Epic, lol. Thanks for the added info and today's lesson.

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On a slightly different point from what others have mentioned; if that were true, it would be prophecy and therefore inevitable, and then so why worry about it? If you believe in stuff like Armageddon, then presumably you would be on the "good side" and therefore would have nothing to be concerned about! I, on the other hand...

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No it doesn't miss the point. As you said, we have quite a few accelerators running. The information gathered with those accelerators all produce the same data (more or less). Why build a larger one only to use it to verify whats already been tested and verified for half a century? That would be a an extremely large waste of money, not to mention the wasted amount of work done by the scientists.

Again, why verify something that has already been tested over and over for 50 years using many other accelerators? It's like claiming that jet engines should run no faster than a propeller driven engine to verify that the propeller engines work as claimed.

The purpose of building the LHC in the first place was to take us to the next level of particle physics.

It won't have much of a use if it's held up in court. As a matter of fact, it won't have any use if it's held up in court.

Well yes, it would. The point of the LHC is to move particles faster. If the courts hold it up, the LHC won't even go on-line.

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Well, you still have not answered the question.

You're more kind of saying the question should not be asked.

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I'm not saying that's what should be done with the new one.

I'm asking if that could be done with the new one.

That's very different.


Rubbish.

It's more like using a newer better wind tunnel to re-measure a wing design already tested by an older wind tunnel.

(added: also, that misses my point that the existing accelerators are still (as far as I know) still in operation. That does imply (if I'm right) that there is still more useful stuff to be done in that area of interest.)


I agree.

I say yes.

I don't say no.


Depends exactly what the court order, if any, stated.

My question is relevant to that.

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There are no controversial results from the current high end colliders? The fact that I can't remember which one is currently the strongest indicates my expertise, but I seem to remember reading about results that are contested. Duplication of results in a new collider is not a step backwards, confirming results is a step forwards. So if such a limitation were to be temporarily imposed, the delay to full power needs not be a complete waste.*) Not that I'd like it... fire it up already

*) provided LHC has the proper detectors etc to duplicate results.

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Sticks, "Jurassic Park" was written by a staunchly anti-science author (who is also an all-round jerk). And it's fiction!

Blake's Seven? Also fiction!

And the arrogant know-it-all scientist? Fiction! Three strikes! You're out!

The "arrogant know-it-all scientist" is almost entirely the invention of anti-intellectual dullard authors and screenwriters, who play on the fears of a public that doesn't understand science, and thus fears it (while nevertheless enjoying the benefits thereof.)

Popular culture is filled with fictional mad/irresponsible scientists, from Dr Frankenstein to any number of frizzy-haired cackling lunatics. And since WWII there's the over-emphasis placed on German and Japanese butchers-in-lab-coats, and the ambivalence over the morality of the Manhattan Project scientists.

But the Nazi/Japanese butchers were an aberration, a tiny minority. The Manhattan Project scientists did end the war, saving millions of American and Japanese* lives.

The lone madman working magic in a castle is also rubbish. Modern scientists always work in collaboration with others. These days, there is very little that can be accomplished by one man. And those other scientists, and the peers that review them, tend to put the brakes on any one man's psychosis. (Unless, of course, the entire country is undergoing a mass psychosis.)

*)Saving Japanese lives? Didn't the evil, murderous Americans butcher tens of thousands of Japanese women and children? Well yes, they did. But if they had invaded instead, millions more would have died. In fact, the Americans wouldn't have needed to invade. If they had waited another few months, their blockade would have resulted in the starvation of practically the entire Japanese population. In a horrific sense, the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared the lives of millions more of their countrymen.

Atomic bombs are a terrifying menace, but they did end WWII. And while the paranoia in the 1950's over a Soviet/American war was also terrible, the threat of nuclear retaliation did put the breaks on any plans Stalin might have had to steamroller the armies of Western Europe.

So it is grossly simplistic and unfair to portray nuclear-weapons scientists as irresponsible accessories to mass murder.

