Large Hadron Collider Sparks 'Doomsday' Lawsuit

smooth wombat writes "In what can only be considered a bizarre court case, a former nuclear safety officer and others are suing the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation and CERN to stop the use of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) until its safety is reassessed. The plaintiffs cite three possible 'doomsday' scenarios which might occur if the LHC becomes operational: the creation of microscopic black holes which would grow and swallow matter, the creation of strangelets which, if they touch other matter, would convert that matter into strangelets or the creation of magnetic monopoles which could start a chain reaction and convert atoms to other forms of matter. CERN will hold a public open house meeting on April 6 with word having been spread to some researchers to be prepared to answer questions on microscopic black holes and strangelets if asked."

THINK OF THE SPACESHIPS

[i_liek_turtles]

Captain Zapp Brannigan: We'll just set a new course for that empty region over there, near that blackish, holeish thing.

Obligatory

[bondsbw]

xkcd [xkcd.com]

Not this again...

[Ethan Allison]

I smell FUD. It says in the article that most scientists dismiss the whole doomsday machine theory.

Re:Not this again...

[ShieldW0lf]

The reason they're doing the experiment is because they don't know what will happen.

Any scientists who say that they know one way or another what will happen are not scientists at all.

Scientific experiments that aren't surrounded by uncertainty and doubt are not much use in removing uncertainty, are they?

Re:Not this again...

[node 3]

Scientific experiments that aren't surrounded by uncertainty and doubt are not much use in removing uncertainty, are they?

Well, that's the UD of FUD, but this whole episode centers really around the F.

While the whole point of any experiment is to generally know the unknown, to clarify the doubt, there are still expected ranges of outcomes. For example, while you might not know what will happen if you feed your adult dog Puppy Chow, you can be fairly confident it's not going to turn him into a cat.

Likewise, while the people at CERN may not know if they'll get mini black holes, they can be fairly sure the sorts of dangers they pose, which are "none".

My understanding of the LHC is that it doesn't do anything that doesn't already happen on Earth already. The main difference is that instead of the mini black holes being created by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere where we can't study them, they are happening right inside of a controlled scientific device, which is the ideal place to study them.

Am I to believe that the energies and particles involved are beyond what happens on/in the sun, or when the Earth is bombarded by radiation from space, or inside of an H-bomb explosion? If so, that's quite amazing.

Hawking Radiation

[thesilverfox06]

So what if it creates microscopic black holes? They'd dissipate in a fraction of a second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[bugnuts]

So what if it creates microscopic black holes?

Microscopic black holes are actually the cause of networ

CARRIER LOST

Re:Hawking Radiation

[pcgabe]

to: [e-mail]
re: MBHs
status: urgent

MBHs not dissipating as anticipated. Please advise.

Re:Hawking Radiation

[Anonymous Coward]

re: MBHs

Well gentlemen, I suggest you all stick you head between your legs and kiss you ass goodbye. I'm going to the Andromeda galaxy. Yes, I invented a way to get there. I did it twenty years ago after a vodka binge, actually. Peace, bitches.

Re:Phew, I was worried for a minute but, hey----

[thesilverfox06]

Well then it's a good thing I didn't get my information FROM Wikipedia, but instead just linked to it since it's a convenient resource and the information contained on that article agrees with my previous knowledge of Hawking Radiation.

Re:

[megaditto]

How many scientists actually believe in Hawking Radiation? Has it been ever observed? Has this hypothesis been verified experimentally in any way?

Is Hawking Radiation anything beyond a neat mathematical conjecture based on a demonstrably flawed theory of quantum mechanics? [wikipedia.org] Not like Hawking hasn't admitted to being wrong before, you know...

Particles get accelerated in solar wind of Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/solarsystem/2006_mag_recon.html [nasa.gov]

I havent seen any massive blackholes emerge and gobble up the sun or solar system. How the hell would the puny LHC be able to do it?

The jerks suing are just trying to make a name for themselves.

But...

[Colin Smith]

That's natural and this is man made.

Hold on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold on, haven't we been bombarded by even higher energy particles from space for billions of years now without us, or for that matter the world (as in the rest of all visible matter) turning into a black hole?

Re:

[The Master Control P]

Yes. The upper limit of the LHC [wikipedia.org], using heavy ions like lead, is on the order of 10^15eV in a collision. Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays [wikipedia.org] can have energies of 10^20eV and higher, far beyond anything we will ever be able to create on Earth, and yet we're alive.

When they build a particle accelerator out of the asteroid belt, call me and we can panic together :)

They forgot one...

[supabeast!]

What happens if an escaping convict accidentally wanders into the collider, gains super powers, and tries to take over the world?

Re:They forgot one...

[IthnkImParanoid]

Obviously one of the scientists will have wandered into the collider as well. Although his or her superpowers will not be as powerful/deadly/cool as the convict's, their determination, faith in humankind, and good heart will allow them to narrowly win in the end, no matter how badly the odds look to be stacked against them.

They will still have a hard time getting laid, though.

Re:They forgot one...

[Xtravar]

Dear Sir,

I work for a major Hollywood studio and would like to make a movie based on your plot. It is both refreshing and unique. Can you get me a complete transcript by next Friday?

ICE-9 anyone?

