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Why the LHC Won't Destroy the World
An anonymous reader writes "Most people are aware of the recent articles contending that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN might destroy the world. While most scientists have no such concerns, a recent preprint released to arxiv systematically dismantles the notion. The gist of the argument is this: Everything that will be created at the LHC is already being created by cosmic rays. If a black hole created by the LHC is interactive enough to destroy the world within the lifetime of the sun, similar black holes are already being created by cosmic rays. Such black holes would be stopped by dense cosmic objects (neutron stars and white dwarfs). A black hole stopped in one of these objects would eventually absorb it. We see sufficiently old neutron stars in the sky, thus any black hole that could be created at the LHC, even if it is stable, would have no effect on the earth on any meaningful timescale."
First particle?
rewriting history since 2109
Guess I now have to get back to my TPS report.
Don't they see that there used to be MORE neutron stars?
According the the Farnsworth Theorem, which has been accepted by the scientific community, the LHC is almost certain to destroy the world. There are consequences to creating a black hole, you know.
Dr Farnsworth suggests that you collect your most prized possessions and carry them down to the lowest basement you can find. This way you will at lest be among the last survivors on our doomed planet.
Even if they did manage to destroy the world, we'd all die so quickly there wouldn't be time to dish out any blame.
I can imagine the last words in the lab just before we all disappear into a singularity:
"Oops"
Summation 2
This article doesn't take into account accidental resonance cascades that open up portals to bizarre alien.
Wasn't the actual "danger" in question the creation of stable negative strangelets (which would gobble up regular matter through electrostatic attraction, not through gravity like a black hole) ?
But still, if there was such a thing, cosmic rays would have created one "naturally" by now.
Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow. R. A. Heinlein Glory Road
I wouldn't worry really. If it does destroy the world (which this is saying it won't, because if it could, it would have already happened naturally), then too bad. There isn't anything we can do, and such is life. C'est la vie.
Oh yeah, and I really have been there, there was an open day a couple of months back, the thing is less then about 15 cm in most places (then you have the various vacuum thingys, etc.). Which is rather big, actually, considering the size of the particles...
I wank in the shower.
"Science is the work of the devil!"
I believe the saying goes, don't let the facts get in the way of a good story. "Safe" doesn't sell National Geographic, let alone Wired.
We will just sent sg1 in to take care of the aliens and then we just blame it on the homer simpson type people working there.
Let me be quite clear that I don't think the LHC is likely to destroy the Earth.
However, the argument that what the LHC does is equivalent to collisions of cosmic rays with the atmosphere is bogus. The LHC's collisions between two particle streams with equal and opposite momentum could create things that are more or less at rest with respect to the Earth; a cosmic ray hitting the atmosphere carries momentum that will cause any resultant particles to move away from us very quickly.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Interestingly Enrico Fermi did use the same argument while setting on the first nuclear reactor during the Manhattan project around 1940 (that some cosmic rays are anyway much more energetic and bombarding the Earth since ages). And later fission and fusion bomb makers did use the same argument while playing with increasingly powerful toys. Ditto particle physicists for each new and more powerful accelerator. Isn't it time that journalists and other dumb news makers understand?
"We have an unintended event horizon."
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Do I have this right? It sounds like he's saying that a created black hole could not possibly harm the Earth on the basis that such black holes exist naturally and if they were dangerous there would be less stars in the sky now than we see.
In other words, if its not dangerous enough to wipe out a noticeable percentage of stars (the strong ones) then its not dangerous enough to mess up earth?
Because I can think of plenty of things that exist naturally in space that, while not dangerous enough to destroy a star, would certainly give our fragile climate and tidal system a bad day if it actually landed.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
The world will not end when I flip this switch.
I shall prove this, by ...
What in the world could that be?!
*points over there*
*flips switch*
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
As long as some guy in a suit doesn't whisper 'prepare for unforeseen consequences' in one of the scientists ears, we'll be OK.
Now, now, if you follow standard insertion procedure, everything will be fine. ... Although I will admit that the possibility of a resonance cascade scenario is extremely unlikely.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
What does it mean that a black hole is "stopped"?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
So when does it come online? Just in case something happens, I need the day off to do what I always wanted to do: Spend it with a beautiful woman in bed--who am I kidding? I'm posting on slashdot. I'll be playing GTA IV. :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Huh. Shows what I know, I just thought it couldn't create a world-destroying black hole because there just plain and simply wasn't enough mass and energy within the planet to do so, let alone in one (relatively to the planet) tiny building in Switzerland.
I see my lack of fear was not well-grounded. :-)
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
John Titor was from a different future than the one we're heading towards.
So each being equally small in probability the two ways the LHC will get us is either by
1. Black Holes (like the article says)
or
2. Instantaneous conversion of all stuff on earth into exotic matter.
Personally #2 sounds more fun.
I never thought I'd see a resonance cascade, let alone create one.
You mad
"In theory", posting to Slashdot is safe.
"In theory" you can't accidentally summon the elder gods by not limiting your .signature to 120 characters.
"In theory" posting more than twice within a ten minute limit won't create an imbalance of left-handed and right-handed electrons within the local ethernet causing anything up to and including total protonic reversal. (I bet you'd be kicking yourself for not buying cables with signal directional markings which could have prevented this problem.)
