nucleus! 
Yes, I am also uneasy about this.
Okay, the chances of apocalyptic destruction may be very remote but given the lack of certainty of what _is_ going to happen and the scope of posssible calamities I’d rather it wasnb’t turbned onb abnywhere on this Earth.
This all reminds me of David Brin’s excellent SF novel ‘Earth’ (Futura, 1990) where a singularity is accidentally created …
It also reminds me of vaguely hearing / reading somewhere that some neutron stars may actually be composed of quark or strange matter rather than neutrons.
Incidentally, soem bneutrobn stars may actually e composed
Somewhere (I think a comment on the previous LHC article) someone suggested that GRB’s might really be civilizations turning on their LHCs. To me, that was screaming out for a back-of-the-envelope calculation. So: the mass of the earth is m=6×10^24 kg. This mass is equivalent to E=mc^2 = 5.4*10^41 Joules.
Googling turns up that GRB’s are estimated to release about 10^45 to 10^47 Joules (http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~ejb/faq.html), or about 2,000 to 200,000 times the energy contained in the earth. As mentioned in the given link, the upper end of that range is roughly equivalent to converting the mass of our sun completely into energy (!!).
So at least we won’t cause a GRB-sized explosion if we turn the earth into a ball of strangelets or something.
Does anybody know if we should be able to see any such explosions happening in our galaxy or in the Local Group?
HC:
“I’d rather it was constructed in orbit.”
was the idea I was seconding!
Too many posts came after too quickly!
I for one cannot wait for them to turn the LHC on. The theories that can be tested with this device are mind blowing (IMHO) with the possibility of maybe detecting Hawking radiation a real bonus. I’m surprised that the suit doesn’t mention about risk that an energetic collision could cause vacuum decay thus destroying the universe as we know it.
# Kevinon 29 Mar 2008 at 6:50 pm
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Isaac Asimov:
“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.”
All very well to make that choice for yourself yet what about all the
millions of others who would disbagree?
Your choice would condemn them all too.
# Kevinon 29 Mar 2008 at 6:50 pm
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, from Isaac Asimov:
“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.”
All very well to make that decision for yourself yet what of everyone else
on the planet?
Millions would disagree & deserve their say - & their lives too.
Would you condemn them all to death?
… & must a lack of a complete understanding of bizarre esoteric particle physics necessarily render life “dull & swinish”???
Trillions have lived full, rich, interesting lives w/o knowing all the details of Higgs Bosons, high energy particles, stranglets and singularities ..
Sorry, thought my first post there hadn’t worked ..
I don’t think CERN or the LHC will destroy the Earth …
… But I do think there is a very slight possibility that the unforeseen will intervene & that it could happen.
What if we split the neutrinio or cretae something we dbibdn’t expect and can’t cope with?
Its not worth the risk. Especially when we don’t know what might happen.
(The Aussie ABC TV science show Catalyst had a great piece on the CERN that made this clear to me.)
As I said before, I’d be far happier if we waited to do this on an asteroid far from Earth. I nominate asteroid philpalit as a test site!
Or maybe Sedna or Eris?
Thanks! That was very reassuring.
You should also put out a video. Wear a Jedi cloak, and with a wave of your hand say, “No, the LHC won’t destroy the Earth.”
I’m really excited about the LHC. However, I do share their concerns for safety.
What if Hawking Radiation does not exist? This is the only thing stopping a micro black hole from eating up the planet. We know black holes do exist and we know what they’re capable of doing.
I am convinced about strangelets though. I think they should prove that Hawking Radiation does indeed exist before going off and firing up the LHC.
BTW. I was being sarcastic about your post being very reassuring.
Another case of fear trying to overcome reason.
Nope. I think it’s a case of “attention whore trying to overcome obscurity”
Isn’t the LHC in Europe? Why not sue them there instead of in Honolulu? CERN is a Swiss organization, why not sue in Switzerland?
Oh, of course… because if he did, a Swiss judge would have him beaten about the head and shoulders and launched into France by catapult. But in the US, anyone who can walk up with a claim gets media and a day in court.
Now you know why man hasn’t detected intelligent signals from anywhere else in the Universe yet — shortly after civilizations begin electromagnetic transmissions, without fail they go on to build high-energy colliders that terminate their existence through unintended quantum side effects.
We mythical creatures only begin to reveal ourselves in the historic twilights of these civilizations, if only to make our brief stays on these flash-in-the-pan planets more memorable. It’s hard to resist getting ourselves a little TV and internet coverage after we patiently evolved in the shadows as far from the electric grid as possible for the last, my goodness, has it really been 5 billion years? The previous planet I evolved on, where I was nicknamed “three-eyes” (I swear, on my next planet I vow to evolve characteristics that can’t be reduced to these tacky two-word combination nicknames) took only 2.3 billion of your years to strangify its quantum soup. I’m sure you science-minded readers can imagine that creationists on that planet really emphasized the “not enough time” angle in their anti-evolution arguments.