[hguorbray]

Well -they were afraid when they detonated the first above ground nuke as well -thought they might torch the atmosphere, but they did it anyway -better dead than.......?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_Cradle [wikipedia.org]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine [wikipedia.org]

I'm just sayin'

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:ICE-9 anyone?

[DerekLyons]

Well -they were afraid when they detonated the first above ground nuke as well -thought they might torch the atmosphere, but they did it anyway

No, they didn't just do it 'anyway'. They sat a panel of physicists down and analyzed the situation and determined that it couldn't happen. I've seen a copy of their report floating around on the web, but cannot locate it at the moment.

idiots!

[wizardforce]

there's never any attempt at understanding the physics of any of this, it's just a nice way to scare people who don't know any better. never mind the fact that cosmic rays hit the atmosphere all the time with at least the amount of energy the LHC is going for- you'd think that over billions of years if there was ever a time for strangelets and blackholes to kill us all it would have happened by now.

Re:idiots!

[wizardforce]

you mean this?:

The cosmic-ray argument has been applied to the black-hole and strangelet scenarios as well. If such dangerous things can be created, why haven't they already eaten up Earth, along with other planets, stars or whole galaxies in the billions of years since the universe arose? To answer that question, Sancho and Wagner pose a counterargument: Perhaps cosmic-ray collisions really are creating tiny black holes or strangelets, but those little bits of doomsday zip by too fast to cause any trouble. In the LHC, they say, the bad stuff could hang around long enough to be captured by Earth's gravity and set off a catastrophe.

I've got a counter-counter argument for you: consider the number of cosmic ray hits over billions of years. it would stand to reason that some of them would be in the range of the LHC and would not in fact zip right on by- they would in fact be just as likely to be "captured" as anything produced in the LHC. then there's the fact that a lot of the cosmic ray particles can't zip right on through even at higher energies- there's 8,000 miles of rock and metal between them and the other side if they hit right. if blackholes, monopoles and strangelets are producable and dangerous at these energies, they would have done us in a long time ago because there would be at least a few that wouldn't escape over such a long time span.

Re:idiots!

[secPM_MS]

Cosmic rays have far far higher energies than any issue that will ever come out of a man-made accelerator. The intensities are far lower, but the energies are far higher.

doomsday machine could be a feature not a bug

[EjectButton]

I think we can all agree that even if it does end the world it would be an even greater crime to build a machine that big and then not turn it on. I would rather be converted into strangelets than living in THAT world.

Re:doomsday machine could be a feature not a bug

[wizardforce]

even if it does end the world it would be an even greater crime to build a machine that big and then not turn it on.

he he... glad you see it that way. better to be destroyed trying to learn something new than live forever in a state of perpetual ignorance.

10 year old news...

[calebb]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16322014.700-a-black-hole-ate-my-planet.html [newscientist.com]

"Within 24 hours, the laboratory issued a rebuttal: the risk of such a catastrophe was essentially zero"

What is "essentially zero"???

[BUL2294]

"...the risk of such a catastrophe was essentially zero"

While I'm not one of the doomsdayers, I do have to ask how these statistics are created, and what bullshit statements like "essentially zero" mean. For example, if "essentially zero" means that 0.00000000000000000001% of the particles cause black holes, then there could be millions of said black holes in the reactor. Does it mean that there's a 0.00000000000000000001% chance that two or more mini black holes would be close enough to cross event horizo

Nothing will happen, fears are unfounded

[diewlasing]

Just to preface this; I'm a 3ed year undergrad student in physics on track to get a PhD in high energy physics. That being said, I spoke with my professor about this, he explained to me that the formation of world swallowing black holes is so small is negligible. He explained to me (if I remember correctly) that high energy cosmic rays have been bombarding the Earth for billions of years, at much higher energies than the LHC could ever produce. If these world-ending things were to form they would have already, long before humans were around and we wouldn't be here to study these fascinating phenomenon.

Tinfoil hats

[OSU ChemE]

Will they be distributing them at the open house meeting? Perhaps that will calm those worried about the doomsday scenarios.

Could this explain the lack of ETs?

[RobinH]

Could this explain why we haven't found the universe teeming with extra terrestrial life? Every civilization becomes more and more advanced, then starts doing more and more powerful experiments, and thinks, "the chance of destroying our planet is really slight... we're perfectly safe going ahead with this." Then, poof!

Their Own Damn Fault

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

As you sow so shall you reap.

After reading the tenth or twentieth scientific article that interviewed people working on the LHC, that includes some wild speculation about remote possibilities that might come to pass when it comes online... this surprises me not at all. I understand being a bit sensationalist to make a more entertaining article. I understand hyping the potential a bit to help keep that government funding coming in. Still, black holes, strangelets, cascading subatomic events, time travelers finding the earliest point to return to... it was a bit much. Maybe you get promoted in experimental physics by making waves and smoking pot with the boss. The you want your name in a magazine so you spin some half-assed idea as though it was a real possibility. The only problem is, some people listened and are now worried.

This is why the Manhattan project was top-secret: two out of six physicists think it might destroy the planet... okay those are good odds, let's try it.

Vade retro, lawyers!

[martin-boundary]

Trial judges and lawyers shouldn't be allowed to dabble in scientific questions. Leave the deciding of risks to real scientists.