So, yes, "in theory" the world is safe from being destroyed by you. Today.
And "in theory" that makes me feel better.
There's a big difference between people mouthing off in a "forum" and a carefully researched, scientific journal article. TFA is the latter (there are two actually) and weighs in at 88 pages! Further, they begin by rejecting the points in your post (which are assumptions that most reasonable people would begin with), to see what would happen, because the original claim by the folks in Hawaii did just that. Now hopefully some nutcase won't make us reject the assumption that dragons are not involved...
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Accidentally creating lazorkitties!
Yes, in theory. Just as the sun will rise tomorrow "in theory." And if I repeatedly shoot someone in the head, they will die, "in theory." And reality exists, "in theory."
Provability only exists in mathematics. For everything else, from decisions about what to buy at the supermarket, to designs of scientific experiments, we humans must use mental models that rely upon fundamental assumptions about how the universe operates (e.g. that past experiences allow us to make meaningful predictions). In other words, every action we take must be informed by some sort of "theory." The question then becomes "how robust is this model/theory?", "how much can I trust the predictions?", "what is the range of the possible outcomes?", "what are the consequences of errors in the assumptions/model/theory?", and so on.
If you have a specific problem with one of the assumptions, logic, modeling, mathematics, data acquisition, or analysis, then point it out in detail. But saying, "that's just a theory" is not useful. Everything we do is based on theories.
After all, the opposite is also a theory: Not turning on the LHC won't cause the destruction of the Earth... in theory.
Also, black holes are still a "theory". Hell, YOU existing is just a "theory". As far as I am concerned, this is all a dream created by a machine that I am hooked into, by a race of robots, so that they can learn what it is to be more human
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
See also the Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions which also appeared today, and is a more non-technical summary of the safety review.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
If you have a specific problem with one of the assumptions, logic, modeling, mathematics, data acquisition, or analysis, then point it out in detail. But saying, "that's just a theory" is not useful. Everything we do is based on theories.
Experiments are conducted based on our lack of confidence in those theories. Either this theory is trustworthy enough to make the whole experiment pointless, or it's not trustworthy and experiments are justified. You can't have it both ways, and anyone who attempts to defend the safety of an experiment with only the theories being tested as evidence is an idiot. There's uncertainty, and thus there's an experiment, and we don't really know what will happen. Period. Get over it already. One way or another, you're still going to die.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Slashdot doesn't need to hear all this, they're highly trained professionals. We've assured the administrator that *nothing will go wrong*.
What if this is just the Technocore telling us "sure, it'll be fine". Next thing you know, bam, Old Earth is sucked into a black hole (or, as it turns out, not), and we have to farcast over to Tau Ceti Center.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Does that mean that we may already have a few of these things in the Earth or Sun, but don't have to really worry about that for the next 100 million years?
Can't we get EPA to do something about those guys about polluting Earth and releasing long lasting emissions/pollution? I mean come on if those folks that complain about long lasting nuclear waste get wind of that I can see endless protesting.
It's one thing if you tell me that this stuff will likely disappear less than a second of being created. It really worries me that you are telling me that you might create something that may last millions of years. I mean come on would they be able to even find/move the thing if they created one? I think we need to develop space travel so we can send all these potentially dangerous tests out to Pluto.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899?
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Peter.
Actually they speak German too. In fact most of them speak German; French is the largest of the minority languages, iirc.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
The main theoretical uncertainties come in is in the energy scale at which these black holes are created in such collisions, but the authors argue that we can place a conservative bound on the effect simply by comparison with these more dense objects.
Why is it that physicists on and in favor of this project (and those that are following this story) are even remotely surprised by the "Create a black hole, and destroy the world" rhetoric?
We've heard all the sensational "Black holes are the ultimate destructive force" commentary from Astronomers for decades seen all the cool Black hole animations, etceteras, ad nausium.
In my opinion, all the sensationalism surrounding the Black holes to start with was a ploy for funding. Now that same story line shows it's dark side, and people seemed surprised at the outcry and at overly dramatic fear of the LHC.
I'm not saying that sensationalizing science is a bad thing per se, just that people shouldn't be surprised when it bites them on the ass.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Wipe out the planet? Better still, wipe out the planet by creating one of the most powerful objects known to exist in the Universe? Oh wait, even better - wipe out the planet by creating exotic forms of matter which have hitherto not been observed in nature?
To quote Governor Tarkin, "I think you overestimate their chances!" But if you insist, visit . Then tell me you think the LHC could spell the end of Earth itself - there are plenty of more likely ways to go than by particle collision.
Way lower, here, can be as much as a factor of ten million.
Here's a nerdy but popular account of an extreme high energy cosmic ray detected at the Fly's Eye II. And that's just what we've detected in a few decades of running small detectors. What the planet has intercepted in the last few billion years must be even more staggering.
This is what the article addresses. The counter-argument to "cosmic rays would already produce them" is that they would be moving quickly through the Earth and not interact. They would be produced by cosmic rays elsewhere in the universe, though. If they are interactive enough to destroy the world within the lifetime of the Sun, they would be captured (despite their high velocity) by certain types of stars and consume them. We see no evidence that this has occurred.