It was nice knowing you all, especially the rationalists, and I am sorry we led the more gullible among your race astray. Just so you know, string theory was sort of on the right track, but they would never have been able to complete and unify the standard model until they theorized the other six time dimensions. Dark matter and energy? That was just us playing games with your observations. Honestly, I argued fervently against it, but some of us, especially Nessie and Yetti, have sick, sick senses of humor.
Finally, DB Cooper didn’t survive the jump. We found his lifeless body, buried his parachute to perpetuate the mystery, and blew most of the money on drinking and gambling on the reservation casinos.
I must be going now, the strangelet will be created in a blink of an eye on our timescale. I truly regret that I can’t risk sticking around long enough to find out if the Arrested Development movie will truly be made …
-Foot
@Alan
[quote]JackC wrote: “If the black hole has some electric charge it will collect some electrons or protons and become a funky sort of atom.”[/quote]
Actually, that was Dave. I hope I got that quote tag right. Probably not with my track record.
JC
I submit that “something unexpected” WILL happen. I further submit that “something unexpected” ALWAYS happens. And finally, I submit that whatever unexpected DOES happen, it will be interesting, enlightening and totally, completely, absolutely benign - except perhaps to some attitudes about how unbelievably “dangerous” this all is because “something unexpected might happen”.
If, through experimentation, we ONLY got what we expected, we would very soon grow tired of experimentation.
Anyone worrying about “black holes” with the LHC needs a bit of time in the Total Perspective Vortex. I really want to say the same about ’strangelets’ - but there, my physics escapes me leaving a cloud resembling itself.
Belgium.
JC
According to my theoretical calculations…
Smashing Republicans together would actually improve the chance of life on Earth.
Where’s my grant?
And I would be extremely disappointed that the results wouldn’t be available within my lifetime. Besides, it wouldn’t be that much safer (not that I think it’s at all unsafe to begin with): anything produced by an LHC in orbit (at, say, the altitude of the ISS) would have about as much chance of shooting down at the earth as it would of flying off into space and escaping.
This may sound harsh, but I’ve often felt that the kindest thing about death is never getting the opportunity to regret it. So what if we all die? The universe won’t care, and neither will we.
But I don’t think that matters here, because nobody seems to be making a solid case that any of this could actually happen.
I see little to be gained from discussing two specific hypothetical catastrophies (black holes and strangelets) when it is even more likely that something will emerge for which we don’t even have a name to consume the planet or worse.
I take more comfort in knowing that nature pounds us with even higher energy cosmic rays than the LHC with no Earth-ending effects (so far, anyway) than any calculation or assertion of improbability based on our incomplete theories.
IMO, the fact that particles with much greater energies than LHC can produce smash into our atmosphere (not to mention the rest of the observable universe) quite frequently is a pretty good argument that we we don’t have much to worry about.
As Phil says, it’s worth thinking about, but the chances that we are wrong are very very slim indeed.
This kinda reminds me of the feeling I get on a plane as it’s taking off: even though I *know* this is technology we have 100% understanding of, what if this time….? But enough about my problems
One thing that goes a long way towards allaying my fears has nothing to do with theoretical masses or hawking radiation or anything like that. As Phil pointed out, nature itself has created particles with far higher energies than anything that’s going to be coming out of the LHC. At least on the wikipedia page, collision energies in the LHC are listed as a max of 14 TeV (1.4 * 10^13) between protons and a max of 1,150 TeV (1.15 * 10^15) if aimed at lead (I actually don’t understand why stationary lead nuclei have more energy than a proton traveling at close to the speed of light, but then again, I’m not a particle physicist).
By contrast, the “Oh-My-God particle” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-energy_cosmic_ray ) was estimated to have an energy of 3 * 10^20 freakin’ eV. Not only is that 10,000 *times* more energetic than anything we’re playing around with here, there’s no reason to think that’s the most energetic thing out there (though from my limited understanding, that is skirting what people think is an upper limit). So if the theory was completely wrong and somehow stable black holes could have been produced, the Earth would’ve ceased to exist long ago, since we’re in essence, in the crosshairs of a far more powerful accelerator than the LHC.
Even if the LHC could create a “microhole”* I imagine the results would be negligible. Given the large amount of empty space on the subatomic level, a microscopic black hole wouldn’t be capable of inhaling the Earth any more than a distant stellar black hole could suck in all the stars in the galaxy - not even a supermassive black hole can do that. Gravity after all is gravity and it obeys the inverse square law.
*Hey that’s pretty cool - I should trademark that!
>If two subatomic particles collide at high enough speed, it’s possible that they will collapse into a black hole. If that happens, it would fall through the Earth and, well, you can guess what bad things would happen then.
Okay, here’s my guess… NOTHING!
The black hole would just fall to the center of the Earth. I don’t even think it would orbit around inside the Earth, since every time it got near to an atom, the tidal force exerted between the two particles would brake it. I’m pretty sure it would just fall to the center of the Earth, drift around, and do nothing.
If I guess right, do I win a prize? Or are you saving this for the next book?
The defendants will first have to convince their own lawyers to fight this, rather than recommend a precautionary shut-down. Since lawyers are to physics as cavemen are to spaceflight, that will take some doing. I’ve got it! Just remind them that there will be no liability suit if the plaintiffs are right. They will sign off right away.
