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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."
Are they serious? They make it sound like a Pandora's Box that could destroy the whole planet, or solar system.
The rest of it just sounds so bizarre it's unreal. The fact that it is people on the inside saying it is somewhat concerning. I don't even know what to think, but those "headlines" are truly spectacular.
I smell FUD. It says in the article that most scientists dismiss the whole doomsday machine theory.
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
So what if it creates microscopic black holes? They'd dissipate in a fraction of a second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/solarsystem/2006_mag_recon.html
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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.
Without 'e' you cannot have enlightenment.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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?
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Yes, this nuclear safety officer should get more credibility than others outside the LHC team. Here's why: random Joe Schmoe from Vermont or some random state has no experience, no education in this area etc. His credibility is neutral, as would be that of any member of the general public. The nuclear safety officer may not have any more educational experience than Joe Schmoe, but he works on the LHC, and is therefore in a position to hear things that some random member of the public may not be exposed to. Therefore, we have to give him somewhat higher credibility, and at least listen to his concerns and ask where he got them from. Could be he overheard the head scientist talking about it, or saw a report on the subject. He has access to much more information than a random individual (especially since scientists are in the business of being open and often don't secure their research as heavilly as, say, the military might)
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
We have no idea whether the laws of physics will remain constant from one second to the next, let alone what the outcome of a given experiment will be. However, the popular consensus is that things will carry on much as they were. For things we don't understand, we look to experts. Most of those experts work at CERN, and unlike the Manhattan project, it isn't classified - wouldn't you expect one of those thousands of people to make some sort of noise if they thought there was a risk of something going wrong?
xterm -n 8
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.)
Not being believed is hardly a qualification for being right.
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.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
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? Not like Hawking hasn't admitted to being wrong before, you know...
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
"""
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. Now give us yours: What qualifies you to judge this mans' credentials?
You can't take the sky from me...
Prometheus: Playing with sticks from Gods. Learning how to make fire.
Cassander: Might set whole world ablaze.
Oppenheimer: Squish fissiles together. Make big fire.
Cassander: Chain reaction might set the atmosphere on fire.
Oppenheimer and Teller: No, the equations say it won't.
Cassander: Not understand equations. Don't care what you say. Gonna yell loud.
CERN: Squish hadrons together. Make Higgs boson.
Cassander: Not know what Higgs boson is. Type in all caps!
Cassander: (exhales for the fifteenth time this friggin' minute! and he does it 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!)
Anonymous Coward: I'm not opposed to your breathing on the grounds that you may or may not PERSONALLY have the right to your own life. I am opposed to the SOCIETAL risk of EVERYONE dying on the grounds YOUR NEXT BREATH MIGHT BE THE ONE THAT PRODUCES THE FINAL MOLECULE OF CARBON DIOXIDE THAT PUSHES GLOBAL WARMING PAST THE TIPPING POINT AND TURNS EARTH INTO VENUS, KILLING ALL SEVEN BILLION OF US. You wanna breathe, do it in a controlled fashion. You know, like in a location that, if your next breath does produce that fatal molecule of CO2, the destruction will be localized to whatever orbital colony we sent you to, rather than our entire civilization.
No one seems to have noticed yet that a US district court has zero jurisdiction over a facility that's located in France and Switzerland ?.
...
:)
Worst case they can tell the US that they can't participate - Whooo!!!! - most of the US's contribution will have been spent already and there'll be all this spare time now for the rest of the world
I fail to see how CERN cares
Ok. So people who studied this topic for years are fairly confident that there is no risk. Understand to boot that they have a professional aversion to saying "impossible". Someone else asks a question that doesn't have an answer, and thinks that all progress should be stopped to answer the question first. Let's also assume that the question is: "Does lighting this match create invisible pink unicorns that will eat my soul?" Do you still think that this is a reasonable course of action?
Because that's essentially what you're doing.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Hey, and I have got a counter-counter-counter argument!
If you hit the earth with a ultra high energy particle (e.g. cosmic ray), the particle GRADUALLY loses energy due to the process which has been well described by Bethe-Bloch.
If you now do a CENTER OF MASS COLLISION of two particles in the LHC, all the energy will be available for high energy processes in an instant. I consider this a different scenario. Maybe there are real-world cases where these things happen and show that we're safe (you'll probably need to start to list things like black-hole jets, GRBs etc. - which is kind of ironic...) but the 'cosmic rays hit the earth'-argument just ain't worth anything in this discussion.
Imagine if you will that the seeds of life could be found, at one point in time, on millions of planets with drastically varying situations; e.g., very close to a star, very far away from a star, on a gas giant, on a planet like Venus, on a planet relatively close to a strong gamma-ray source, etc.
After a few billion years, you'd find that life as we know it had failed to exist on the planets that were not compatible with carbon-based life. The planets that were conducive to life, such as Earth, would be teaming with it. Some life might point to their very existence as proof of an intelligent design, but the more intellectually advanced members of the species might realize that the situation could be no different. A non-existent or dead observer cannot observe that "Hey, life really sucks here next to this quasar, why the hell would an intelligent designer put us here?"
The fact that we are here, and alive, tells us NOTHING about an intelligent designer. The fact that we are conveniently located has nothing to do with design- it has everything to do with necessary conditions for life (as we know it). If conditions were different, we wouldn't be here to comment on how crappy the conditions were.
This argument reminds me of an old Chick Tract that stated that since bananas were so delicious and convenient to eat, that it proved the existence of a kind and benevolent god. I noted with some interest that the Tract ignored things like walnuts, lactose intolerance, rhubarb leaves, salmonella, poi, and various other poisonous or troublesome foods. Fun.
This idea is know as the anthropic principle. It makes for interesting reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.