There are two opposing viewpoints on the matter.
On the one hand, we have particle physicists whose "theories" on the interaction of subatomic-scale matter is drawn from decades of research and experimentation.
On the other hand, we have people who know essentially no physics and seemingly assume that the people building the LHC must be as lost when it comes to science as they. They make the argument, "Well, we don't *really* know what's going to happen."
It's amazing that the latter are able to function, as crippled as they should be of the fear of uncertainty.
Well, seeing as how you're posting to /., those machines are either getting extremely horrible data, r extremely appropriate data.
I'm not sure how I want to look at it until someone observes me and the wave form collapses.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
They don't need to hear all this. We've assured the administrator that nothing can go wrong.
Doesn't time slow or almost stop after crossing the event horizon of a black hole? If that is true then wouldn't the black hole persist for a very long time from our perspective even though from its perspective it only lasted a few nanoseconds. And if so, wouldn't that pose some risk? How does that work exactly?
Or in even simpler terms: "We're doing this experiment because we want to find out what happens. We don't really know what will happen, but we assure you it will be perfectly safe."
We don't do experiments because we have no idea what will happen. We do experiments because we have very specific questions we want to answer. Whether or not miniature black holes will be created is not one of those questions.
I think the argument "we haven't seen it yet, so we'll bet the existence on the human race on it not happening ever" to be quite unscientific.
I'm sure the probabilities of creating something destructive are very small, for now. But I doubt there will be a proven lower energy limit for such an event. So, will we keep creating more and more powerful particle accelerators until we do destroy the earth?
Of all sciences I think particle physics is the most cool one, but also among the most useless ones. Why are we risking our existence to satisfy the curiosity of a couple of thousand, without the side effects of even prospects of actual real life progress.
Shouldn't we put off the high energy particle physics until we have devised a way to get rid of any black holes that we might create? Or perhaps until we are able to do them far away from our home planet.
I think I'm actually going to be slightly disappointed when the Earth doesn't get destroyed when the LHC is turned on ... ... not that I really *want* the Earth to be destroyed, but the story would make for something interesting to tell the grandkids.
For all we know there could have been far more neutron stars which have been devoured by such micro black holes. The argument seems to be similar to "I know your gun won't hurt me because I've seen old bullet proof vests not ridden with bullets). Or it may take longer for a micro black hole to devour a neutron star than we think, in which case all these "sufficiently old" neutron stars would be pretty hollow by now.
Or so he said.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Agreed. The standards of "proof" have dropped a lot lately, apparently.
Any proof of the form, "If it were going to happen, it already would have happened" are intrinsically fallacious (Appeal to Probability), and doubly so in a situation like with the LHC where we are doing something that (to our knowledge) has never been done on this planet before.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Yeah, it's perfectly safe until you cause a resonance cascade. Next think you know, we're blowing away headcrabs with a shotgun.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
...is that Stephen Hawking declined knighthood. If all doomsday predictions about the collider were true, he would've said, Well, WTF, might as well be a knight when the s**t comes down...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
A galaxy black hole .... .... ....
A star black hole
A CERN black hole
Gravitational (field) displacement big or small is particular.
Levitational (field) displacement small or big has verve, not grave gravity.
We will never see the particular hole, no mater how much we correctly surmise or surprise the dogma-afflicted. By physical law what is that, can never be, as we are aware of dark-levity far more than bright-gravity.
How does that song go ....
Let the attack begin ....
"Reality is self-induced hallucination." oh21
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Now I have really pay back all the money I borrowed assuming the world is going to end? It sucks. Hope it sucks big enough to form its own black hole.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I use to work on a project at this lab called Black Mesa. I heard that there might be some kind of time-space cascade thing during one of our experiments but I didn't get to see it for myself because I had to call off sick that day. If I can look up my co-worker Gordan Freeman he might be able to explain it better.
Oh! Thank God the marines are here to save me from these dreadful creatuadfE$Rf#rq23rf
NO CARRIER
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
So, what is the worst case scenario, and, would I notice it?
Given that it's thought this can create weak stable black holes, couldn't they be used to generate power? I was tought in physics that when a big object 'enters' a black hole, it ejects a narrow stream of energy through the back of the black hole. If you couple this with Hawking radiation (or if what I'm talking about IS hawking radiation), couldn't you use black holes as a powersource? Something with the ability to convert 100% (eventually) of mass to energy must have huge power generation potential.
Please don't tell me what I'm thinking of is a ZPM, damn stargate Deus Ex machina devices...
"...on any meaningful timescale."
Really?
Of course, that could mean:
Whatever we do, if we make a black hole...
A) it will grow so enormous so quickly and annihilate us all in either the emitted radiation or actual consumption of our masses, we won't even notice we're dead.
or
B) it will grow so slowly that it will finally reach the point where it consumes the earth in something like 10k years, so who cares anyway?
Ah well, if it's the slow one, maybe it will give a much needed boost to the idea of space travel.
-Styopa
If the earth was swallowed into a singularity, it would take less than a second.
"haven't accounted for 96% of the energy and mass of the universe in their current model."
