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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."
Captain Zapp Brannigan: We'll just set a new course for that empty region over there, near that blackish, holeish thing.
xkcd
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
So what if it creates microscopic black holes? They'd dissipate in a fraction of a second. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation
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?
What happens if an escaping convict accidentally wanders into the collider, gains super powers, and tries to take over the world?
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.
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.
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
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine
I'm just sayin'
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.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
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?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16322014.700-a-black-hole-ate-my-planet.html
"Within 24 hours, the laboratory issued a rebuttal: the risk of such a catastrophe was essentially zero"
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!
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
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.
make world, not war
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.
Last time a bunch of lawyers and politicians tried to legislate the value of pi, they got 3.2.
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".
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!
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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?
-Valiss
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:
The latter is freely available on the arXiv. From the conclusion:
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.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
So, was he sent back to warn us about our impending loss of the letter 'e'?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Without 'e' you cannot have enlightenment.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
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.
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.
I may be wrong here but wasn't Homer a Safety Officer for a nuclear power plant ? What is he doing working at CERN ?
That's what my old roommate used to say.
Fucking ravers.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
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.
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?
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
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.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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.
One of the premises of Intelligent Design, as described in "The Privileged Planet", 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.)
Thank you for correcting GP. I feel so much better now.
But we won't be here, so why should I care?
It would be very amusing for the folks on the ISS though.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
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..."
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
make world, not war
I dunno how long you take, but it takes me longer then a few milliseconds to make "piece" with myself.
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
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7292657.stm
Hopefully (un)common sense will similarly prevail and save the day.
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.
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?
make world, not war
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.
This is my sig.
Scientists are different to normal people
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...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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!
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I'm disabling ads until because I choose not to reward redesigns that are less usable than "view source".