Last time a bunch of lawyers and politicians tried to legislate the value of pi [wikipedia.org], they got 3.2.

Hasn't all this nonsense been said before?

[LoRdTAW]

I remember hearing the same kind of dooms day predictions about RHIC at Brookhaven national labs. Also it was said that some scientists predicted the first atomic bomb would ignite the atmosphere destroying the planet. At any rate none of those doomsday predictions occurred and RHIC has been operating since 2000.

The Risk has Already been Assessed

[internic]

While this is the first I've heard of lawsuits, the subject of a possible catastrophe due to a new particle accelerator is not a new idea. This has actually been a cycle that's happened a couple of times, IIRC, usually when someone mentions the possibility of black holes (or even AdS-CFT black hole analogues) being created in a new particle accelerator. Scientists have actually thought about this and published a number of papers on the topic. Here are two that came up easily via Google Scholar:

• Will relativistic heavy-ion colliders destroy our planet? [sciencedirect.com]
• How unlikely is a doomsday catastrophe? [arxiv.org]

The latter is freely available on the arXiv. From the conclusion:

We have shown that the relatively late formation time of Earth implies that life on our planet is highly unlikely to be annihilated by an exogenous catastrophes during the next 109 years. In the case of the doomsday scenar- ios studied in the Brookhaven report [2], our bound also applies to hypothetical anthropogenic disasters caused by high-energy particle accelerators (risks 1-3). This holds because the occurrence of exogenous catastrophes, e.g., resulting from cosmic ray collisions, places an upper bound on the frequency of their anthropogenic counter- parts.

In short, similar events occur naturally due to highly energetic cosmic rays, so, even if we assume we know almost nothing about the physics of the hypothetical catastrophic event, we can infer from teh fact we're still here that such a catastrophe is very unlikely. Based on this conclusion, and the fairly wide acceptance of that conclusion amongst experts, I think it's safe to say this lawsuit is without merit.

Also the Physics Suggests These Won't Happen

[internic]

The studies I talked about in the parent make almost no assumption about what the catastrophe might be or how it would work. If you want to get into the physics of the specific things people are worried about, then there are even more reasons to think it's not a significant danger. There was a report about the possible disaster scenarios for RHIC [arxiv.org] that should mostly apply to the LHC, and here's a paper discussing the possibilities for the LHC [cdsweb.cern.ch]. Finally, it looks like Wikipedia has a pretty decent discussi [wikipedia.org]

This just in

[geekoid]

gorg will be rubbing two sticks together next wednesday. He hopes to create a sustainable heat source.

Mrog, who new gorg as a child, is trying to stop it claiming this 'fire' may ravage the cave.
Next up, a balanced report on why the wheel should be avoid at all cost due to it's risk.

simple answer

[confused one]

This is old news, came up during the design phase of the LHC. I heard a simple common sense based answer:

If high energy particle accelerators could create particles that could destroy the Earth, then you would see this effect all over the universe. Why, you ask? Because there are natural accelerators everywhere, many of energy much higher than anything we could hope to build on the Earth's surface

implications for SETI

[Jodka]

Maybe the rarity of intelligent life in the universe does not owe to infrequent arisal. What if the structure of the universe contains a built-in pitfall: the scientific understanding required to build large colliders is far less than that required to anticipate the lethal consequences their operation. Thus, progression of scientific understanding among all technically advanced species leads to self-extermination.

On strangelets

[nuzak]

If a strangelet chain reaction were possible, then it wouldn't stop at earth, right? So why haven't we detected any strangelet stars? Heck if one of them went nova, we should be seeing strangelet galaxies, no?

Obligatory hardon

[justinlee37]

Try searching Google Scholar for "large hardon collider." [google.com] You might be surprised.

here's the thing

[blair1q]

these are all mythical objects

1) Microscopic black holes require a matter density higher than elementary particles possess. Ergo, once the microscopic black hole tries to swallow an elementary particle, the elementary particle swallows it, making it no longer a black hole, but just part of the particle's matter, with a true radius larger than its schwarzchild radius. Black Hole Down.

2) Strangelets? Don't exist. Don't even have a decent theoretical underpinning. You might as well be worried about the production of caloric or magic.

3) Magnetic monopoles also don't exist. Magnetism is a description of the curvature of electric flux. Imagining a magnetic monopole is like imagining a left with no right, or an up with no down.

And, honestly, these people have no sense of adventure. The universe will end some day. Why be so arrogant as to insist that it be after you die, solo, from something less interesting?

Don't laugh.. It could happen!

[kpainter]

I found this on Wikipedia (so it must be true). "What came later to be known as "The Black Mesa Incident" was triggered by a seemingly innocuous and routine experiment into teleportation. As part of the Anomalous Materials team in Sector C of the facility, research associate Gordon Freeman introduced a crystalline specimen..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_Research_Facility [wikipedia.org]

Nothing to worry about. No evidence of black holes

[GrpA]

If there was any likelyhood of civilisations wiping themselves from existance with the creation of microscopic black holes, then you would expect the universe to be full of black holes where each subsequent civilisation had extinguished itself.

Now take a look into the night sky... How many black holes do you see?

None!

So obviously, this is completely safe...

GrpA

Porn Version

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I am going to wait for the porn version of this experiment.