Everyday we are bombarded with particles much more potent than any the LHC can produce and we survive. Everyday, the moon is bombarded with particles much more potent than the LHC can produce and we survive. If we are to fear the LHC, we should never have come out of our caves.
One day we may build a machine that can smash particles together more powerfully than Nature creates and then we might worry. By then we’ll be building these things at a Lagrange point well away from the surface of the Earth, I hope.
That assumes of course, a particle collision more powerful than Nature can create is even possible.
JBS
How am I not surprised that it would be the Honolulu District Court that this suit was filed in? It’s good to live in a somewhat progressive state, but even out here, we get our fair share of lunatic progressives. Don’t these people have better things to do? Maybe sue their mothers for having birthed their annoying selves?
Wow, that website sure is a mish-mash of abstract ‘thinking’…as well as of fonts and typefaces.
Some of the language in it reminds me of the stuff I read on crappily-made and crappily-translated crap from China. “Hours of funny and laugh!”
All of the fretting about micromini black holes and strangelets might seem justified to some, but I feel it is misplaced. Probably due to the lack of fully fleshed out theory. Additionally, the probabilities of any mischief being done by the products of the LHC are on the order of the sun turning itself off tomorrow. That probability is not zero. It is close to zero, though. Wicked close.
There is another concern that I have not yet heard discussed: the massive cooling system that allows the LHC to function. I’m convinced that it has a high probability (close to one) of producing ice-9. And that scares me. ;–>
Dress warmly, kids! Wait . . . that wouldn’t help.
The earth is bombarded every day by cosmic rays with far higher energy than the LHC will create in its collisions. High energy physicists would love to see what happens in those collisions, but they’re completely unpredictable; there’s no way to get a detector in place to catch one happening.
So they have to spend billions of dollars to build an accelerator that can deliver the collisions to the exact middle of the enormous detectors.
But everything that LHC will produce, and more, is already produced every day on this planet. It’s just in the wrong place.
(But, some people say, cosmic ray collisions happen in the atmosphere. Is it more dangerous if they’re near the surface? As someone above noted, they happen on the surface of the moon, and it hasn’t imploded in the last 4 billion years.)
Check out this article, related to this topic-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/06/scitime106.xml
.
There’s a one in a billion chance that it will destroy the earth.
Since there are six billion people, the LHC will kill, on average, six people.
Looks like they just watch too much of the SciFi channel, and think that the movie The Black Hole (with Judd Nelson) is really a documentary.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433883/
No you’re right. I mean the link you provided DOES make Hawking radiation sound perfectly safe….
“Whatever the case, you would not want to go near an evaporating mini black hole, which would be a source of lethal gamma rays and energetic particles, even if it didn’t look like much visually….
In the final second of its existence, the mini black hole radiates about 1000 tonnes of rest mass energy. Such an explosion is large by human standards, but modest by astronomical standards. An evaporating black hole would be detectable from Earth only if it went off within the solar system, or at best no further away than the nearest star.”
Why couldn’t they build it in France?
Since you fly to the UK to see the LHC, just to mention, you won’t find it there
It’s right on the swiss/french border very close to Geneva, 10 mins from the airport and 10 mins by foot from my home. And sunday 6 April is indeed an “Open Day” : you’ll have the last opportunity to visit the LHC before it is switched on.
Let’s see here. Wouldn’t a black hole need a certain amount of mass to stay viable? The smallest of black holes are several solar masses. Or is this some strange type of black hole that given it’s size does not require a large amount of mass? Very interesting to say the least.
Nospam said:
“Parting volley: Was Galileo himself not outside the mainstream in his day?”
Irrelevant. In Galileo’s time, the “mainstream” was dictated by the church, not by a massive body of empirical data (as it is today).
stupid americans!!!
Cosmic rays coliding with the earth’s atmosphere carry more energy than LHC ever will. Apparently we didn’t observe any black holes in the atmosphere so I am reasonably sure that the LHC won’t cause anything. And why should CERN be concerned with the lawsuit in Hawaii? The building is complete and they are cooling the superconductors.
BTW Cern is based in Switzerland and the energy is coming from France.
OK, so I haven’t read all of the replies here, but it seems to me that a great many commenters have missed a point that Phil made:
Particles of higher energy [than the LHC can achieve] are hitting the Moon all the time.
Similarly energetic particles are also frequently colliding with Earth’s atmosphere. If there were a genuine risk that such energetic particle collisions could destroy the Earth, then the Earth would not be here now. Ergo, the LHC is safe (unless you have an artificial pacemaker and stand next to one of the superconducting magnets, in the which case you would just have contributed to increasing the average intelligence of the Earth’s population).
Phil, I do have a bit of a quibble here, though:
The BA said:
“…my trip to the UK next month to visit Europe’s new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), …”
Erm, it’s at CERN, which straddles the French-Swiss border, not in the UK. Admittedly, you can catch a train from London to Geneva (probably with a change at Paris), but it is still a fair old distance away (probably over 500 miles, I think).
Ah, there we are. Baley pre-empted my replies.
Why would CERN, which is based in Europe, have to pay the slightest attention to any court ruling in the US ?