They also haven't accounted for all possible group particle mergers and interactions in the LHC. Unlike nature, in a particle accelerator they have groups of high energy particles moving in close proximity. In nature, we have lone high energy particles. We don't know what we can create in group collision mergers of high energy particles and even though these are rare compared with single particle interactions, they can still occur. Even if a black hole like particle was briefly formed and then hit by another particle or two or twenty, then what?. The point is, we simply don't know whats possible, but its very likely to be a different situation than simply a lone particle able to break down. If a group collision merger occured in nature, it would most likely be very rarely occuring, but it could be enough to help account for some fraction of the mass of the universe. We simply don't know, but we do know that in a particle accelerator, its going to happen a lot more often than in nature and we don't know what kinds of reactions group high energy mergers could cause.
While its (mostly) safe to assume single high energy particles are not going to be a problem, as they happen relatively often in nature, we cannot say the same for multiple collsion mergers and all possible interactions of multiple particles, as we simply do not know for sure. The current various theories are not proof its safe and the fact we cannot account for so much energy and mass in the universe is a very good reason to suspect our theories are wrong.
Also the fact they are building the LHC is proof in itself that they build it to learn, so they don't currently know for sure. Also for all their planning, even that magnet failure showed their theories and multi-million dollar design plans about how the machine should function can still go wrong. Humans make mistakes. Thats fine, we all accept that, but making a mistake with the LHC could potentially be the most serious mistake in human history.
What concerns me is their intense desire to learn is going to bias their judgment. (I know my desire to learn has biased my judgment from time to time), but this is the most important experiment in human history, so its vital it doesn't go wrong in any way, or it could be the last experiment.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
To Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Invenio via vel creo
Does anyone remember the (admittedly bad) scene from Oceans 11 where the electronic wizard is on the roof of the parking garage, getting ready to push the red button to produce the EMP, and as he does so, puts his free hand over his groin area, turns his body to the side and grimaces?
I'm wondering if anyone at CERN will be doing something similar or will they all stand there in quiet reflection as they prepare the sky nets to catch Gordon's body after they fire the capacitors.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
aren't black holes those anomalies which have such a strong gravitational pull they suck everything in including light?
The earth doesn't move as fast as light.
black holes != safe.
They're using their grammar skills there.
You can't take the sky from me...
If there is no possibility it destroys earth, why build one in the first place?
- Energy of maximum LHC collision: 14 TeV
- Energy of "Oh My God Particle" cosmic ray that hit the sky over Utah in 1991: 300,000,000 TeV
Sources:Could someone more knowledgeable than me do a cost-benefit on this one?
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider) says this will cost 'between US$5 and US$10 billion', plus we have the potential (even if ridiculously remote) to really mess up the planet.
The gains, again same source are:
Physicists hope to use the collider to test various grand unified theories and enhance their ability to answer the following questions:* Is the popular Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model realised in nature? If so, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?[11]
I have some (fairly redundant) questions myself:* Will the more precise measurements of the masses of the quarks continue to be mutually consistent within the Standard Model?
* Do particles have supersymmetric ("SUSY") partners?[2]
* Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?[2] See also CP-violation.
* Are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?
* What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?[2]
* Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?
A) What is the net-gain, other than knowledge? For example, what are the foreseeable practical applications?
A1) Are any of these potential gains greater than the risk of losing the Earth itself?
A2) Are any of the competing methods of gaining this knowledge comparable? (Assuming any exist...)
B) Why not do these experiments in space? Since we're already on a framework measured in billions of dollars, wouldn't an additional 10% overhead be enough to conduct this somewhere we could merely avoid if things went 'wonky' on us?
I obviously have no stake in this one way or the other, but to date no one has attempted to put this in these terms.
Note to certain ass-hatted, overzealous moderators: This is likely to get hammered here via replies alone. No need to add insult to injury. I really, genuinely am wanting to hear what people think on this topic - AND I feel it contributes to the overall discussion to go over it.
I'm a physicist (working on my PhD), but I've had one nagging question about hawking radiation noone's been able to answer (satisfactorially)
So, the process of hawking radiation can be thought of as a particle/anti-particle pair being created near the event horizon. Suppose that one of them is juusssttt close enough to the event horizon that it falls in and the other one remains outside. We assume that (to conserve total energy) the antiparticle falls in, annihilates a regular particle trapped within the black hole and the regular particle that was just far enough away escapes. From the outside, it appears the black hole is radiating mass.
Fair enough, I can follow that.
But, I fail to follow the assumption that "in order to conserve mass, the antiparticle falls in". What does the antiparticle care? How does it 'know' it's actions? I have two things that make me question that.
A) I would think that there would be an equal probability distribution of which particle is closer to the event horizon. However, if that were the case then there would be an equal probability that normal/anti particles would fall in, and that would cause the black holes to not evaporate. We know they do, so I don't know how to rectify that. What makes the antiparticle more likely to be closer to the event horizon?
B) Suppose you were able to accrete enough antimatter that you could produce a black hole with it. Virtual particles are created on the outside. In this instance, the normal particles must fall in and the anti-particles must escape to conserve total energy. How does that happen? How can the particles see beyond the event horizon to know that's what's within?
They're probably real naiive questions, but it's not my field of study, so go easy on me :)
-Bucky
Or so the theory goes, anyway. The truth is, we don't know what will happen. If we did, there would be no need to actually perform the experiment.