The DVD will be called:
Large Hardon Experiment Goes Interracial!
Creates black holes and fills them with loads of quarks!

Cosmic Rays

[Strider-]

Uh... if this was possible, our planet would never have existed. Cosmic rays whack our atmosphere all the time with far more energy than the LHC could hope to generate. Even if this causes a momentary microscopic black hole, it obviously doesn't matter, since we're still here.

Does the US have any jurisdiction over CERN?

[Xest]

I notice from TFA the lawsuit has been filed in Hawaii, as CERN is in Europe surely even a succesful lawsuit could simply be ignored?

I was under the impression that whilst the US has helped develop the LHC it doesn't actually own it and as such has no control over deciding whether it's allowed to start and stop. Is there something vital the US still brings to the project that could be used to prevent the project starting should the lawsuit be a success?

I was going to make a comment about how it seems typically American to try and create a lawsuit to shut down something they have no right to try and shutdown (see things like the recent Wikileaks domain fiasco) but in all honesty I'm not sure abuse of the court system is really much less in many European countries now, the only difference being the European countries at least tend to make the sensible judgement on the case even if the case itself is idiotic. With again for example the Wikileaks case the judgement was just simply stupid and the fact the judge had to backtrack so quickly only emphasised the level of idiocy that can occur in some courts. At least cases like this were thrown out in British courts for example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7243656.stm [bbc.co.uk]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7292657.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Hopefully (un)common sense will similarly prevail and save the day.

Re:WTF?

[Spacepup]

I guess it's just the kid in me, but now I want it turned on even more just to see what will really happen.

Maybe they should schedual the first start for one of the predicted end dates ala the Mayans and Egyptans. The Hadron collider builders should also play "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by REM the day it starts.

Re:WTF?

[Chris Burke]

Maybe they should schedual the first start for one of the predicted end dates ala the Mayans and Egyptans.

I want to see them turn it on too, but that's tempting fate a bit much maybe? So to make sure they can't accidentally cause the Mayan predictions to come true, they'll deliberately activate the machine several days before the end of the Mayan calendar.

Only once they turn it on, as it's powering up, they'll get a phone call from an anthropologist who will tell them that he just discovered that the previous calculations as to the start of the calendar were wrong, and it is in fact THAT VERY DAY that the calendar ends! Oh bitter irony, when your attempt to avoid the prophecy causes it to come true!

Re:WTF?

[Dun Malg]

You underestimate the Mayans. The few days in between is the time
the black hole takes to gather enough mass to speed up the process.
It will be tiny first, and will grow slowly. Amazing how the Mayans
got it right. I would not know where to start.

Yep, you can't count on the safety of exact dates, as we all learned from Back to the Future III when Doc and Marty figured they were safe going to the dance Saturday because the tombstone Marty saw in 1955 said Doc died on Monday. Then along comes Buford who points a gun a Doc's kidney...:

Buford: "It's a Derringer, Smithy. Small but effective. Last time I used it, the fella took two whole days to die..."

Re:WTF?

[Alsee]

Score:4, Funny

Who the hell modded that Funny?

Citing a Hollywood Sci-Fi movie to explain temporal causality theory on why you should not tempt fate against ancient Mayan mythology predicting the end of the world because of scaremongering US-litigation junkscience, according to Slashdot rules that is damn well supposed to be modded Informative!

-

THIS is what happens!

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS is what happens when you turn it on! [xkcd.com]

P.S. Xkcd may be super-awesome, but this post is in no way meant to endorse the irradiating of little birds or helicopters...

Re:

[evilviper]

Maybe they should schedual the first start for one of the predicted end dates ala the Mayans and Egyptans. The Hadron collider builders should also play "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by REM the day it starts.

You forgot the final season of Lexx (4.x), which made this exact topic the main plot point.

Re:

[vloktboky]

The Hadron collider builders should also play "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by REM the day it starts.

Except if any of those three scenarios they described came true, I don't think you are going to "feel fine."

Re:

[therufus]

At least we know Lenny Bruce is not afraid...

Re:WTF?

[EdIII]

You'd have a few milliseconds to make peace with yourself.

I dunno how long you take, but it takes me longer then a few milliseconds to make "piece" with myself.

Re:WTF?

[wass]

A nuclear safety officer is hardly on the 'inside of' the LHC team.

The article didn't go into the scientific backgrounds of the guys involved, but the job requirements of being a nuclear safety officer is hardly any prerequisite to being able to in any way accurately understanding the quantum chromodynamics, or even quantized general relativity (which nobody can do yet), etc involved in the LHC.

This would be like an airport luggage screener making claims about the aerodynamical stability of a fighter aircraft, or an electrician who can wire up a new 110 AC outlet in your house making claims about transistor-level details of the latest Intel CPU.

While it's possible they might be experts in highly technical fields hugely beyond their job descriptions, it's fairly unlikely.

This doesn't mean that their concerns are necessarily invalid, but they shouldn't be given any more credibility than other non-members of the LHC team.

Re:WTF?

[Valiss]

but the job requirements of being a nuclear safety officer is hardly any prerequisite to being able to in any way accurately understanding the quantum chromodynamics, or even quantized general relativity

No kidding. Have you seen the safety inspector in section 7G?