Someone needs to give these two idiots an atlas and lesson in legal jurisdiction. They somehow failed to notice that CERN would be subject the jurisdiction of France and Swizterland. Although most of the LHC is in the latter it does enter France.
I don’t really get these scares - isn’t it the case that the Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays at higher energies that will be achieved at LHC? And if such high-energy collisions could result in dangerous black holes, or quantum particles of DOOM, wouldn’t that kinda make our very existence in the first place impossible, in a universe where high-energy physics that put LHC to shame aren’t exactly rare? I mean if the LHC is to produce a tiny non-evaporating black hole, your average supernova explosion would pepper the universe with tiny black holes flying in every direction, would it not?
So no, I’m not worried.
My missus works at the place that makes the magnets for this baby so as an am astro myself (2 x 8″ meade sct) ive got some qs for the big boys amongst you, forgive this post here because i left one on a thread that has been dry since nov 07, what a muppet! (To many nights out in the cold maybe).
Is there anything energetic enough to leave the universe?
What is the escape velocity of the universe?
Would an observer outside of the universe be able to ’see’ the universe?
If the universe is expanding then what is it expanding into and why cant we get across the possibility of ’space’ existing outside of this observable universe?
Black holes are detected due to their effects (gravitational influence, radition of particles being shredded at the EH etc etc)
What is the ’smallest’ black hole detected?
Has a mini black hole ever been detected?
Has a black hole ever been detected where there was none before (at nova, snova, whatever)?
Lastly, where did all the matter come from?
Sweet dreams, enjoy your lives and the best health you can maintain, dont be frightened of dying. tc@123easypc.com
I am no physicist so I’ll have to trust that the guys at LHC knows what they’re doing, but for me, I hope they are more reassuring than: “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about”. When someone claims there a chance an experiment will destroy the Earth, you better be absolutely 100 % sure that it wont. What I don’t want to hear when someone makes that claim is: “Well, I don’t THINK it will…”.
I am reminded by a quote from the Discworld: “Any true wizard, faced with a sign like ‘Do not open this door. Really. We mean it. We’re not kidding. Opening this door will mean the end of the universe,’ would automatically open the door in order to see what all the fuss was about.”
TC said:
“Is there anything energetic enough to leave the universe?”
This question is meaningless, because the universe contains (by definition) everything, including space. There is no “outside”.
TC - What is the escape velocity of the universe?
Since we have no measure of the size of the universe (we can only comment on that portion of it which we can observe - because the universe is expanding, there is a certain distance beyond which we cannot see because those parts of the universe that are farther away are travelling away from us faster than the speed of light), we cannot know the sum total of the mass in the universe. Plus, also, there is no outside.
TC - Would an observer outside of the universe be able to ’see’ the universe?
Again, this question has no meaning in light of any present knowledge.
TC - If the universe is expanding then what is it expanding into and why cant we get across the possibility of ’space’ existing outside of this observable universe?
It does not have to be expanding into anything. The universe contains everything that exists and it is expanding and it is, as far as we can tell, infinite.
TC - Black holes are detected due to their effects (gravitational influence, radition of particles being shredded at the EH etc etc)
What is the ’smallest’ black hole detected?
I don’t know for sure, but I seem to recall that there are several good BH candidates in the range of about 4 - 5 solar masses.
TC - Has a mini black hole ever been detected?
No, as far as I am aware.
TC - Has a black hole ever been detected where there was none before (at nova, snova, whatever)?
I don’t know. Anyone else want to take a stab at this one?
Well… If it does take out the earth. We can at least take comfort in the fact that we won’t hear them gloat. err scratch that. A comet hitting the earth will happen before the LHC causes problems.
Good post, Phil. Covers the related facts of why there isn’t a concern without going overboard on the hyperbole.
Please use this post as a template for your more…how do I put this delicately…politically charged posts.
Its not an unfair ad hominem attack to say that someone offering an expert opinion has no qualitifications as an expert.
It would be an ad hominem attack to say, ‘Yes, he is an expert, but he beats his wife, so we should not lsiten to him despite his expertise.’
I really don’t see the point of the lawsuit. Many people mentioned allready that us-american law does not apply to switzerland or france. Only problem I see with that is that it could cause the us. to think about it’s participation again.
And for the rest of the “debate”: Cosmic Rays. As long as we can’t produce anything with higher energy we are on pretty safe ground. It would be wrong to say 100% safe ground, but nothing in life is 100% sure. It’s in an area where every sane person would say something like “Yes we are defenitly sure nothing can happen”.
So in essense, their objection is that if physics is not as we think, then the results will be unpredictable. This is, of course, true of everything.
There is a lot of extreme activity in the universe. I am not an expert, but I have a feeling that experiments on earth are nothing compared to what is happening in stars. Some stars collapse to black holes, but not because of some particles accidentally smashing into each other somewhere half way. And as far as I know there is no record of stars disappearing and/or turning in quantum goo all the sudden.
The new math of doomsday
http://www.newcomensengine.com/2008/03/new-math.html
StevoR:
Trillions of what? Humans? There haven’t been that many. I’ll quote Wikipedia:
Also note that this includes large numbers of people who did not in fact live full, rich, or interesting lives.