That is not true.
When I do a crash test on a unit, I don't know with 100% certainty what will happen, but I do have some very clear ideas as what is expected to happen. I also know what can not happen.
It is possible to conduct an experiment and know what should occur.
If you go by the premise that they could be wrong in their calculations, then you should point out where those calculations are wrong.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Hey, sparky, just because they aren't asking the question doesn't mean they aren't going to get the answer. Many discoveries were made because someone was doing something to the find the answer to a specific question and ended up finding the answer to a whole different problem.
In fact, I'm going to make that my new sig.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Get yah crowbar Ma, we're goin' Nihilant huntin!
All things told, I'd rather die by act of science than by act of war.
More Twoson than Cupertino
If we can produce an argument with absolute certainty as to the outcome of the experiment - then why do it in the first place?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
So, yes, "in theory" the world is safe from being destroyed by you. Today.
Is this a challenge?Well, exactly how small black holes _are_ we talking about? Because it seems to me that the whole scare is due to a few people's not really understanding physics.
Gravity is actually the weakest force at a particle level. But ok, let's imagine a really really small gravity well.
Arguably the interesting thing about one would be, basically, "up to what distance can it gobble things up." In other words, the the Schwarzschild radius.
I'll use simplified version, which is: 3km for something weighing as much as our Sun, and it varies linearly with mass from there. Literally. For Something the size of Earth it would be 9mm, btw, but they won't collide particles weighing the same as _Earth_ there. If they did, I'd worry about _recoil_ before I worry about black holes.
So how big a black hole will they create there? Say, about the weight of two neutrons? _Three_ neutrons? Heck, let's be generous and smash a whole five neutrons together. Each neutron weighs 1.67492729x10^27 kg. So 5 of them is very approximately 8x10^-27 kg. The Sun weighs 1.9891×10^30 kg, let's say 2x10^30 kg.
So we get roughly 3km times 4x10^-57 km, or 4x10^-54 metres. That's the ridiculously infinitesimal size, up to which it could gobble matter. By comparison a helium atom has a radius of 31 picometres, or approx 3x10^-11 metres. Our black hole is about 10 to the 43'th power smaller than that. Write a zero, a dot, 42 more zeroes and a 1. That's how much smaller that black hole is than a helium atom.
To be absorbed by it, another particle would have to come that close to it, overcoming all other forces. Which become pretty damn strong when you try to get that close.
In effect, the _only_ way for that "black hole" to gobble any other particle, is for that other particle to be shot directly at it with an even bigger particle accelerator. With some incredible (and thanks to that guy Heisenberg, also pretty much impossible) accuracy. Otherwise, it will be bounced around by the other atoms, without ever getting close enough to one to actually absorb one and get bigger and meaner.
If that's the big threat to Earth, well, I've seen scarier kittens than that ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The argument is wrong. An energetic cosmic ray (which most of the times is a proton, like in the LHC) hits generally another proton, or a neutron, within the atomic nucleus of a nitrogen or oxygen molecule in the atmosphere. Because the energy is much larger than the proton rest mass energy (from E=mc^2) thousands of new but less energetic particles are produced, repeating the process and raining down to the ground like a shower of protons, electrons, muons, photons, etc. In the end most of these particles are stopped, except a few photons that return to space.
Reminds me of a SF short story I read where a group of explorers where traveling in space and found ship(?) with a strange energy signature. They brought it back to earth for inspection. At the core was a strange reactor. The scientist set up all sorts of shields and such and then carefully open the reactor - nothing came out. But some individual several stories below the test chamber died.... the micro black hole fell like a yo-yo to through the center of the Earth collecting material as it went back and forth and continuously growing. They ended with the estimate that our little section of the space would have black hole large enough to consume the our sun in a few years. So until we understand Gravity well enough to contain a renegade Black hole we should proceed with caution.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
I have an news article from 1999 about how a similar supercollider is going to "create a Black Hole and Kill Us All".
It was fear mongering then and it is fear mongering now.
If it was possible to create black holes with that little mass involved, there would not be much of a universe for us to study.
But fear sells papers (and web ads)...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Any time the mass of a spinning system is rearranged it'll change the angular moment and there will be a corresponding change in angular velocity, yes. But I don't really see how it's relevant, since we'll all be dead anyway.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
"Concern" isn't a word I would use, but the arguments do become weaker for the VLHC. So the worst possible imaginable scenario would only have the earth surviving for a few hundred million years after our experiment, instead of billions. Also the VLHC is far from "planned". It's been discussed, but there is no engineering work and no formal proposal for it.
Also note that astronomy is really advancing at a lightning pace these days. By the time any VLHC reaches serious consideration, astrophysical bounds on these scenarios will be much, much tighter. A VLHC could not be operational any sooner than 20 years from now, if serious planning started today.
The assumptions of the original lawsuit basically requires one to reject the 2nd law of thermodynamics (in order to prevent black hole decay). This is not a "normal" assumption. It might have been a curiosity in the theoretical literature, but should never have grabbed the public's attention. My comment about dragons is not really in jest. One can never know anything about things which have never happened, and I don't think are worthy of our time (scientifically). Of course humans love to debate about all kinds of unobservable things -- gods, ESP, angels, etc...
