Quote:
Originally Posted by Celestial Mechanic
I'm very disappointed that you are pursuing this argument against the LHC so vehemently. You are the only poster here ever to defend an ATM theory well enough that I could accept it as a possibility. (The possibility that we are only seeing the top of the GRS of Jupiter and that it really is a low-pressure storm, not a high-pressure one. I don't accept it stretching all the way down to the core, however.) I think if you understood particle physics as well as you do teleology (uggh!) you would understand that the LHC poses no more risk of creating black-holes than nuclear weapons did of setting the atmosphere on fire or of strangelets (another particle accelerator doomsday scenario) gobbling up the Earth.
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Thanks for the complement re: the GRS (I think,
) (BTW, my theory is that it only extends to the PPT, a mere fraction of the total radius--but let's not talk about that too much, I don't want to get scooped again!
)
My main point here is not that the probability of a global catastrophe is not tiny. I've worked out to my own satisfaction that the
pcatastrophe is on the order of the risk of death from taking a single flight on a commercial airliner. Moreover my estimate is in line with quantitative estimates that were calculated for RHIC. And given that the LHC is an order of magnitude more powerful than RHIC, I don't see how the LHC
pcatastrophe can be much lower than the
pcatastrophe estimates for RHIC.
And so my point is that people underestimate the true cost of accepting tiny probabilities when immense values are at risk. If we extend the ordinary techniques of risk analysis to the LHC, there is cause for concern. And there are practicable alternatives, like building a single-beam collider; no one has yet said that a 14 TeV single-beam collider is ruled out by the laws of physics; it sounds like it's more a matter of engineering and $$$. Alternatively, CERN could take modern risk analysis seriously and conclusively demonstrate (with evidence) that the risk is much less than 10
-18. I've mainly been trying to draw people more into a debate about what
is the acceptable, avoidable, maximum risk that we should accept when the very existence of Mother Earth is on the line. If the maximum, acceptable
pcatastrophe is not 10
-18, then what should it be? Arguably, 10
-18 is too
high. That's a question that is relevant to all of Earth's citizens, and you don't have to be a particle physicist to weigh in on that subject.
And yes, I have no special expertise in particle physics. The cursory introduction I received was not very impressive; I did not find quarks to be very charming.