Nemo: Right on,,,
While low tech tribes CAn have rich lives, a simple cut can also be painfully fatal,,,and don’t even try to imagine a decayed or damaged tooth extraction w/o Novocain,,,
Gary 7
LHC - It’s day 2 in the Big Collider House
Gunter: Hey Karl, be careful with zose cake crumbs, zay are fallink into ze target area…
Karl: Oh look Gunter, a cute baby black…. Woooaaaa! Look how fast it’s growi…… [phwok]
God: Oh… bugger!!!
(Thinks: That’s the last flippin’ time I let humans get onto the ark!)
But that aside, I can’t help feeling that this is like watching a kid break something apart to “see how it works”. We’ve got to be more inventive than this. Bashing particles together may help us see some of what matter is made of, but smashing something to bits may itself be responsible for the splinters. Imagine that much investment being put into reusable spacecraft technology or development of telescope optics.
BTW, the last thing I want to hear is: “So THAT’s what caused the big bang…”
Folks– I know the LHC is in Switzerland and France. I’m going to the UK to meet up with Dr. Cox et al., then flying over to visit CERN. I suppose I should say “my trip to Europe”, but I’m flying into London to meet up with everyone, and that’s where I’ll be most of the time.
Heathrow Terminal 5 is a perfect example of Chaos Theory at the moment so make sure you have underwear and toothbrush in your hand luggage. Welcome to England! Have fun.
Sounds like someone’s been reading Hyperion recently.
Smashing particles together is the only way to generate particles with high enough energy to test some of the main particle theories out there. In terms of science this is an absolutely fantastic tool which could help us get to the next level in terms of a GUT. I don’t see how more advanced optics or reusable spacecraft can compare to this on a scientific scale. I’m just thrilled that this is going to be turned on within my lifetime and that aspects of string theory will be able to be tested. I will go out on a limb here and state that the LHC could conceivably produce some of the most important scientific results in our history.
p.s. I’ve probably sold advanced optics a little short as confirmation of life on exo-planets would probably have to be done optically since physically traveling there is a wee bit of a problem.
I totally don’t understand how they think this suit will have any effect on what CERN does at all? Not only is the USA *not* a member state of CERN (they are merely an ‘observer’), but CERN exists outside the jurisdiction of even France and Switzerland - employees even have diplomatic plates on their cars.
As far as the Environmental Impact statement is concerned, they have done loads of environmental impact studies… I believe the place is close to producing no CO2, for example… mainly because they get their power from France which is about 75% nuclear…
This is simply stupid… I read a great quote on this in the NYT:
Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”
Look, just trust me on this. Don’t screw around with this kind of stuff. Or at least, if you do, be sure and bring lots of ammo.
– Gordon Freeman
What beats me is the fact that two americans have the gall to think that a court in Honolulu of all places has any jurisdiction in France or Switzerland.
You do not, I repeat DO NOT, rule the world.
Hi Doug,
Despite my comments regarding alternative investments I’m really very excited about LHC and the possible advances in understanding. I didn’t mean to sound negative.
I would perhaps humbly suggest that we can also continue to learn more about the same areas of interest by better exploration of solar phenomena etc. This would be as well as and not instead of using LHC of course.
I’m pretty much carried along, surfing precariously on the wave of discovery achieved by those far far cleverer than I, so I really don’t mind where those waves (or particles) originate so long as they keep coming!
Cheers
Scythe,
I still don’t see how anything can compare to the accelerators that we use in terms of particle physics. Sure you can look toward stars and find observations that fit the macro scale theories, but in terms of quantum scale effects nothing beats smash up derby with a bunch of detectors standing by to test what the smash has wrought.
I don’t understand why anybody would want to stop the “8th wonder of the world” from going ahead, they obviously have some ulterior motive, hmmmmm wonder what that could be, and the fact that they are American doing this in an American court will definitly not aid in the PR crisis.
Maybe we’ll find goo after all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9HLIOnTapE&feature=related
I love this blog, and I especially love that it now contains a post reassuring us that the Earth isn’t going to be destroyed by mad scientists. Though I guess I should check the archives before I assume it didn’t before.
@Anders:
Another potentially relevant Discworld quote is: “Scientists have calculated that the chance of anything so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
That said, of all the ways we could possibly destroy the Earth, this is one I’m least likely to lose sleep over.
If im going to be finished off anytime soon, I would respect getting torn apart by a black hole. Instead of cancer, or car crash or any other mundane end, I think that would be more fun.
[…] Read the full story… This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under le Chat Marchet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. […]
I hope it does destroy the earth, then I can quit going to work. ( I work on Earth.)
I can’t say that I’m worried about this. The question that the two gentlemen have raised has crossed my mind. But I also feel that the scientist that will be using the LHC have a greater understanding of what may or may not happen during their experiments. However,I do recall that the S.S.Titanic wasn’t supposed to be able to sink.
Okay, assuming even a SMALL (say .000000000001 percent) chance, does this give the scientists in question the right to gamble with everyone’s lives?
If your answer is yes, then at what percentage risk do other individual’s views and rights begin to outweigh the specialists???