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Let's put it this way:
We KNOW enough about the math, even with all the estimations and incomplete theories, to be able to say that, on the extreme outside chance the LHC does make a mini black hole, the mini black hole will evaporate/destroy itself in a time frame measured in tiny fractions of a second. It cannot destroy the Earth, let alone the solar system or the galaxy.
On the other hand, know nothing of the possibilities of interdimensional travel. Therefore, we are safer considering, and maybe preparing for, the possibility of Hellboy landing in the lab. And he ain't such a bad guy, really.
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
That's all right. I have shiny things outside my office to distract anyone who shows up to complain.
You missed the funny. That quote is from the game Half Life. :)
Say what you will, but I took 3 seconds to look at CERN's Personnel website...
"New timetable for a Regular morning and evening shuttle"
"Starting from 31 March 2008, for one month, a new timetable for a regular morning and evening shuttle serving LHC Points 2 and 5 will be put in place."
Are these guys trying to poke fun at Half-Life or is this for real?
We are so fucked.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
We should prepare for unforeseen consistences. Just in case.
My favorite crazy LHC theory is explained in glorious detail in this video. The guy seems reasonable to start, but he manages to pull in more kook-memes than you'd think possible. Delicious!
There are two things wrong with this opinion. the first is factual: when the LHC was being funded the main funding argument was discovering the Higgs (or else figuring out how else the probability of two types of particles scattering did not exceed 100% around 1TeV in energy). The other main argument, which came along slightly later with the WMAP data, was figuring out where at least 23% of the energy of the universe is hiding i.e. dark matter.
The second problem is that it requires that physicists created the sensationalism. How exactly do we do that? It is the press that creates sensationalism, not physicists. Are you suggesting that scientists should not consider theories that the press may consider sensational? or, if we do, should we not tell anyone what we are doing in case the press find out and goes sensational on us?
While most of us, myself included, think that these black hole production theories are very unlikely, they cannot be ruled out and would explain some issues with current theories. As such they are legitimate avenues of research and not a 'ploy' to get research funding.
so the area around it where the gravity would significantly bend the universe would also be quite small, making our painful (but swift) deaths rather unspectacular
I'm sorry, but you're completely forgetting about at least one mitigating factor. There's simply no way the earth can be destroyed, one side effect of which would be my untimely demise. Why? Because I've still got a balance on my Capital One visa card, and they will do anything, including changing the very fabric of space and time, in order to not miss out on that interest money. So, we're safe for a while yet.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Link should go find more rupees.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
You obviously haven't tasted CERN coffee - they have expresso machines and its generally very good. Much more likely is "This food is offal". I remember several times going to to the coop and the three dishes of the day were things like calf's head, tripe sausage and tongue...yummmm!
Any proof of the form, "If it were going to happen, it already would have happened" are intrinsically fallacious (Appeal to Probability),
Granted, but that applies to all possible events. The argument that my making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich might create a black hole and destroy the earth is unrefutable to exactly the same degree, no less and no more. Your additional claim, that the probability doubles for things that have never been done on this planet before is simply rhetorical, and no actual probabilities can be assigned, (as I can prove by two counterexamples if needed). The argument that allowing you to continue breathing might create a black hole and destroy the Earth is also unrefutable on those same grounds. Ergo, you have just proved it would be logical for someone to assassinate you. I don't recommend you develop your line of argument any further.
Who is John Cabal?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The LHC collides protons, not electrons.
Repulsion by solid matter isn't enough to stop it.
This depends on whether or not it is a charged black hole. In all likelihood it will be since it would have been produced by colliding two protons. Since EM interactions are many, many orders of magnitude above gravitational ones (calculate the difference in the gravitational vs. electric forces in an atom for an excellent illustration) I would expect a charged black hole to interact via EM far more strongly than by gravity.
Fear keeps us alive. But it can also keep us from really living.
Ultimately, we need to understand how the universe works. The long-term survival of our species requires it. Gaining knowledge may be dangerous and may cost lives. Failing to gain knowledge, however, is guaranteed to spell the end of our species.
> B) it will grow so slowly that it will finally reach the point where it consumes the
> earth in something like 10k years, so who cares anyway?
You need to add some zeros. A _lot_ of zeros.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Exactly why is this fallacious? This is how ALL science works. We measure things and then use statistics to determine how likely our result is given out current understanding of the universe. If we come out with a probability like 10^-6 then we have observed something new which we don't (yet) understand (assuming we correctly accounted for all known effects).
You, yourself, appeal to probability all the time in your everyday life. When you cross the road or drive a car you do this because you think the probability of being killed in an accident is low, when you fly somewhere you do so because you think that the probability of the plane crashing is low etc. etc.
So why is it fallacious to argue that given the evidence available to use the probability of the LHC destorying the Earth is incredibly low? We already run the risk of being wiped out by an extinction level asteroid impact everyday and we have considerable evidence that this has happened multiple times on the Earth's past. So if the maximum probability of the LHC wiping out the Earth is considerably lower (and in fact is probably zero) why do you regard that as a fallacious argument?