Re:

[Original Replica]

accurately understanding the quantum chromodynamics, or even quantized general relativity (which nobody can do yet)

Perhaps it is that lack of understanding that is the cause for concern. I understand that the point of LHC is to increase that understanding, but much of human knowledge is gained by making mistakes, then figuring out where we were wrong. When it comes to making a blackhole, the repercussions of a mistake could conceivably be the end of our entire solar system. I don't think it's wrong for t

Re:WTF?

[Surt]

In all fairness to the LHC people, the worst possible outcome is a blackhole that swallows the earth, not the solar system. It's not like there is magic mass available, to make the black-hole earth have more gravity than the earth does and pull in the rest of the solar system. It would just sit there orbiting the sun like the earth does now.

Re:WTF?

[Harmonious Botch]

Thank you for correcting GP. I feel so much better now.

Re:WTF?

[Omestes]

But we won't be here, so why should I care?

It would be very amusing for the folks on the ISS though.

Re:WTF?

[meringuoid]

It would be very amusing for the folks on the ISS though.

Fortunately, they'll be vapourised when the Earth collapses. All that mass falling through an infinite gravity well releases a whole lot of potential energy. The flash will far outshine the Sun, at least for a moment...

Re:WTF?

[kalirion]

Unless of course an alien space ship saves them and sends them back in time 5 years to stop it all from happening.

Re:WTF?

[wass]

It is not wrong to stop and ask these questions when the cost of failure is potentially a global concern.

Certainly not, and I addressed that in my comment.

It is certainly worthwhile running the calculations to verify such catastrophic events won't occur. Many physicists have already done this. But a non-expert suing the government without anything even remotely resembling evidence is pretty ridiculous.

It's like some of the first rockets. Some skeptics were worried that a sufficiently-strong rocket combustion could ignite all of earth's atmosphere. Sure that's a worry and it was worth running the calculations by full-time expert chemists and physicists to justify whether such an event could occur.

But any non-expert suing a project to cancel it based only on shaky claims? That's a different story.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's look at the credentials of said "nuclear safety officer":

"""
Walter Wagner graduated UC Berkeley with a Minor in Physics, and a Major in Biology. Later, he discovered a novel particle in a balloon-borne cosmic ray detector, initially identified as a magnetic monopole. Though its identity remains uncertain, it is definitely not within the standard repertoire of known particles. After a three-year break from science to attend law school, Dr. Wagner resumed work in Physics and Biology at the US Veterans Administration Medical Center in San Francisco, working in Nuclear Medicine and Health Physics. He then embarked on teaching Science and Mathematics, from grade school to college. Dr. Wagner developed a botanical garden in Hawaii, and continues involvement with several professional associations, including Health Physics Society and Society of Nuclear Medicine.
"""

So, this is a guy who discovered a magnetic monopole (which would theoretically tear the universe apart, right?) and works at a VA med center? He only has a minor in physics? The "nuclear safety blah blah" in this case means nuclear medicine, as in the guy who makes sure no one mishandles the radioactive dye they use at every hospital in the US.

Some expert.

Homer Simpson filed a law suit !?!?!?

[Brigadier]

I may be wrong here but wasn't Homer a Safety Officer for a nuclear power plant ? What is he doing working at CERN ?

Re:WTF?

[wass]

Right on! Thank goodness everyone at Slashdot has their PhD in theoretical Physics.

Damn it, at first I was going to say "ah ha", since I just got my PhD (I defended less than two weeks ago) in Experimental Physics (condensed matter). But then I saw that you qualified it with theoretical physics, and alas, I cannot say "ah ha" anymore :-(

But yet your sarcasm proves my point exactly!

Having a PhD in condensed matter experimental physics, in no way whatsoever am I qualified to qualify the creation of 'strangelets' or microscopic black holes. I've taken my share of grad classes, such as graduate-level quantum mechanics (Sakurai) and E&M (Jackson) with other high-energy theorists, and I've even done a small bit of relativistic quantum field theory (Peskin/Schroeder).

Given all this, I barely even know enough of quantum electrodynamics, much less QCD or anything well beyond that, to make valid judgements of the effects of LHC. But I'm supposed to take the word of a guy on these same topics with far less physics experience than me?

My theory

[TopSpin]

The rest of it just sounds so bizarre it's unreal.

The exopologic theorem of Flammeus Fortuitus states that civilizations that pursue the Higgs boson eventually produce destructive monopoles, usually just below their own troposphere, which immediately annihilates their planet/moon and nearby planets and/or suns. Each gamma ray burst detected in the universe is, in fact, another such conversion. Fortunately, interstellar space lacks sufficient matter to sustain the conversion and the process stops.

This theory provides a compelling explanation for why, despite the inevitability provided by immense timescales, we have yet to observe alien visitors; the physics of our universe tends to eliminate those species that investigate the sort of physics that lead to interstellar spacecraft. Thus, the only long-lived species one may expect to discover in the universe are those that do not employ high energy physics which, naturally, precludes all efforts at detection.

It is also possible that I've been working on makefiles for too many hours and no longer merit your attention. You are to be forgiven; you didn't know that when you started reading.