One percent? Ten Percent?
The pursuit of knowledge is a good thing, but when it comes to
items like this perhaps the experiments should wait until they can be done elsewhere (.i.e. the moon, mars etc).
This issue will begin to crop up more and more often as the powers
humans wield become ever greater. Nanotechnology, genetic engineering, quantum physics, all have the potential to destroy
our species.
“I can’t help feeling that this is like watching a kid break something apart to “see how it works”. We’ve got to be more inventive than this. Bashing particles together may help us see some of what matter is made of, but smashing something to bits may itself be responsible for the splinters.”
How else would you take atomic particles apart, my blender doesn’t have speed settings past frappe’ on it and I don’t know what size socket set to use for ’sub-atomic.
[…] read more | digg story […]
HAHA, DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS
In a sense, operating the LHC will destroy the earth:
Since every decision everyone makes, creates a new universe, pocket universes, fractally, branching off forever, the decision to switch the machine on will literally change the world! We will lose contact with everything we knew, forever, and be forced to face the new, post LHC universe. There is no turning back!
[…] Bad Astronomer. Natürlich. […]
[…] Two men are suing to stop the LHC from being switched on, saying it may be dangerous and might even destroy the Earth: But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole…http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/29/no-the-lhc-wont-destroy-the-earth/ […]
It occurs to me that we might be looking at this the wrong way. Surely there exist conceivable (if low-probability) scenarios in which not turning on the LHC leads to the destruction of the Earth. Counter-suit!
So the mini-black hole will drill a hole right to the center of the earth, and with its mass won’t pose a significant risk? Hmm… sounds like Exxon might be all over it…
Regarding that other dude… where the heck does he get this macro-organism mumbo jumbo from? wow..
Well….
The thing about higher-energy particles smashing into us all the time doesn’t seem right to me. If it’s true, it makes perfect sense that CERN poses no danger, because if something could go wrong, it would have already happened.
But these particles (at least, ahem, according to Wikipedia; see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_my_god_particle) have macroscopic amounts of energy–that is, if they really were smashing into us, it seems to me that we would see (and occasionally feel) little explosions now and then for no reason. Which we don’t.
And anyway, if we really are so sure what’s going to happen, why are we running the experiment?
Isn’t great that people think they can risk THE WHOLE PLANET and LIFE ON IT without following simple guidelines. It’s a wonder we’ve made it this far.
All theories are tested where possible to confirm, or not, the hypotheses. Just like the… ahem… ID hypotheses. We’re expecting confirmation on that score any day now. With a few billion people praying really hard you’d expect to see some sort of results. Real. Soon. Now…
Cosmic Rays
…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.
People are so self-centered? Why do they think it might destroy the Earth? Hell, if anything, it’ll take out the entire dang universe!
Just out of curiosity, what are the chances this thing will get switched on before April 15?
This arguement has occurred with every new, larger, particle accelerator that they create.
I’m afraid as they continue to create yet larger and larger devices, this arguement will continue.
But if we do make a singularity then we can getting moving on Romulan War Bird production and ZPMs for wormhole gates.
# Albert on 30 Mar 2008 at 1:22 pm
“What beats me is the fact that two americans have the gall to think that a court in Honolulu of all places has any jurisdiction in France or Switzerland.
You do not, I repeat DO NOT, rule the world.”
Somebody please tell Bush Jr & his neo-con mates that! Really quickly!
# John Q on 30 Mar 2008 at 4:53 pm
[quote] “Okay, assuming even a SMALL (say .000000000001 percent) chance, does this give the scientists in question the right to gamble with everyone’s lives?
If your answer is yes, then at what percentage risk do other individual’s views and rights begin to outweigh the specialists???
One percent? Ten Percent?
The pursuit of knowledge is a good thing, but when it comes to
items like this perhaps the experiments should wait until they can be done elsewhere (.i.e. the moon, mars etc).
This issue will begin to crop up more and more often as the powers
humans wield become ever greater. Nanotechnology, genetic engineering, quantum physics, all have the potential to destroy
our species.” [/unquote]
Exactly! That’s my view too.
Nemo : Ok then Billions of peopel not trillions - happy now? & ok not all have had rich and full lives but many have.
# Ian on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:01 pm
SR (me) : I would feel a lot safer if the whole thing had been constructed in orbit.
[q] “And I would be extremely disappointed that the results wouldn’t be available within my lifetime.” [/q]
Well, we’ll have to work on building an O’neill station or colonising the asteroids /Moon ultra-fast then won’t we! Who says your going to die so quick - I hope you don’t!
Ian : “Besides, it wouldn’t be that much safer (not that I think it’s at all unsafe to begin with): anything produced by an LHC in orbit (at, say, the altitude of the ISS) would have about as much chance of shooting down at the earth as it would of flying off into space and escaping.” [/q]
Yeah, but doing this in space would be much cooler and we’ll still have a planet to stand on if something does go wrong!
What if this thing splits the neutrino or electron ..
Just because we *can* do something doesn’t always mean we *should* ..
