Lawsuit about risk of CERN and parallel universe
BB pal Vann Hall spotted this great headline at The Register. It's no joke, either. Walter L Wagner and Luis Sancho fear that firing up the new Large Hadron Collider could create a black hole that might suck the Earth into a parallel universe. So they've sued to delay the LHC from being switched on. "And people claim we live in a too-litigious society!" says Vann. Link
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I think this proves we already live in a parallel reality.
If it were possible for the Large Hadron Collider to create a black hole that might suck the Earth into a parallel universe, then we'd be gone already. The earth is regularly hit by cosmic rays that are far more energetic than anything the LHC will be able to produce. So if simply accelerating particles to vast energies could end the universe, it would have ended long ago.
But everyone knows botanists know more about black holes than the folks at CERN do, right?
(Instant Expert syndrome: I understand one thing and people respect me for it, therefore I know everything about everything. Alas, too many people -- authors, scientists, religious leaders, politicians, you name it -- seem to develop bad cases of this at some point in their career.)
I fully expect Worf to pop through the collider's singularity.
This story is running on NewScientist as well:
Particle smasher 'not a threat to the Earth' - 28 March 2008
I love drama. So long as it's good drama. If these litigants can't give us a good show, hang them.
Frome the NewScientist article, linked above:
"A 2003 safety review for the LHC found "no basis for any conceivable threat". It acknowledged that there's a small chance the accelerator could create short-lived, mini black holes or exotic "magnetic monopoles" that destroy protons in ordinary atoms. But it concluded that neither scenario could lead to disaster."
" "What we want to do is get this machine up and running," Gillies says. "We'll show people that the world is not going to disappear." "
I'm on CERN's side, but that last sentence is not reassuring to anyone who isn't :)
Um... so, let's say the Earth did end up in a parallel universe... If it's the whole earth and everything on it, what's the difference for our daily life? Maybe we lose a few people in space, our moon and tides, have a different (or no) sun, we all die from freezing, or are eaten by Weavils... I don't see this as much of a problem, it's not like we'd live long enough to regret it... In fact, maybe we should take action and do this - invading the parallel universe - before they invade us! No one way rift into Cardiff for me! Let's preempt their universe! Maybe they have WMDs or something!
The Image on the frontpage of their website should probably be changed. Galactic explosions probably aren't helping anyones argument.
link...
http://img516.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot027zc6.jpg
I fully expect it to be delayed until late 2012, say late December. Let's make it the 21st shall we?
As long as there is ANY probability of any weird shit going down with these colliders- i am against it. why are my tax dollars going to creating black holes? I have a mortgage for chrissakes!
I'm going to do my part and go yell at the people at brookhaven national labs.
Er. Botanist?
The guy suing CERN also has a minor in physics and calls himself a "Nuclear Safety Specialist".
I seem to recall that was also the title of Homer Simpson at a nuclear power plant...
Such a scenario makes for interesting speculation, but this botanist fellow, well he should know better. He's a crank.
The situation though is reminiscent of the plot to John Cramer's wonderful sci-fi novel "Einstein's Bridge". It's a great read. Cramer is a physicist at University of Washington. Now if Cramer were warning of mini black holes and strangelets, I'd sit up and listen.
See here:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/E_Bridge.html
The parallel universe couldn't be much worse than the one we've got now. I say fire it up and give it a chance!
First, let me disclaim that I worked for CERN for a few years and now work for a US National Lab, doing research work for an experiment within the LHC (the ATLAS experiment, http://www.atlas.ch )
This mini-black-holes we expect to generate at LHC don't look at all like what most people associate to them. Have a look: http://atlas.ch/events.html
In fact what we see is the Hawking Radiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation) emitted by the evaporating black hole, which should disappear in about 10e-25s. Meaning, if it were traveling at the speed of light it would cover a distance of less that the radius of an hydrogen atom. This is a 8TeV black hole.
And as #2 said very well, particle collisions way more energetic that that happen every day in our atmosphere, and we're still around...
The danger of strangelet conversion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet) is even more exotic since it's not only merely a vague theoretical possibility as it needs matter densities way higher that what you have on earth to be of any concern. A strangelet, if it exists, is even more unstable that a mini-black-hole and so at the speed of light will barely cover more than the distance of a proton radius before disintegrating. Only in a very packed and dense environment (like a neutron star) it would be able to propagate.