Re:

[Grave]

There were fears by some scientists (not many, but a few) of the Manhattan Project that maybe they shouldn't detonate that test atomic bomb because the chain reaction might not actually stop, and could ignite the entire atmosphere.

This is such a cutting-edge field that it is easy for otherwise intelligent people to reach incorrect conclusions. Still, we really don't know with 100% certainty just how everything will work with this aspect of physics. If we did, we wouldn't need to build these ultra-expensiv

Forever Peace by Haldeman

[gobbo]

I just finished reading Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman, great book, excellent sf. The central plot hinges on a similar idea:

SPOILER AHEAD

There's a giant accelerator being built around Jupiter, that will simulate the first .01 second of the universe... only the central characters figure out that it won't be just a simulation, but a new one, expanding and overwriting this part of this one.

There are end-of-world religious nuts who find that out and strive to make sure it happens. Much mayhem and a touch o

Re:

[Robber Baron]

Are they serious? They make it sound like a Pandora's Box that could destroy the whole planet, or solar system.

All the same I still think it'd be a good idea to keep a shotgun, ammo, and a few medpacks handy...

ID is an ally in this case

[CustomDesigned]

One of the premises of Intelligent Design, as described in "The Privileged Planet" [amazon.com], is that God/whatever not only planned for intelligent beings, but planned for them to explore their universe. The book talks about our ideal placement in the milky way for observation, yet with sufficient protection from gamma bursts, the fortuitous placement of the moon allowing solar eclipses to reveal the corona, etc. A Bible passage would be Proverbs, "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search out a matter." Part of trusting God in this viewpoint is assuming that, barring deliberate or negligent self destruction, the next discovery won't destroy us. Although each advance in physics brings more and more dangerous knowledge to light, we will be able cope technically. (Moral failings are another matter.)

Re:WTF?

[Goaway]

Due diligence may be quite prudent. However, that doesn't mean these guys are not nutcases.

Far higher-energy interaction happen every day as high-energy cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. If these things could happen, they would have already happened and destroyed the Earth long ago.

Re:WTF?

[Pendersempai]

In fact, nobody really know what will happen when the machine is switched on.

Well, no one knows what happens on the subatomic scale when the particles collide. On the macro, visible-to-the-human-eye scale, you could say that we know exactly what will happen: basically nothing. This sort of particle collision must happen all the time in the sun or near its rays, so the fact that the planets in our solar system and sun haven't already been swallowed by strangelets or black holes or singularities suggests that we probably don't have to worry about those things.

I don't have a lot of respect for arrogant scientists blithely telling us everything is safe when history keeps proving them wrong over and over again, or for people that use science like a bible to bash people with.

Huh? Who here is using science like a bible? Is this rant related to the topic of discussion, or just sort of an extracurricular?

Re:WTF?

[gumbi west]

Setting aside the GPs odd comments.... While these black holes would have to be created all the time by cosmic radiation in objects the size of the sun, they would continue to move at near light-speed. At these speeds, nearly everything has zero cross-section for reaction, so that only tells us not to worry about the ones that will leave earth at about these speeds (most of them). But, CERN will generate several of these particles per year that do not have escape velocity and so might (if there is no Hawking radiation) just hang out in the planet. While their reaction cross-sections couldn't be huge, given a few hundred of these and a few decades, one might just be able to take off and make the real thing--that's why serious physicists are worried about this.

Re:Are they serious?

[gardyloo]

The microscopic black hole thing is passably plausible, although any such tiny black holes are far more likely to evaporate almost instantly than launch into a positive feedback state.

    The magnetic monopole creation is almost surely complete bunk, as (so far as I know) no one has ever detected signs of such a thing (nor is anyone certain that such a beast can exist). On the other hand, Dirac showed that the existence of even a single magnetic monopole, somewhere in the universe might explain charge quantization. The converse, however, may not hold.

How could a tiny black hole ...

[Nicolas MONNET]

How could a tiny black hole engender a positive feedback loop? I'm not even speaking of Hawking's radiation here; but how would a few g big blackhole do anything? Its mass being tiny, it's not going to have much gravity at all, so it's not going to attract anything to grow. At most will behave like a heavy particle. Big black holes suck up stuff because their gravity overcomes all other forces, but here that can't be the case.
Clearly, they have mistaken the catchy name for the definition.

Re:How could a tiny black hole ...

[gardyloo]

Big black holes suck up stuff because their gravity overcomes all other forces, but here that can't be the case.

Semantics, pff. Get close enough to that tiny particle, and 1/r^2 is going to win every time.
      To argue your main point, though, I think that is one of the reasons (in addition to the Hawking radiation argument) that those microgram 'holes aren't dangerous: to feed in enough mass to make the thing grow would take an incredible density of mass very close to the b'hole's location, and you can't get much of that density on Earth anyway. (Here I'm talking about a sort of "macroscopic" density, not that of nearly-pointlike particles like electrons or neutrons.)

      Remember, too, that *energy* has mass -- massive objects have tremendous amounts of energy in the gravitational fields surrounding them, and these fields contribute mass to the "whole hole". It can be shown that when an object reaches such a state that the field energy starts to attract itself more rapidly than it's radiated, _that's_ when an event horizon will form. This can happen at any size. Just because the black hole can't sustain its own growth due to environmental constraints doesn't mean it's not a black hole.