Not really, but we are dealing with a now hostile media whipping up fear

This is quite true, the science does show that nature works to higher energy levels than we are. As for arrogant scientists, not sure any stands out in this field, but the public preception is that scientists in one field could tar those in unrelated fields in the minds of the general public. For an example of a scientist that seems to have an arrogant public image, I would have to cite Richard Dawkins, even though this has nothing to do with the LHC. People look at him and think he represents all scientists. Maybe wrong and totally unfair, but that is what we are up against.

But the genreral public when they look at science fiction may assume that the writers did do something resembling research (Apart from the ones who came up with Phil's "favourite" Armageddon). They may not know or care about the back story, and these things filter into public perception.

As for the arrogant know-it-all scientist being a myth, again I have to refer to the way Richard Dawkins comes across sometimes. People see that and unfairly tar everyone with the same brush.

We may have the science on our side, but we forget that this is not just about science, unfortunately politics muddies the water here.

We have the gutter press coming out against this, manipulating the public who pay the wages of the elected politicians who make the laws.

Remember Intelligent design was exposed as creationism by the back door, thanks to a court case. Scientists were prepared to submit their science to the test in open court, why not those at CERN? Surely with the science so watertight on this, there should not be a problem like there was no problem at Dover?

Now the BBC is trying to help out with their big bang day and they have a Q&A section where Brian Cox has addressed this safety issue here

I can not really paste his response here as the last bit might violate the forum rules on bad language.

But even with the BBC on our side, I am not sure that could overcome the likes of The Sun newspaper, which has in the past helped to decide the outcome of General elections in the UK. Maybe an injunction and a subsequent court case would be the best way to deal with the doom mongers like the way ID was knocked down by the Dover court case.

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This is the version from the Daily Mail

You may want to read the comments, as a lot of people do seem to be against this, although there are a few defending the LHC.

Our standard argument is that cosmic rays have higher energies than the LHC, however one commenter came up with this.

So what is the response to this comment about CRC's You may want to post it on the Daily Mail site as well.

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well, atmospheric collisions would be like firing a snooker ball at a huge cloud of other snooker balls; that is, you are still going to get head on collisions.

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I think what it boils down to is that yes, the LHC has a nonzero probability of creating mass destruction on Earth.

But that's mathematically nonzero.

It's also a nonzero possibility that every molecule on the Earth might spontaneously wink out of the observable universe all at once.

I'm not holding my breath for the day it happens though, and neither am I worried that the LHC will doom us all.

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The problem with these statements is that they sound like an admission.
Granted- you are being honest but...


There is also a nonzero probability that I will be teleported across the galaxy spontaneously.

Many folks don't really understand what a nonzero probability actually MEANS. They hear nonzero probability- and their brain just says "This can happen, then!!!"

If they answer with, "So that could happen then!" just say:

Yes, if scientists were to invent a machine that could manipulate probability so that the most insanely, incredibly improbable events started happening - all at once.

Since there is no such machine and never will be I think we're safe.

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it's funny how people are so concerned about a few mini- black holes, but don't really care about global warming.


there's probably a non-zero chance that there will be a black widow spider in people's cheerios, in the morning too. But they'll spoon it down, without a glance.

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yeah...
That goes in one ear and out the other

Five minutes later they are yelling it could happen again.

Cosmic rays have been hitting the Earth for 4 billion years. The odds approach 100% that at least one has done so on a path aimed at the center of the Earth and absolutely nothing happened. And Earth's gravity has the same effect whether the products of the particle collisions stop or not. If you look at the collision fragments from these collisions, they spray out in a variety of directions and I believe gravity has insignificant effect on them (they are just single sub-atomic particles). A micro-black hole would weigh no more than that and gravity would have as little effect on it.

There is no evidence that the LHC will make a single black hole, let alone millions.

And how much say does public opinion in the UK have on the operations of the LHC. I'll admit ignorance about European courts, but does a UK court have much say on something in France and Switzerland?

I find it very troubling that "we" would even consider shutting down or delaying the operation of the LHC for such moronic, fear-mongering rubbish. The cost of waiting years while this absolute nonsense slugged through the courts would be in the millions, if not more (staff, grad students, equipment, etc. can't be put on hold for nothing). If we bend to this then the morons have truely won. We will be lowering our selves to the lowest common denominator of stupidity.

Sorry, but that is my frank opinion.