Perhaps, instead of the popular "think of the children" meme we should regard this type of inability to stop worrying about incredibly low probabilties as "think of the dinosaurs"?
Let's see, [1] eMV particles - deductive, [2] massive singularity - enigmatic. So, in the event our calculations are correct surely they must lead to formation of something we know so much about....
He then goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing.
Quote "...systematically dismantles the notion... cosmic rays... black hole... neutron stars... created at the LHC... any meaningful timescale."
The report has not yet been externally validated, but an internal validation of the report by CERN's SPC Committee contains the not so reassuring statement about the certainty of the primary safety argument:
"but this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos that, while highly plausible, do require confirmation, as can be expected in the coming years." - Quote from CERN's SPC Committee
But I did not see a recommendation to delay collisions until the confirmation they state is required... I have read collisions could begin in two months.
As for "any meaningful timescale", Dr. Otto E. Rossler writes "â¦after 50 months the earth to a centimeter would have shrunk. It would be nothing more there, not only no more life, there but also the earth would be⦠a small black hole."
M.B. Dion of society du jour writes in The ATLAS Experiment... Madness Or Invaluable Insight?: âoeSo is ATLAS just an intellectual version of something Evel Knievel may have attempted in the lab?â I can imagine Evel Knievel telling a co-pilot about to jump the Snake River Canyon with him, "I can't tell you there is no risk, but I assure you that it is perfectly safe". LHCFacts.org
"we don't really know what will happen. Period."
Bull. We don't know exactly what will happen, but that's not the same as having no idea at all. We know very well that certain things will not happen; like destroying the earth. The experiment to be performed is performed regularly by random cosmic rays in the atmosphere. We don't know what will happen in terms of the data collected by the sophisticated instruments in place at the LHC, because these instruments are not in place for those naturally occurring experiments. But for those naturally occurring experiments, certain very crude instruments are in place. Including a crude, but actually perfect detector for earth-destroying effects, which we call the earth. It's still here.
Can't we still hope for a stranglet? Please? That's all I'm asking for.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
Why are we finding no extraterrestrial civilizations?
They all get to this step in technological advancement and "Black Hole" themselves?
Maybe a significant portion of existing black holes are not the results of collapsed stars, but rather previous Hadron-like mistakes of monumental proportions?
I agree, as far as "science doesn't deal with deduction, as opposed to induction."
This proof, however, lacking any experimental results or direct observation of the phenomena in question, is unquestionably a deductive proof. It's quite a simple one actually:
"If cosmic rays spawn world devouring strings/black holes, then we'd see a marked absence of quasars and neutron stars"
"We don't see a marked absence of quasars and neutron stars"
"Therefore cosmic rays don't spawn world devouring strings/black holes"
This is fricking modus tolens; it's one of the most basic deductive constructs. Saying therefore, that his proof is fallacious is perfectly legitimate.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
That's actually a number of fallacies in and of itself, not the least being the ever-popular "Strawman", and the statistical "base rate" fallacy; if making a pb&j were dangerous we would have abundantly proven this by experimentation, likewise breathing. And if I'd actually said something so stupid as "breathing may cause a black hole" you might be justified in the stupid shit that you're saying.
Saying that you know the consequences of an action that has never been attempted is pretty much the opposite of science. I'm surprised you would defend it. We might as well have not built the LHC at all, since you already know all the outcomes.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If you defend rednecks on Internet forums... you might be a redneck. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I really don't understand your ire here. Or your need to point out that non-rednecks also do stupid things. Redneck does not indicate ethnicity or birthplace. To me, redneck is just shorthand for stupid and uncultured. If you aren't stupid and uncultured, you aren't a redneck.
So why are you defending stupid and uncultured people? Or are you trying to use redneck in a different context, and irritated that others don't see it that way?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It seems math on this should be possible, but has anyone done it? It might be 10s of billions of years to get to the point that its dangerous, and we don't care, but has anyone bothered to find out?
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
If you take a grapefruit and compress it down till it collapses, it still has the mass of a grapefruit.
grapefruits are not known for their gravitational fields.
I am actually just now re-reading David Brin's Earth and I know this will bite us in the ass. We'll have evolved to a borg-like multidimensional entity billions of years out, and we'll be like "Oh CRAP it's Y2K all over again, but this time the fabric of spacetime is at stake! SHIT!"
In related news, if a camera takes your picture it will not steal your soul.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
No, they're quite serious. Modern particle accelerators extend for miles.
We know very well that certain things will not happen; like destroying the earth. The experiment to be performed is performed regularly by random cosmic rays in the atmosphere.
Not quite. From what I've read, the LHC would create more-or-less stationary black holes, which if they don't evaporate, would bounce back and forth through the earth, eventually settling in the core. The cosmic ray collisions would create micro black holes traveling at high velocities, which would could go straight through the earth and out the other side, without being much affected by the planet's gravitational pull and not getting the chance to do any real damage. The article states that if this happened, then surely there'd be no old neutron stars in the universe (since, unlike the Earth, a neutron star would have enough mass to capture a high-velocity micro black hole.) I don't find that reasoning too comfortable.
I propose another one: they accidentally invent the warp drive, accelerating the entire planet into a several thousand RPM spin and causing it to explode.