Re:How could a tiny black hole ...

[forand]

IAAPP-Gravity is weak. VERY weak. This is the basis of the evaporation idea. The rest of space has enough latent energy around to pop particles and anti-particles(in exactly equal numbers) in and out of existence. Near the surface of a black hole Hawking theorized that some such particles would be within the schwarzchild radius and their partners outside. These would cause the black hole to lose energy overall as it radiated away particles. This occurs because the binding energy of some such particles is far greater than gravity AT ANY DISTANCE. Basically r^{-2} does NOT always win, other forces have greater influence at different length scales.

Re:How could a tiny black hole ...

[gardyloo]

IAAP, too, though not a P (Particle?) one. You're right about the strengths of other forces dominating that of gravity, of course. However, we were talking about "classically" capturing particles from outside the Schwarzschild radius. Note that if a particle escapes the black hole, it does so because it shows up outside the 1/r^2 "break-even" radius for its particular momentum. I don't know if it is claimed that pair creation still goes on inside the event horizon.
    If white dwarfs stars and neutron stars *do* exist, I suppose your argument about "binding energy" (couched in terms of the Pauli exclusion principle) has particular merit. However, it remains to be determined whether gravitational forces can overcome the exclusion "force" beyond the event horizon of a black hole.

Re:How could a tiny black hole ...

[kebes]

How could a tiny black hole engender a positive feedback loop? I'm not even speaking of Hawking's radiation here; but how would a few g big blackhole do anything?

You're right that a micro black hole would have a very weak gravitational field (a nanogram black hole has the same gravitational attraction as a nanogram of ordinary matter). However if the black hole didn't evaporate, it would slowly accumulate mass just from random collisions with nearby atoms. An object that is a singularity (infinite density at core) will have an event horizon. Even though the gravitational field is not strong around a micro black hole, there is still a (very, very small) region where the field gradient is so large that nothing can escape.

For instance if a micro black hole was generated in the LHC but didn't evaporate, it would eventually drift into the sidewall of the collision chamber, and whatever matter it 'touched' (atoms pass beyond the event horizon) would not be able to escape and would add to the mass of the black hole. Slowly by slowly it would grow in size. Because matter is never lost out of the black hole, it would eventually accumulate a huge amount of matter. How exactly the scenario would play (in terms of rate of expansion, etc.) would be interesting to calculate (would it sink down into the earth? would it slowly consume the atmosphere?): but I think it would grow exponentially and ultimately consume the entire Earth.

That's assuming that such a small black hole is actually a stable singularity with an event horizon, and that it cannot evaporate or dissipate in any way. Our best understanding of black holes right now indicates that if they form at all in the LHC (which is itself a dubious notion), they will be so small that they will evaporate very quickly due to Hawking radiation.

The doomsayers worry that our theory of Hawking radiation is somehow wrong. But as others have pointed out, high-energy cosmic rays hit the earth all the time, and we haven't been converted into a black hole yet. So it's either very hard to form micro black holes, or they evaporate very quickly.

Re:How could a tiny black hole ...

[arevos]

For instance if a micro black hole was generated in the LHC but didn't evaporate, it would eventually drift into the sidewall of the collision chamber, and whatever matter it 'touched' (atoms pass beyond the event horizon) would not be able to escape and would add to the mass of the black hole. Slowly by slowly it would grow in size. Because matter is never lost out of the black hole, it would eventually accumulate a huge amount of matter. How exactly the scenario would play (in terms of rate of expansion, etc.) would be interesting to calculate (would it sink down into the earth? would it slowly consume the atmosphere?): but I think it would grow exponentially and ultimately consume the entire Earth.

Even without Hawking radiation, micro black holes are entirely harmless, as they consume matter at too slow a rate to do any damage. Matter is mostly empty space, and gravity is an extremely weak force. Atoms are on the order of 10^-10m apart, whilst the event horizon of your postulated nanogram black hole would be 10^-25m, if I've done my sums right. That's a huge difference in scale, and a black hole so small isn't going to run into other particles with any significant frequency. The Earth would be long gone before a microscopic black hole made any impact.

Re:How could a tiny black hole ...

[kesuki]

In well accepted physics, there is a nongravitational black hole analog whose formation and evaporation is currently observed at RHIC.

It sounds like the world's largest super collider already observes the creation and evaporation of black holes. the question is will the hadron collider create stable black holes? not likely, they're not dealing with enough mass.

Re:

[NonSequor]

IANAP but I believe the following is roughly correct:

The black hole emits Hawking radiation at a rate inversely proportional to its mass. At the same time, it can gain mass as stray particles wander into its event horizon. The rate at which stray particles wander into its event horizon is proportional to the surface area of the event horizon which is proportional to the square of its radius which is proportional to the black hole's mass.

If the rate at which particles wander in is greater than the rate of ev

Re:How could a tiny black hole ...

[budgenator]

Some think these black holes may be a normal state of matter;

Physicist Brian Greene has suggested that the electron may be a micro black hole; see black hole electron. [wikipedia.org] Small black holes would look like elementary particles because they would be completely defined by their mass, charge and spin. On this view, the significance of the Planck mass is that it marks a transition where the Hawking semi-classical approximation breaks down, and a fully quantum mechanical description of the system becomes required. Gravitationally dominated "black hole"-like structures might still exist with these lower masses, but the emission of Hawking radiation would be suppressed by quantum effects, just as an electron constantly orbiting [centripetally accelerating around] an atom does not radiate, despite the apparent predictions of classical electrodynamics. Micro black hole [wikipedia.org]

Re:Are they serious?

