Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
That's what my old roommate used to say.
Fucking ravers.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
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
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.
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.
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
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.