Anyway, soon all this debate will be over...
@bogartnoir
I totally agree, but I still don't understand why they haven't made holding a gun to someones head and making them get a mortgage illegal :/
As for tax dollars being spent on stupid stuff I really wish they would get rid of all those silly tax breaks for home owners, they could put that money to good use determining the laws of physics.
Actually, maybe I don't agree with you :(
This is funny....and it's easy and fun to call the plantif a crank.
But what if he's right? My understanding of physics is very limited, but this is a realm where the smartest minds in the world can't even agree on what particles exist, let alone how they'd behave when poked with giant expensive sticks.
I don't like the idea of the lawsuit (can you imagine this being decided by a jury of "peers" with average education and very limited understanding of physics? Where the lawyers would have to explain to them in the opening arguments that there are, in fact, particles other than the neutron, proton and electron they remember from high-school? That's like when the patent office had reviewers trained on mechanical inventions suddenly reviewing software and data algorithms).
However, I like the idea of questioning the "parallel universe" ramifications of this type of tinkering. And what if the parallel universe isn't one where Fry and Leila are dating, but rather one where everything collapses into a pre-big bang tiny ball of compressed dark matter?
Sell your stocks short now, people, quit your job, stay home and have lots and lots of sex.
Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com
I always wanted to meet my evil twin.
"...the LHC may rip a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum and so destroy the Earth..."
I love it. Can I push the button?
Well, there are probably much more unpleasant ways we could destroy the Earth.
I say, let 'er rip.
First of all, the guy does have a physics background (as do I, FYI), so just calling him a "botanist" is quite unfair. Also, his arguments make some sense:
1: the cosmic ray argument doesn't hold up exactly, as in the accelerator two particles of identical but opposite momentum will collide, so that their reaction products (including, possibly, mini black holes) could have very low speed, low enough to be captured by the Earth's gravity, which would be impossible for any black holes created by cosmic rays -- they would just shoot out of the solar system at almost the speed of light.
2: Hawking radiation has not been observed or conclusively demonstrated, so it is just possible that a mini black hole would hang around. It would probably not be very interactive with the local matter at first, so it would fall into the Earth's core and slowly (but with exponentially increasing speed) devour our planet, and possibly the whole solar system. Due to tidal forces the Earth would be a terrible mess if it did in fact emerge in another universe; what happens to matter that falls into black holes is a matter of current debate.
Physicists at the Brookhaven LHC before it was turned on calculated a maximum chance of 20 in a billion that it would destroy the Earth. To me this seems *way* to much of a risk. Accelerator physicists may be more interested in their careers than in small possibilities of annihilating the solar system...
#3 posted by technogeek , March 30, 2008 11:39 AM
But everyone knows botanists know more about black holes than the folks at CERN do, right?
------
And engineers from Leonardo da Vinci to teams of talented scientists in the US Army labored non-stop to make an airplane, but a couple of bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio were the first to do it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers
A lot of scientific discoveries have been pioneered by people from outside the field they're working in. For instance, many celestial bodies have been discovered by amateurs.
Sometimes it takes a LACK of formal "it's done this way" training to see the big picture and get it right.
Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com
With all the cuts to research and science programs in the US, this might just be a brilliant new funding idea: we'll fire the accelerator unless the UN sends us... ONE BILLION DOLLARS!
@18: Asking "What if he's right?" about this guy is like asking the same question about a guy who is suing a construction company that is about to pour the largest block of concrete ever, claiming that it will plunge through the Earth's crust and cause a super-volcano, when there are naturally occurring free-standing rocks that are many orders of magnitude larger than the block they are proposing to pour.
@2 said it best: nothing will happen at the LHC that doesn't happen in nature on a regular basis, and a lot of stuff happens in nature that requires energies orders of magnitude above anything the LHC can reach.
So answering the question "What if he's right?" might make for a science fiction story. It won't provide any value to the public policy debate because he is not right. The probability that the LHC will destroy the universe is the same as the probability that you will destroy the universe by triggering some hitherto unknown law of physics the next time you cross the road. We probably can't prove that the probability is zero, but we can also be sure that this is just the same as the risk we take every time we go out to buy milk, and accept it as the price of living in a universe we don't entirely understand.
CERN already invented a parallel universe, why not let them do it again ;)
I hope this guy is wrong...I really hate headcrabs.