[gardyloo]

In all seriousness, I do not think they will end the world, but am I supposed to take your 'word' for it, or the word of whatever think tank even?

Nope. Just study physics for the last decade or so as I have. I suggest Weinberg's Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (1972), although Misner's, Thorne's, and Wheeler's Gravitation (1973) is accessible enough.

 

Last I heard, there was still great debate among top scientists as to the nature of existing black holes.

You must not have heard too recently, then. Very few physicists (here I'm taking physicists as proxies for your "scientists") doubt General Relativity (its competing theories give much the same predictions) to any degree, and one of GR's beautiful predictions is that of the existence of black holes. We've witnessed gravitational lensing, time dilation effects, and many of the other predictions of GR; galactic jets and galactic dynamics point rather conclusively to the existence of black holes.

Call me a bit skeptical, but I think I'll wait to see what happens instead of predicting.

Good! You're following the precise credo of science, which is that experimental results trump all hypothesizing. However, don't carry empirical skepticism to the extreme of philosophical skepticism. Otherwise, you'll stop breathing for an hour to see whether, just because it's seemed necessary thus far, it might not be from now on. Besides, if the LHC doesn't produce black holes, or we can't detect them, or whatever, will in no way invalidate the possibility of their existence.

Re:John Titor

[MouseR]

WOuldn't it suck to discover that, in the end, Hawking is just some lame robot sent from the futur to enlighten us?

Futur Scientist 1: "We should send back a robot!"
Futur Scientist 2: "Hrm. it'll take years to develop a convincing one!"
Futur Scientist 3: "Let's get to it!!"
Futur Janitor: "Hey... why dont you make him look like a crip? You could then use that IBM 5100 chip on the floor as a voice box."
Futur Scientists: "Smart ass".

Re:John Titor

[AuMatar]

So, was he sent back to warn us about our impending loss of the letter 'e'?

Re:John Titor

[OrangeTide]

Without 'e' you cannot have enlightenment.

Re:John Titor

[spazdor]

That's what my old roommate used to say.


Fucking ravers.

Re:John Titor

[Anonymous Coward]

well done. I call it X though. And yeah, its enlightenment in a pill.

Hey, this is Slashdot. It's called "The X Window System", or "X11", or "X11R7.1" if you're up to date, and enlightenment is merely a fancy window manager that looks so fucking awesome... oh, wow, it really does look awesome. Goddamn, I fucking love everything when it boots up.

Re:John Titor

[BrotherBeal]

There aint no E in All that and a bag of potato chips!

Unless you're Dan Quayle.

Spelling Problems

[cbelt3]

Not this collection of morons again. They wandered about the high energy physics landscape nattering on about 'black hole signatures' after the Brookhaven collider made what *appears* to be quark gluon plasma. As I understand it, there is a fellow who is just bad at math and wants to keep his grant money coming.

Fortunately, court documents have probably not spelled the word properly. You see, for the US Government, "Nukular" is the legal spelling of the word. And the documents will be tossed out.

Fermi Paradox.

[Mactrope]

Such a dissaster would go a long way in explaining the Fermi Paradox [wikipedia.org]. We don't run into aliens because they all destroy themselves soon after they form.

Re:Fermi Paradox.

[tjstork]

I always held the light speed limit coupled with the vast size of the universe to be a more probable reason why we haven't run into ET yet,

I would be willing to bet, too that, when you do stack up all the things that can possibly go wrong, from local nova, to supernova, to large body impacts, to being placed too far, or too close from a star, without enough radioactive elements to keep a planetary core hot, but with not so many as to make it unlivable, and to somehow manage an oxygen carbon chemistry that doesn't just plop into a big carbon dioxide blob and allows for very energetic organic molecules to form and thus life, you just keep stacking up those odds, and suddenly, like factoring a large number, the weight of probabilities goes increasingly against you, no matter how many stars you have to throw at it.

If we are alone in the universe, or even the galaxy, it is kinda cool, because it means that the WHOLE THING IS OURS. While physics rules out a vast interstellar empire, there's nothing that rules out one way trips leapfrogging across the galaxy. In a few million years, we might be able to consume the whole thing.

Re:Fermi Paradox.

[glittalogik]

Scientists are different to normal people [xkcd.com]

Re:

[blueg3]

This is quite misrepresenting the situation: they have very, very good ideas of what will happen, but they've been unable to test some of the crucial border cases for lack of a giant supercollider. It's not as if they're just building a machine with no idea of what will happen. (If they didn't have any idea of what would happen, they wouldn't have enough information to properly build the machine or detectors.)

Re:

[blueg3]

Not being believed is hardly a qualification for being right.

Re:

[zaren]

"Vice Admiral William P. Blandy addressed nervous people about the effects a nuclear bomb would have with the following quote:

The bomb will not start a chain reaction in the water, converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy!"

http://atomicplayboy.net/colophon/ [atomicplayboy.net] is where I was able to find the quote, btw