Errr....no. Rest mass of proton is ~1GeV, centre of mass energy of LHC is 14TeV so, given that there are 2 protons involved the raction of rest mass energy is 1/7000 or 99.985%. So you might want to lighten up on the '9' key a bit. However what is more important is the electrons and protons interact VERY differently and radiate energy far less that electrons because their rest mass is a factor of 2,000 larger (you could not build the LHC using electrons) so it is important to get it right.
and it all entered the LHC in the form of regular old electrons passing along copper wires into the accelerating magnets, over the few minutes of the actual run.
Errr, again no! First magnets do not accelerate particles (in the sense of giving them energy) because the magnetic force always acts perpendicular to the direction of motion thus the speed remains constant. Instead microwave cavities, which use an electric field, are what accelerates the particles. Secondly the LHC will run in fill, accelerate and then collide mode. The runs last for hours but the acceleration phase only for a few seconds.
You have a net charge differential equal to being down a net 2 electrons for the whole thing, and you are applying that charge, not to just 2 protons, but to all the contents of the black hole.
You didn't do your homework did you? Had you actually calculated the ratio of gravitational to EM forces in an atom you would have got a roughly 30 ORDER OF MAGNITUDE difference. Even if we assume the entire centre-of-mass energy of the LHC goes into the black hole mass (which is very unlikely to happen - usually it is made of a couple of quarks from the protons) this is a (generous) factor 10,000 increase in mass...so only 26 more orders of magnitude to go and you'll be there!
In fact the only reason that it is postulated that we may see blackholes is by invoking extra space dimensions that are compactified (like a human hair appears 1D at a distance and has a 2D surface close up). This will mean that, at very short distances gravity becomes a lot stronger. However, since passing through matter the distances will be bigger than this, I continue to argue that the EM interaction will be greater than the gravitational.
I am Not a Lawyer. I am not a Gypsy Prince. I am not Komar, King of the Voins.
You are also very clearly not a physicist!
Indeed, humanity shall join the Flying Spaghetti Monster in pure Spaghettification.
Ramen !
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
Haven't you learned anything? You blame it all on Tibor
Tax filing infinitely delayed!
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The "event" has already happened. You're just not aware of it yet in your time frame. You're on the outside of the event and still traveling inward, for the rest of your life...
Although Germans would have a hard time understanding them anyway ;P
One that hath name thou can not otter
How self-centered. It's OK to destroy the universe as long as we do not do it in any timeframe that would affect our human life on earth. As for other intelligent creatures in the universe whose civilizations are old beyond our imagining or arose later than us - well that is too bad. No wonder that humans are often portrayed by science fiction visionaries as pests to be eradicated by the illuminated. Well as long as it does not affect my vacation plans ...
I think you may be interested to see what a previous poster wrote:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=592163&cid=23902723
It's African American Holes, you racist clod!
AFAIK, and please correct me on this: isn't hawking radiation a prediction that hasn't been obeserved in the universe?
Also, I read that what the LHC is doing would occure naturally as well. I also read that this is not exactly a common event, maybe a few thousand since the beginning of the univers. So, what's the chance that anything like this ever happened near a planet?
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
I'm certainly no fearmonger and I believe the world is gonna be a-okay after LHC does it's thing BUT the arguments presented from "your" side are not very convincing.
... ... what if hawking is wrong?
- This happens in nature also. Yes, but not very often and probably less often on the surface of a planet
- We would see neutron stars, white dwarfs being consumed by these kind of objects. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence as they say
- LHC created blackholes will evaporate. Really? This might be the first time hawking radiation is observable
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
They're very convincing if you have any level of scientific background.
First, you're confusing "absence of evidence" with "evidence to the contrary". If I know there's an effect that should destroy any neutron star or white dwarf within 10^3 years and I see neutron stars and white dwarfs 10^6 years old, this effect is not occuring. This is "evidence to the contrary".
Second, "not very often and probably less often on the surface of the planet" is completely unquantified. This is the usual "scaremonger tactic" -- no data, no quantification, and the assumption that quantification doesn't exist or is impossible. One can compute how often it occurs -- near neutron stars or on the surface of the planet. In fact, the paper has done so.
It's good, quantified science. By comparison, "but something might happen" is a worthless argument.
It's exactly not EVERY neutron star. Only every neutron star that is hit by such a blackhole. Since the formation of these blackholes is also hypothetical and the last word about neutron star formation is probably also not spoken there is indeed no data, no quantification, only some assumptions.
....
The last I've read about these blackholes (sorry, no source, german news article) spoke about a formation rate of some thousand (3000 if I recall correctly) since the beginning of our universe. I don't think that we would be able to tell if even a million neutron stars where missing universe-wide
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
what you should do is say, damn straight it will destroy the world! We want 1 MILLION dollars!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
According to the calculations in the paper, cosmic rays in the energy range that would be produced in the LHC impact Earth at the rate of (very roughly) 1000 per second.
Black hole production from cosmic rays is rarer. In any given neutron star, you're looking at something in the vicinity of 1 cosmic ray black hole per year impacting the neutron star.
In the interim, are we going to have to suffer another argument from the astronomers about what constitutes a planet once ours gets a black hole at its core?