Seriously, I can see how the LHC might generate enough energy to cause some local damage if something goes wrong. But to say it's going to rip a hole in the universe and shove the Earth through it seems a little bit of a stretch.
I hope...
Which of course leads to the obvious comic...
http://4lfa.com/page.php/20080330/190105/Stop_the_Large_Hadron_Collider
That I couldn't resist making earlier today :)
#25 So answering the question "What if he's right?" might make for a science fiction story....
---
I love how the non-physicists on this thread all say the plaintiff is a crackpot, but the only two guys with actual training in physics won't say a catastrophic event is impossible. That's what I love about the "open playing field" of the Internet.
#22 "First of all, the guy does have a physics background (as do I, FYI), so just calling him a "botanist" is quite unfair. Also, his arguments make some sense...."
and
#16: First, let me disclaim that I worked for CERN for a few years and now work for a US National Lab......The danger of strangelet conversion....Anyway, soon all this debate will be over...
--------
Michael W. Dean
http://www.stinkfight.com
#10! LOL
I wonder if the CERN folks will take 12.21.12 off, just in case. It's a Friday.
And I have to wonder what sort of stuff that botanist is growing.
A parallel universe? You mean like one where Bush actually won the 2000 election?
Once we stop these guys at CERN then we have to ban wardrobes. We shouldn't be taking the chance of people ending up in Narnia!
If you follow that thinking, paintings of ships, train platforms and colored rings are dangerous, too. Oh, and progressive boarding schools.
Honestly, why are people so afraid of violent cataclysmic events? personally I'd much rather die because of a supernova, or a black hole, heck even an atomic weapon (as long as I'm sitting right in the part of the blast where your vaporized) instead of dying because of cancer. or aids. or in some lonely cell in guantanamo.
Cataclysmic instantaneous death=cool
long painful, possibly alienated and ostracized death = lame-sauce
Wouldn't you rather die, along with the whole world, or galaxy even, in some instantaneous geeky death? I know I would. Bring on the Earth destroying comets and LHC induced alternate realities.
Oh great, the LHC is getting delayed again, thus antigravity machines, warp drives, and other cool stuff utilizing advanced knowledge of physics is now delayed.
what if it's a parallel universe of happiness and love?
Another cartoon about the dangers of the Large Hadron Collider:
http://www.overcompensating.com/
(March 28th installment.)
it's a pretty problem though. I'm sure this person is wrong and we should go ahead. Based on balance of probabilities derived from life experience -not lab time. I don't begin to understand the science in any meaningful detail but I do know by now who gets to spend money, run things and throw the big red switch at the opening ceremony. Plenty of good minds have worked a long time on this. If significant hazards were possible (based on same data the litigants have even less of), there would be a chorus of naysayers and daily acts of sabotage. Someone is either taking the piss, getting the limelight or just being selfish and stupid.
What about global warming? I thinbk it is happening and a threat. Should I kill the deniers on the grounds they are trying to kill all of us?
Why did they fire the first thermonuclear bomb on Teller's main insistence it was safe when anyone who knew Edward Teller knew he was dangerously arrogant and monomaniacal? After some genuinely raised the question that runaway fusion would ignite the atmosphere? Do you know the name of the that Russian submariner that likely stopped World War 3 - even heard of him? I suspect he was "crazy" at the time too.
Fire up CERN by all means. Look out for complacency too.
#10/calebcharles
I was thinking the same thing. Of course, I've been watching too much History "End-of-Days" Channel of late.
#14 - another fine story that has a Particle Accelerator causing shenanigans is Walter Jon Williams' novel "Days Of Atonement". Not on quite the same scale though...
If we don't take some chances to advance scientific understanding we'll end up smoking ourselves anyhow.
I for one welcome my non-baryonic overlords....
I don't begrudge this fellow his day in court, but I think it's inappropriate to issue a prior injunction absent much stronger proof.
If the experiment goes wrong and the earth is sucked into a black hole or parallel universe and destroyed, then let him claim actual damages. That's why we have civil courts, after all.
MSNBC has an article as well, with handy hyperlinks...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23844529/
Amateurs
Sam Hughes shows us all how to do it right.
How to destroy the Earth
@ Micheal DeanI" love how the non-physicists on this thread all say the plaintiff is a crackpot, but the only two guys with actual training in physics won't say a catastrophic event is impossible."