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Swift, the trouble is that these people who are being scare-mongered are those who pay for this through their taxes and the politicians know this. (Although I am not shure what the UK contribution is to CERN if anything, especially when there was talk earlier in the year of pulling the plug on Jodrel Bank)

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It will actually be very bad science to NOT repeat previous experiments to see if they show the same results, since that's a confirmation that the detectors are behaving as expected.
Feynman wrote an article about bad habits of science, and one of them was to run only new experiments when you get new equipment without first confirming that the new setup can reproduce the results of older equipment.

You should do it to verify that the new accelerator works correctly before going to the energy ranges where it doesn't overlap with the others, since an even larger waste of money would be if we run it for a year before realizing that all results have to be thrown out because it wasn't confirmed to measure what was expected.

Unfortunately, getting grants for runtime to repeat experiments already done on other accelerators is likely to be difficult even though a lack of such experiments makes all the rest of the results suspect.

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Let me add that this statement is inaccurate.
The larger accelerators can achieve MORE than the existing ones.

As an analogy- Imagine trying to use a grade school chemistry set or having a full University Chem lad available

The larger accelerators can push us further. It is not just reproducing results, it's generating NEW results.

Any further news on this injunction?

They are using Human Rights legislation to block it.

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There is a nonzero probability, however, that one will be manufactured...

There is another thread around here about how most folks just don't get probabilities; this thread is excellent evidence of that.

Tell the Average Guy that there is a one in a gajillion chance that the LHC could produce a mini-black hole that swallows the earth, and he will insist it never go on-line.

However, that same Average Guy will smoke cigarettes and expect not to get any disease, or drive a car and expect never to have an accident.

This is probably tied to some sort of internal, subliminal risk matrixing that folks do (likelihood vs severity). While the odds of me having a car accident are significantly higher than the mini-black hole scenario, the severity of the outcome is far less (just me) compared to the mbh (the whole flippin' world!).

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I think it is because most of us think we won't have a car crash because we have (illusory) control over what happens on the road. It's a myth, of course; if you have ever seen a high speed car crash, it is AMAZING how fast they happen. There is very little--or none at all---chance a person will react in time, but we all think we will.

With the LHC, we can't even kid ourselves about that...we (the vast majority of us) have no control at all...no matter that the odds of a bad outcome are almost infinitely smaller.

I've seen quotes that there is a 1 in 50,000,000 chance that SOMETHING REALLY BAD will be produced by the LHC. These are better odds than winning the Powerball (1 in 179,000,000). Yet, people win Powerball every few days. And what are we betting? Your mother, sisters, daughters, granddaughters, great granddaughters, great great granddaughters, great great great granddaughters, etc.

But for me to say that really misses the point. The odds are either 1 or they are zero. The fact is we don't know what the odds are. What are the odds that Hawking is right, and Einstein is wrong? Any attempt to put a number to that must be recognized for what it is: a subjective, Bayesian probability. You're better off asking the British odds makers than actual physicists what the probability that the world will end.

And what is the potential benefit? There will be a few papers with 200 authors, and billions of euros worth of government sponsored makework will occur.

It's not worth the risk.
Of course!

Who was quoted, what was the quote, and what scientific study was it based on? When you get back, please provide a reference for this.

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There must also be a small possibility that the discoveries made at the LHC will lead to the discovery of new energy sources that will allow us to wean us from the carbon based economy, which has a quite high likelihood of wiping us out. Since, in my own mind, the likelihood of a disaster emerging from our current use of resources is quite high, I think the very small risk of some kind of disaster is worth taking.

If you want to consider the possibility of some unknown bad phenomenon, I think we also have to consider the possibility of some unknown good phenomenon.

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Without comment
On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders

maybe very small black holes are produced in the atmosphere, and just fall into the Earth and eat one atom a year, perhaps the fate of all the matter in the Universe is to be eaten by mini black holes.

So the LHC wouldn't make much difference anyway.

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I've seen quotes that the odds are 1 in 54,382 that something really bad will happen the next time you blink.

Note that these kinds of statements are completely useless without corroborating evidence, or at least the source of the quotes.

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I wouldn't be surprised if the LHC's main job turns out to be the study of mini-black holes- that would be ironic..

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