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Originally Posted by Van Rijn
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I didn't want to have to do this, but . . .
LURKER ALERT
Fellow Doomsayers: Read carefully the dissembling words of the infamous Professor Cox du CERN
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Originally Posted by Brian Cox
Okay, so how do we know this thing won't make planet Earth implode then? (Stephen)
A: Let me answer all of these at once.
The LHC has absolutely no chance of destroying anything bigger than a few protons, let alone the Earth.
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This is false--even the boosters on this thread agree that there is no such thing as absolute certainty.
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This is not based on theoretical assumptions.
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Actually, it is; he details them below.
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It is, of course, essential that all scientific research at the frontiers of knowledge, from genetics to particle physics, is subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny to ensure that our voyages into the unknown do not result in unforeseen, perhaps dangerous outcomes.
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So he admits he's heading into the unknown.
That goes to show that government policies are out of date--they weren't designed to deal with existential threats to the entire planet.
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For the record, the LHC collides particles together at energies far below those naturally occurring in many places in the Universe, including the upper atmosphere of our planet every second of every day.
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This is the same old "nature's done exactly the same 'experiment' 10
31 times!" line that
Van Rijn can't get out of his head, like that old ELO song.
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If the LHC can produce micro black holes, for example, then nature is doing it right now by smashing ultra-high energy cosmic ray particles into the Earth directly above our heads with no discernable consequences.
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Check out the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't magic trick here: he fails to mention that cosmic ray produced mBH's won't get trapped by Earth's gravity, whereas LHC produced mBH's will.
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The overwhelmingly most likely explanation for our continued existence in the face of this potentially prolific production of black holes is that they aren't produced at all because there are either no extra dimensions in the Universe, or they aren't set up right for us to see them.
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Now he expresses his doubts about extra dimensions. That's because he's a particle physicist. Particle physicists and string theorists have, shall we say, a strong professional rivalry. String theorists are mere ivory tower mathematicians who never experiment, whereas particle physicists are mere bug counters just one step above
ecologists. That's how they view each other. Extra dimensions are predicted by string theory. So it's not surprising that Cox takes a dim view of extra dimensions.
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If black holes are being produced, then next on the list of explanations for our continued existence is the broad theoretical consensus that sub-atomic black holes should fizzle back into the Universe very quickly, billionths of a second after they are created in a little flash of particles via a process known as Hawking radiation.
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See, now he's going through the list, just like I did. So, you at least know I had the right framework all along.
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In other words, they evaporate away very quickly indeed. This process, which is perhaps Steven Hawking's greatest contribution to theoretical physics, is on significantly firmer theoretical ground than the extra dimensions theories required to create the little black holes in the first place.
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Hawking radiation: Cox fails to mention that, like hypothetical extra dimensions, Hawking radiation has
never been empirically detected, despite decades of looking for it. Hawking is a certified genius, to be sure. But that hasn't prevented him from being radically wrong in the past. Heck, he used to think that the Universe is
decelerating! Imagine that!
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Even if Hawking is wrong, and therefore much of our understanding of modern physics is also wrong, the little black holes would be so tiny that they would rarely come close enough to a particle of matter in the Earth to eat it and grow.
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It's true that mBH's are tiny. However, they will rapidly orbit the Earth--
within the Earth! And according to one of CERN's own publications, if the string theorists are correct the LHC could become a "black hole factory" producing mBH's at the rate of 1 per second. So they could possibly wind up releasing millions of mBH's into the Earth each year. Even if the vast majority don't hit much of anything, when there's millions and millions of them it's virtually guaranteed that some of them will. Anyone can flip heads ten times in a row--if they keep flipping enough coins.
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And even if you don't buy any of this, then you can still relax in the knowledge that we have no evidence anywhere in the Universe of a little black hole eating anything - not just Earth but the Sun and planets and every star we can see in the sky, including the immensely dense neutron stars and white dwarfs, remnants of ancient Suns that populate the sky in their millions and which because of their density would make great black hole food.
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There's plenty of evidence of
big black holes eating all kinds of things. And if a mBH grows to the point where it can eat a star, it's not exactly an mBH anymore, is it? And here he skips over the part about how it is necessary to extrapolate the semiclassical approximation to multidimensional mBH's that exist deep within the quantum gravitational regime. However, there is no evidence that such mBH's will actually decide to obey the semiclassical laws. Why should they? So it
is possible that cosmic ray induced mBH's might pass harmlessly through neutron stars because of their super high velocity, and that's why we see neutron stars, but the LHC produced mBH's, since they will be basically at rest with respect to Earth, will get sucked into Earth's gravity well.
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So - the only theoretical bit is in the proposition that you can make little black holes in the first place. From then on, observation tells us that these things either (a) don't exist - the most likely explanation; or (b) exist, but do not eat neutron stars and are therefore harmless, probably because they evaporate away very quickly indeed!
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Wait a minute. In the first paragraph he said, "This is not based on theoretical assumptions." If it is only string theory that says one can make mBH's, it is only semiclassical particle physics theory that says that one cannot make mBH's. And Hawking radiation is only a theory at this point. And the extrapolation of the semiclassical approximation to the quantum gravitational regime is a theoretical extrapolation. In short, the entire argument that the LHC is "absolutely safe" is shot through and through with theory.
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I am in fact immensely irritated by the conspiracy theorists who spread this nonsense around and try to scare people. This non-story is symptomatic of a larger mistrust in science, particularly in the US, which includes intelligent design amongst other things.
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I got to admire his chutzpah! I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that Karl Rove is a paid consultant for CERN, were it not for the obvious disdain of the US that some CERN people exhibit. . . .
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The only serious issue is why so many people who don't have the time or inclination to discover for themselves why this stuff is total crap have to be exposed to the opinions of these half-wits. (BC)
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DO NOT LOOK AT THE MAN BEHIND THE SCREEN! Yeah, freedom of speech . . .
Note the blatant insult of thoughtful people who are merely concerned about the safety of their home planet. It does wonders for his credibility. Note also that he did not mention the value of an entire inhabited planet--that would draw attention to exactly what is being risked. Note also that he did not mention possible alternatives to the LHC--like citing the thing off planet, or at least using single beam technology (which would at least eject any mBH's produced out of Earth's gravity well). And note that he did not assign any numerical probabilities to any of his theories that the safety of the LHC is supposed to be based on. That is because, no matter how you slice it, the probability of world destruction is quite large indeed when what will be lost is considered. We've got all our eggs in one basket, and now we're about to bet the bank. Let's hope we get lucky. . . .