I am a real-life Tevatron operator. I am trying as hard as i can to suck us through a black hole, but it is very very hard.
The last time this came up at work we thought we were part of some kind of candid camera psych experiment.
This is stupid. i need more red bull and cheesecake .
"the basics for time travel start at CERN"
-John Titor
#1 posted by jgrassick: I think this proves we already live in a parallel reality.
There's no need for such wild fantasy. President Gore and Prime Minister Hawking have this matter well in hand. Just relax and enjoy the upcoming Israel-NeoPalestine unification anniversary, whydontcha? I plan on flying there myself (since it's so cheap, with oil at $13 a barrel).
I only wish that my wife could go with me to see it, but the Soylent Green lottery is indeed worthwhile, and I know that her sacrifice was needed. It will lead to victory over the Lectroids from Planet 10 - it MUST!
sorry Betatron, all you have is the real world, hard work and proven methods. Not good enough for television.
Favorite line from the nytimes article about the same issue:
"He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, 'the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.'"
i think i saw this happen in the men's shower on the mining ship "Red Dwarf". oh, wait. that was a smeggin' timehole.
big swirly thing alert?
seeing as how this is about democratically admitting all stakeholders, has the Church of the FSM weighed in yet?
You know how some people think vaccinating babies against polio,smallpox, whooping cough, lock jaw, German measles, diptheria, etc. might give them autism or some other health problem? Should they be allowed to sue all vaccination into a standstill until we are really sure?
How about Creationists? Should they be able to get an injunction against any further paelentology just in case the skies open "soon" and the Big Hairy Guy reveals all?
I suppose it was inevitable that halfway through yesterday's New York Times front-page story they would spell it the "Large Hardon Collider." Accident or conspiracy?!?
Maybe botanists should get inside more often. Yesterday, the History Channel ran a marathon of their show, The Universe, and in the episode about black holes they brought up this very point—and dragged out a couple of big brained scientists to prove that the destruction of the universe as a result was a completely absurd idea.
Takuan,
I agree with you on -how- I'd like to go, but I would like to delay going in any event.
This is the relevant webcomic, anyhow.
re:" The earth is regularly hit by cosmic rays that are far more energetic than anything the LHC will be able to produce."
The New York Times mentioned this - but also mentioned - that unlike cosmic rays - which pass through the earth at the speed of light - the results of the collider stick around here.
Black Holes - MEH - let's see some stranglets! Every atom on earth converted into alternate matter - woot!
Takuan, the really annoying thing about these times is that as soon as think you have things figured out it all gets turned upside down.
The Next Big Autism Bomb: Are 1 in 50 Kids Potentially At Risk?
"On Tuesday, March 11, a conference call was held between vaccine safety officials at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, several leading experts in vaccine safety research, and executives from America's Health Insurance Plans, (the HMO trade association) to discuss childhood mitochondrial dysfunction and its potential link to autism and vaccines."
I don't recall walking through the looking glass but it sure feels like it.
Tom was thinking war, but the sentiment is the same
When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that sooner or'l
Later those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.
(But don't you worry.)
No more ashes, no more sackcloth,
And an arm band made of black cloth
Will some day nevermore adorn a sleeve.
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too,
There'll be nobody left behind to grieve.
And we will all go together when we go.
What a comforting fact that is to know.
Universal bereavement,
An inspiring achievement,
Yes, we will all go together when we go.
We will all go together when we go.
All suffused with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd's of London will be loaded when they go.
Oh we will all fry together when we fry.
We'll be French fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.
Down by the old maelstrom,
There'll be a storm before the calm.
And we will all bake together when we bake.
There'll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.
Oh we will all char together when we char.
And let there be no moaning of the bar.
Just sing out a Te Deum
When you see that I.C.B.M.,*
And the party will be come-as-you-are.
Oh, we will all burn together when we burn.
There'll be no need to stand and wait your turn.
When it's time for the fallout
And Saint Peter calls us all out,
We'll just drop our agendas and adjourn.
You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas.
Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollahs.
And we will all go together when we go.
Every Hottentot and every Eskimo.
When the air becomes uranious,
We will all go simultaneous.
Yes, we all will go together
When we all go together,
Yes we all will go together when we go.
Noen
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7076
Two things. One - HuffPo is a sleazy tabloid and spins everything to be sensational. Which is why I read it. Two - The editorial also points out that, if any of this is true, the children most at risk from the vaccines are also the children who most desperately need the vaccines.
