All right, Jim. Point taken.

Let's all take a step back shall we. I'd like to keep this discussion moving forward. You are correct Argos that not all ArXiv papers are peer reviewed. However, Giddings and Mangano (2008) has been accepted to Physical Review Letters, and has thus been peer reviewed, presumably. In any case, the LSAG safety review is primarily based on Giddings and Mangano (G&M). Thus, in order to keep from going in circles, I propose that we limit our discussion to the Giddings and Mangano paper--they are the experts, and it's what the LSAG report is based on, so let's critically read what they have to say.

so I trust we can lay to rest the argument that mBH's must be harmless because the Earth is still here. As I pointed out in last night, G&M's calculations show that cosmic ray produced mBH's probably go right through both the Earth and the Sun. And Gidding's calculations show that mBH's are probably not produced at RHIC because the energy there isn't high enough. Maybe it's the case that a few from cosmic rays or RHIC get stuck in the Earth. But we can't say that for sure. G&M are trying to be conservative--as is proper according to the Precautionary Principle. In other words, since we can't say for sure that mBH's are trapped within Earth, we can't say with a reasonable certainty that mBH's that could get trapped by the Earth in the future are not harmless.

We can discuss this more, if you all want, but I'd rather move on to stopping lengths within white dwarfs. If there is an mBH showstopper that can guarantee the safety of the LHC, it is to be found G&M's argument from white dwarfs. That is, even if it's the case that CR induced mBH's are not trapped by the Earth, G&M argue that they would get trapped by white dwarfs, and since we see lots of white dwarfs, then we may safely assume that any 5- or 6-D stable black holes do not in fact grow fast enough to be a danger--or alternatively, we may safely assume that the universe actually exists in 7 or more dimensions. I actually have not yet taken a close look at that part of M&G. I will point out now, however, that Plaga's section 5 criticized M&G for not taking the worst case assumption when it comes to stopping lengths in white dwarfs; that is, Plaga said that M&G's calculations depend on whether it is valid to extrapolate the "semiclassical approximation" to the the "deep quantum gravitational regime." Moreover, Plaga's section 5 was not directly addressed by M&G's rebuttal to Plaga's paper. So that would seem to be fertile ground for a productive discussion. I promise to keep an open mind if you all do as well. I have learned much by participating in this thread so far, and I hope you all are as well.