Some of those arguments came up when they were conducting the Manhattan project. No one knew for sure what would happen. Many of the scientists at questioned whether or not the nuclear reaction would stop and instead simply consume the whole Earth. Theoretical science takes risks. Go science!
Hawking radiation implies travel to the past as he interprets the negative sign of antiparticles not as standard physics does, a movement left or right, but a movement to the past, as a result it denies the 1st law of thremodynamics (infomation disappears to the past) and the 2nd law (the hottest source the black hole keeps getting hotter) obviously it has never been proved. It is a fancy mathematical hoax and mankind cannot depend on a hoax to survive. strangelets will be stable under the ordinary constant bag or MIT bag used by specialists. CERN is lying to keep the machine going.
it is fascinating how people who would be histerical if some one puts a gun on his head, let physicists to do it just because they dont understand anythign about physics. It is ridiculous to die for not wanting to look silly
Do we really need a LHC to destroy the world ?
It seems to me that we are doing a really great job at it, even without black holes lurking at the center.
Well, great. These LHC fanboys get to risk our entire EXISTENCE to further their understanding of the universe. No matter how small the risk EVERYONE on earth should be asked whether this should be turned on or not. I mean, come on… it’s a huge risk. HUGE.
I’d be a lot happier if they built it on the moon.
Risk is always a question of two factors: How likely is the event, and what would happen, IF it happens.
On the likelyhood side of things it is hard to say. According to Hawking, Hawking radiation exists, so a tiny black hole would pose no danger. On the other hand, particle physiscs was not always right on the spot. Keyword here: Solar Neutrinos. Additionally, other, yet unknown risks might exist. Propability therefor unknown, but they can’t be ruled out.
On the risk side, events like “Earth might turn into something really bad” can be considered as quite a danger. Way worse than the risks I usually have to deal with, “Device might fail at the customers site” being the worst of the risks here…
I’d cosider miself quite scientifically inclinded, and I consider research as very important. But I would sleep way better if they had put the whole thing in orbit.
Curiosity killed the cat.
“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about”… that’s a scary statement =)
Okay, I’m no scientist, however let’s simplify.
1) Scientists call them “strangelets” - which to me, doesn’t suggest the highest degree of understanding.
2) They are doing this experiment because they want to see “what happens”, i.e. exploring new territory - but it “definitely” won’t destroy earth.
3) 20 seconds ago I was reading that “scientists” how now decided cell phones give you cancer.
“Sure, we’re not sure about the cell phone thing, that we’ve had for 20 years. However, we are sure this big shiny new thing won’t destroy earth.”
Well, maybe they’ll make the world flat, that would be an ironic twist.
[…] in the “mainstream science community” say Wagner and Sancho are loonies. Of course, they said the same thing about robots, and look what that got […]
Perhaps the scaremongers are forgetting the amount of time it took to build the LHC. During all of that time, there was ample opportunity for this nonsense about “destroying the Earth” or “turning into strangelets” to be brought up. The LHC was proposed in 1984, and approved by the CERN council in 1994 (from CERN’s site: http://lhc-milestones.web.cern.ch/LHC-Milestones/LHCMilestones-en.html)- where were they then? or in the 14 years since?
[sarcasm]AHA! I’ve got it!!! This is an attempt by CERN to up their public exposure! By getting some patsy to file a suit in the US, which has NO possibility of having any effect on the LHC’s operation (NTM no legal merit or standing), they get into the public eye![/sarcasm]
As far as the whole “destroy the Earth” thing goes, pfft- so what? if it does, we won’t care anyway!
I’m no professional particle physicist, nor astrophysicist, but my elementary studies about the structure of an atom make it hard for me to follow the “more powerful particles hit the atmosphere every day”. If I remember correctly, a significantly large (near-100%) portion of an atom is empty space. Which means that the chances of an Oh-my-God particle (Wikipedia: the layman’s source of sounding intelligent) actually hitting the nucleus, or more specifically a proton in the nucleus, are infinitesimally low. The main benefit, and in fact one of the reasons for its inception, of the LHC is that the HEAD-ON collision of two particles can be observed. I would greatly appreciate if someone could clarify the scientific validity of this perspective.
What I am, is a law student. And as a law student, I actually can appreciate their decision to initiate proceedings in the USA. There really can be no dispute about the jurisdiction, provided the lawyers are eloquent enough, and the Judge, patient enough. Insofar as much the EFFECT of the act alleged as illegal is felt within the Courts jurisdiction, the court may adjudicate. The problems will arise at the time of enforcement of the courts order. This is where (the litigants hope) the government steps in, and takes the matter to an international level. Concepts of sovereignty and freedom aside, it is still very much an international crime to (knowingly or unknowingly) put the planet in irreversible danger.
The organisation that operates CERN is an European institution. As long as they don’t have any work being done in the US (after all, CERN is in Europe as well) then I doubt that any US court has jurisdiction over what that lab does. They should have filed the suit in an European court, though I believe European courts wouldn’t even have accepted a suit like that.
If you argue with that “possibility to destroy the planet” thing, then I’d like to sue the US, Chinese and possibly a few other governments for having enough nuclear weapons to do the same thing (a few times over). After all, they aren’t 100% safe either.