Of course I'm a little biased. I had echovirus, chicken pox, measles, rubella twice!!! and I've got one shriveled nut from mumps.
Oh btw the Brits made some nice film of what a disaster of this type would look like - however unlikely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1vKisefsuI
I'll see that and raise you rheumatic fever
This video shows a more realistic vision of the end of human civilization.
CERN in the parallel universe is probably also being sued right now! So when the LHC of our universe and the LHC of the parallel universe is switched on at the same time, we will just switch our universes... which result in hardly anything detectable! Perfect!
Antinous; why, why you prill us, why?
Perspective.
Good riddance, says I.
AAArrgghh. Prill Rolled :)
can't find it, but apparently there is a prill TV sign-off. That would qualify as old.
@29: I'm not sure what your basis is for assuming I am not a physicist, nor your basis for assuming that people who claim to be physicists are telling the truth. The Atlas guy sounds plausible to me, the "I have a physics background" guy less so, although his account of low momentum mini-black-holes is superficially plausible.
One of the most pointless enterprises on the 'Net is proclaiming your credentials, because anyone can say anything. I could say I've been actively engaged in the study of high energy cosmic ray backgrounds while working on neutrino experiments at Caltech. How could you know if it's true?
In any case, the whole argument turns on one particular theory of physics beyond the standard model being the correct one, Hawking radiation not existing, and the possibility of creating a mini-black-hole that is moving incredibly slowly (less than 0.0001 c). The phase space for such a collision is miniscule, and again: the rest of the scenario depends on pure speculation. Takuan's comparison to actions that might precipitate the Second Coming (or the 12th Imam) is dead on.
If you take this "threat" seriously you are setting a bar so low that virtually any human action whatsoever must be considered as posing an unacceptable threat to the Earth.
I like neutrinos.
"Physicists at the Brookhaven LHC before it was turned on calculated a maximum chance of 20 in a billion that it would destroy the Earth."
The odds are better than 20 in a billion that if you step into the shower, you will slip, crack your head and die. Or get hit by a car. Or killed by lightning. Or eaten by a wild animal. Or have a sudden allergic reaction and choke to death. And on and on and on.
20 in a billion is statistically irrelevant.
Now yer just comin' on to me.
I like fluids. Prill, prill. Sorry for your shriveled nut Antinous. That sucks balls.
Too bad cosmic rays have been exceeding these energies since the birth of the galaxy.
you wish
Jim, that's a hell of a lot of odd things to happen in the shower.
But thanks to you, every time I get in the shower, I'm going to have to check the drain for wild animals.
@25,
Q: Why did the botanist cross the road?
A: To destroy the universe by triggering some hitherto unknown law of physics.
I think it is interesting that we already discuss things like parallel universe. In my opinion science is going the best way when it shows esteem toward the society, at the end toward all of us.
I'd check the shower head for bees first.
I've had black widows and scorpions in the shower. Neither of them tried to suck me into a parallel universe, but I screamed like a girl anyway.
Humans must activate Large Hadron Collider. Only then can Morvo return home...
If you misspell "Hadron", it makes perfect sense to worry about "a large hardon collider opening up a black hole".
thank you! don't forget to tip your waitress.
Stupid Human! MorBo!
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1200/1470195958_9a61f6e2e2.jpg
piker!
try meeting gejigeji in your futon!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/House_centipede.jpg
One doesn't sleep on the floor in the desert. And slippers live on top of the nightstand. My old neighbors had two rattlesnakes in their house.
I finally heard from my physicist friend at CERN, at least he left this on my answering machine:
SHAMMASH SHA KASHSHAPIYA KASSHAP TIYA
EPISHYA MUSHTEPISH TIYA!
Kima Tinur khuturshuna l'rim!
Lichulu Lizubu u Littaattuku!
E Pishtashunu Kima meh naadu ina tikhi likhtu!
SHUNU LIMUTUMA ANAKU LU'UBLUYI!
SHUNU LINISHUMA ANAKU LU'UDNIN!
SHUNU LI'IKTISHUMA ANAKU LUUPPATARI!
Tirrama shaluti Sha Kashshapti Sha Ruchi ye
Ipushu
Shupi yi arkhish Uppu yush!
