Hi guys,

Sorry I haven't had a chance to get back sooner. I'm on my way to a new job in the oil patch to drill Mother Earth. And sorry for calling John Ellis a "geek", Jim. I will say, however, that the language that Prof. Ellis and Brian Cox have used to describe their opponents (e.g., me) is unprintable on this forum at least.

Basically, there are four "showstoppers" that are supposed to guarantee the safety of the LHC:

1. it's unlikely that mBH's will form in the first place
2. it's unlikely that any mBH's that are formed will be metastable
3. it's unlikely that any metastable mBH's will grow fast enough to be problematic because of their tiny size
4. this last point is reinforced the existence of white dwarfs and neutron stars (i.e., if cosmic rays are producing mBH's, they are not probably of dangerous 5 or 6-D variety)

So, for the LHC to be potentially problematic, all four of the above get tossed out the window. If we just go by scientific retraction (not rejection) rates, the equivalent of four papers would have to get retracted. So the range would be 10^-2^4 = 10^-8 (about what Lord Rees came up with for RHIC) to 10^-3^4 = 10^-12.

So then we do a cost benefit analysis. That depends on the value of the Earth. Judge Posner himself rated the value of the Earth at a mere $600 trillion, based on people's willingness to pay to reduce small risks of death. So the expected cost = $6 x 10¹⁴ * 10^-8 = $6,000,000. So if the LHC can be expected to produce more than $6,000,000 in benefits, then we should do it.

However, Posner remarked that the estimate of the value of the Earth at $600 trillion is arguably too small. Americans, anyway, based on their willingness to pay to reduce small risks of death, value themselves at about $7,000,000 each. Presumably, other Earthlings would value themselves similarly, if they could afford it. Social justice demands that we not discount the dollar value of poor people. So, 6 x 10[sup]9 people times 7 x 10 ⁶ USD ea. = $4.2 x 10¹⁶. Multiplying that value by 10^-8 yields an expected cost of $420,000,000 USD. Not too bad I guess. So really, I should go along with running the LHC--if I accepted those valuations of the Earth. Which I don't. This whole cost-benefit way of looking at the issue bugs me for some reason. For one thing it discounts future generations. I don't think that's fair.

There are other ways. As the Adrian Kent paper argued, if we applied the UK radiation standards (1 in a million chance of causing 5 deaths per year), then p_catastrophe would have to be below 10^-18 if future generations are discounted, and 10^-21 if future generations are counted.