Funny. We seem so concerned about who has nukes but who cares who has a machine that, although the possibilities are slim, could destroy the entire earth.
We’re insane.
If it were true that LHC would “eat” the earth, can you imagine a better way to go?
Thinking further upon the legal aspect, apart from the fact that the possible effects, as claimed by the litigants, of the LHC will obviously touch Honalulu (it after all being a part of planet Earth), another advantage to USA courts is the principle of strict liability applied by them. This essentially means that any organization (regardless of whether it be situated in the territory of the USA) will have to be responsible for any damage caused by them, without exception. The court will treat this matter similar to, suppose, a factory upon the US-Mexican border discharging dirty water into Texas. The effects are till felt in Texas, and therefore the courts of Houston will most certainly have a problem.
Further, no event orchestrated by humans can ever compare to a natural phenomenon, regardless of the comparative lack of raw power; the defining point of human scientific actions is their quest for accuracy. Technological developments have made it possible to get larger returns with lesser input than the examples found in nature (For eg, forest fire vs. controlled combustion/conversion of wood -> charcoal) due to an increase in efficiency.
Thus, although the LHC will smash together protons at lesser energy than that what occurs outside the Earth, it will do so in a infinitely more controlled and efficient manner, thus increasing the probability that the final result will be beyond that observable by nature.
Quoting Hawkings, “the more we learn about the Universe, the more we have reason to believe in God”.
And as to the existence of other means of destruction of the planet, they too are faced with extreme opposition (disregarding the views of certain near-dictator/dictator/allegedly-democratic leaders) by the international community at large. So shall this.
Caseus Velox said:
The thing about higher-energy particles smashing into us all the time doesn’t seem right to me. If it’s true, it makes perfect sense that CERN poses no danger, because if something could go wrong, it would have already happened.
But these particles (at least, ahem, according to Wikipedia; see for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_my_god_particle) have macroscopic amounts of energy–that is, if they really were smashing into us, it seems to me that we would see (and occasionally feel) little explosions now and then for no reason. Which we don’t.
No, we should not expect to feel or see little explosions from high-energy cosmic rays. But, how do you think they are detected in the first place?
First, these energetic particles often collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere, causing cascades of less energetic particles (many of which are short-lived, which is how we know they come from collisions within our atmosphere) that reach the ground. Sometimes particle detectors are lofted high into the atmosphere on helium balloons, which is where some of our data come from. Finally, I believe that some satellites are able to detect these particles (and hence work out precisely the energy they possess when they arrive at our atmosphere).
Although an individual atom contains only a small amount of matter, there are a great many atoms in our atmosphere (plus, an interaction between a charged particle and an atom does not need to be a “head-on” collision to have a noticeable effect).
Second, although the particles possess macroscopic energy, even if they did reach the ground we would not feel it. This is because they are not macroscopic objects, and thus do not interact as such. Have you (for example) ever felt the impact of an Alpha particle? No? Of course not. Even the most energetic alpha particles will not be felt because that energy is concentrated on such a small area that (a) it will not be stopped by our skin and so the energy is transmitted along a path rather than dissipated at the point of “impact”, and (b) the area affected is too small to be detected by our sense of touch.
Oh curses, the quote marks did not appear. Anyone know the correct html to quote from another comment?
In my above comment, the first two paragraphs are from Caseus Velox. The rest is mine.
As with so many things, it’s a question of risk tolerance; the risk in this case may be unbelievably small, but when the outcome risked is the loss of our whole world, I firmly believe no sane person can tolerate even that much risk. I am not satisfied with hordes of physicists thinking the risk laughable. Humans are fallible. Only math is guaranteed. Tell us it’s mathematically disproven (or else build it in orbit) and then I will rest easy, but not before.
Homo sapiens at risk said:
“Hawking radiation implies travel to the past as he interprets the negative sign of antiparticles not as standard physics does, a movement left or right, but a movement to the past, as a result it denies the 1st law of thremodynamics (infomation disappears to the past) and the 2nd law (the hottest source the black hole keeps getting hotter) obviously it has never been proved. It is a fancy mathematical hoax and mankind cannot depend on a hoax to survive.”
Not so, in fact.
There is a genuine basis for Hawking radiation that does not rely on breaking any laws of thermodynamics (speaking of which, I believe your interpretation of both the first and second laws is wrong). One possible formulation of Hawking radiation involves movement in time, but this is not the only formulation. It is a mathematical convenience. Not a hoax. And, hey, if you’re trying to do hyperdimensional mathematics in your head (which is the way Hawking has to do it), I’ll grant any mathematical convenience you care to choose.
Euan said:
“No matter how small the risk EVERYONE on earth should be asked whether this should be turned on or not. I mean, come on… it’s a huge risk. HUGE. ”
No. The potential hazard is huge, but the risk is immeasureably small.
I am sure that you, in your everyday life, take risks that are far larger. To do so is only human, after all.
For example, when you are driving, and you make an overtake manouevre, do you consult the occupants of all the vehicles around you before performing the manouevre? No. But you are taking a risk with their lives. A risk that is many orders of magnitude larger than the risk being taken at the LHC.