ZI DINGIR GAL KESHSHEBA KANPA!
good for a laugh
http://www.vietnamwebsite.net/thugian/anhla/nguoi/snakebite.jpg
good evening
http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/ftvms737_2006/frankenstein%201931/nosferatu%20scroll%20whole/nosferatu11.jpg
Lubos Motl's analysis of the LHC risk:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/02/lhc-alarmists.html
why are you all worrying? That gamma ray burster with our name on has already gone off. Anyone's guess on the distance.
As far as I know, we're being thrown into alternate universes every fraction of a second. This is a crazy world for a reason!
For all I know, this might instead mend everything, including Star Wars.
prepare for unforeseen consequences
I think we can safe exclude Biology from the realm of science. It is no more scientific than marketing or economics.
Tom @ 71 wrote: If you take this "threat" seriously you are setting a bar so low that virtually any human action whatsoever must be considered as posing an unacceptable threat to the Earth.
This is the only point that needs to be made, it seems. Mathematically, there's a non-zero chance that all of the air molecules in the room you're in will suddenly coalesce into a small area and you'll suffocate -- it doesn't mean we should lose sleep worrying about that possibility.
Scientists tend to put things in terms of levels of confidence rather than certainty, and that scares folks who want to be "sure" of things. Scientists are extremely confident, for example, that water freezes at 0 degrees centigrade at sea level -- that there is a non-zero chance that it won't at some point, doesn't mean we can't act like we're "sure" about it.
Antinous #82 I've been sucked into a parallel universe in the shower a few times. Ah, memories of good times ;) None of them were a widow, but I think one was a Scorpio :)
bloody mammals
The earth might be sucked into a black hole, but who said it will come out the other side OK? In fact, tidal forces will ripped the earth apart, into bits smaller than grains of sand, before they even reach the event horizon of the black hole.
CERNs web site states that we have not been destroyed by effects of cosmic rays and micro black holes will evaporate.
However, cosmic rays travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, while collider particles smash head on like car collisions and can be captured by Earths gravity. Einsteins highly successful relativity theory predicts that micro black holes will not decay but instead only grow, and Hawking Radiation is an unproven and disputed theory that contradicts relativity.
There is currently no reasonable proof of LHC safety, LSAG (LHC Safety Assessment Group) has been trying for months to prove safety without success. However science may still be a few years away from being able to prove safety or not.
Professor Dr. Otto E. Roessler has given interviews and lectures in Europe warning of a very real danger to the planet from the Large Hadron Collider.
If this experiment is so safe, why arent CERN scientists allowed to express any personal fears they might have about this Collider?
Alleged in the legal action: Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Engelen passed an internal memorandum to workers at CERN, asking them, regardless of personal opinion, to affirm in all interviews that there were no risks involved in the experiments, changing the previous assertion of minimal risk. (Statisticians generally consider minimal risk as 1-10%).
Which would more wise, conduct a full and independent adversarial safety study first, or just turn it on now and see what happens?
JTankers
LHCConcerns.com
who makes money out of any delays and or publicity about theoretic "dangers"?
I'm confident that if it this thing was really dangerous to the universe, aliens would appear at the last minute to prevent us from doing damage. (Or, they would just obliterate Earth to eliminate the human menace.)
Don't worry. If it were imminently dangerous, Bill Higgins would tell us about it.
(Bill gave me a rock that came out of the excavations deep under CERN. It's very cool.)
Don't worry. If it were imminently dangerous, Bill Higgins would tell us about it.
It's not. In my humble opinion.
(Bill gave me a rock that came out of the excavations deep under CERN. It's very cool.)
Under Fermilab, my dear, not under CERN. CERN are The Other Guys.
Your rock was from the MINOS near-detector cave, 350 feet underground, at the end of the NUMI neutrino beamline. Some good pictures are in this slideshow (PDF).
Have you read CERNs SPC Committee's Safety Report disclaimer?
"this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos that, while highly plausible, do require confirmation" (indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?contribId=20&resId=0&materialId=0&confId=35065)
So... Dr. Rosser might still be correct: "...after 50 months the earth to a centimeter would have shrunk"
Awesome video on YouTube "You Prefer Your Collider": youtube.com/watch?v=A1L2xODZSI4
More at LHCFacts.org
Hey! What if the parallel universe we get sucked into is World of Warcraft? I've always wanted to be a mage in real life…
It is probably some kind of a protection against the END OF THE WORLD programmed for 12-12-2012