it would be an idea, for a sci-fiction anyway, for a small country, like Cuba, to develop a way to end the world, with BHs or stranglets, or whatever; and then they could hold the world to ransom.

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I'm not sure that Cuba should really be considered so small. By population, it ranks 73 out of 221 countries listed in Wikipedia. By land area, I guess it's small, but still it's sort of a medium sized country, although of course it's quite small compared to its giant neighbor to the north!

Maybe a better country to do it would be the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. The problem is, I think people would be disinclined to believe that they would actually use such a weapon, for obvious reasons...

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If black holes produced by the LHC were truly a danger, the first supernova would have been quite the spectacular event. If micro black holes posed any threat to Earth, they'd certainly be trapped by far denser and larger stellar cores, even if they started with a high initial velocity relative to the core...remember that their speed would drop as they absorb matter, and interactions from close flybys would transfer momentum to other particles as they fly through the core of a star.

A single earth-bound detector has detected over a dozen ultra-high-energy particles (of the "Oh My God" variety) over the course of a couple years. If MBHs can be produced in such collisions, the number of such particles hitting stars and casting MBHs into their cores per year is enormous.

So a supernova...and then a wave of stars collapsing into black holes following the arrival of the supernova's flash, producing more high energy particles as they consume the entire galaxy. Some of those particles would stand a good chance of reaching other galaxies while retaining sufficient energy to produce micro black holes. There would never be a second generation star, all stars would form directly from the primordial mix of hydrogen, helium, and traces of lithium, until it was all used up and nothing left but black holes and the odd red or brown dwarf too small to catch a black hole. Nothing with which to make planets, no life, no smart apes to blow themselves up by accidentally creating a black hole.

So, no matter how wrong our conception of particle physics is, we can be pretty sure the LHC is not going to destroy us.

When the entire planet is at risk, "pretty sure" is not good enough.

Warren, one of us is a humourless dork. Either I didn't get your joke, or you didn't get that "pretty sure" was used here as a humourous figure of speech meaning "absolutely no way".

Anyway, if you're so scared, why aren't you in Switzerland right now, part of a human chain preventing the scientists from entering the complex? These people are threatening not only your life, but the lives of everyone you know and love. And what are you doing about it? Griping on an internet forum! Some commitment there. Better tell your loved ones right now that you don't actually love them that much.

Admit it: You don't really believe there's a danger. You're probably getting some kind of thrill over pretending there is, like a Boy Scout telling ghost stories around a camp-fire. Or you're just jerking our chains.

The Times Online, Science Editor: The Large Hadron Collider: how the press demeans science

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

in the future mini black holes will be every where, newspapers will give them away as free gifts; they will coat the saucepans, and be non-stick "The kind that eats your crappy food so you don't need to wash it up"

The internet will be made of interconnected black holes glued together to make "pseudo-wormholes" and AOL will charge you $50/week to connect to the psudo subspace internet run by Jane Fonda who will then live on Mercury, inside a specially created black hole that is really pink and Emits gentle Dawkin Radiation that calms the YEC-battling nerves.

A special AI Mini black hole android will rule the earth and give birth to the Schwartz child, a child of infinite wisdom who warps space-time to the sound of ABBA.



Have I said too much..?

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Learn the real science behind it at least if you're going to make outrageous claims.
Oh Rock On!

I wanna send that guy my Winning Lottery Ticket.

The safety studies go far beyond "pretty sure." Warren, I had a question here:

Large Hadron Colliders a DANGER??

Please answer it.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Warren Platts is just using counter psychology on us, which means he just really wants us to switch it ON.

So there REALLY must be a danger: STOP THE COUNTDOWN

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Wow. And I'm the one who gets banned for hassling other members.

These people have the ability to create black holes on Earth, but they do not have the liberty to do that. The small benefits will be concentrated to a few people who give a damn about trivia like Higgs bosons, whereas the rest of humanity and nature and all future generations are expected to share the risk. That's totally selfish, unfair, and unethical.

My knowledge of the science is at least to your level. No one denies that black holes could be produced right here on Earth. Indeed, the collider is designed to produce black holes. They want to make black holes--black holes right here on Earth.

So the question is not whether black holes will be produced or not, but whether such black holes will be captured by the Earth's gravity, and whether or not they will evaporate faster than they can grow. I've seen 1 in 50,000,000 as the probability that any mini black hole created will have a velocity less than the escape velocity of Earth. This is at least a probability that can be approached mathematically and statistically.

But since they will be firing billions of nuclei at each other, the chance that a black hole with the wrong velocity gets pretty close to 1.

But we are told not to worry, because the black holes will rapidly evaporate due to Hawking radiation. Only one problem: there's no experimental evidence that Hawking radiation actually works. Moreover, it contradicts Einstein's theory of general relativity.

So the question is, given that there is no empirical evidence that can settle the matter, what is the probability that Hawking is right, and Einstein is wrong? Well, of course, the answer is either 1 or 0. It's either the case that Hawking is right and Einstein is wrong, or it's the case that Hawking is wrong and Einstein is right. In other words, given the lack of experimental evidence, any attempt to assign a prior probability to who is right and who is wrong is utterly subjective. What any such "probability" amounts to is the results of a poll taken among physicists who are invested in the outcome.

Physicists have been massively wrong in the past. They could be making yet another mistake in their calculations. Indeed, they have already made a mistake with regard to LHC--there was a big explosion there a few months ago.

They have no right to be making decisions that are an existential threat to everybody else on the planet. That is just plain morally wrong, besides being totally undemocratic.

What's the hurry? Why not build a collider on some moon around Uranus?

But what if he knew you would think that, so he's actually using counter-counter psychology? HIT THE BUTTON NOW.

OTOH, he must realise that there are paranoid lunatics like myself here, who would see right through that counter-counter stuff, so he's using counter-counter-counter psychology. Which means...

... that I'd better lie down till this feeling passes.

Warren, is this nonsense a joke? I don't see much point in responding if you're just attempting to play us to get a reaction.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

The way I understood what "they" were doing (in my inexpert capacity) was recreating some conditions thought to be present when a black hole forms, not actually create a black hole. The explanations I have seen regarding Hawking radiation, etc. stemmed from what would happen if such a small black hole were created - whether from a human made experiment or by conditions present in the universe.

Is that about right?

CJSF

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See the constellation ride across the sky
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by They Might Be Giants

Please support the assertion that they want to make black holes. Give us quotes. Because I was under the impression that they wanted to break hadrons apart to see what's inside them. Black holes are not a constituent of protons! If black holes were created, it would probably be impossible to detect them anyway, so why would they be trying?

And also:


Feel free to report me. I could probably use a cooling off period right about now, because the things you are doing to my blood pressure can not be good.

BTW, I'm off to bed now, so I won't be contributing here for a while, banned or not. Hopefully by then Warren has admitted he's just trolling.

It is my understanding that it is far from a given that black holes will be created, in fact I believe there is a lot of doubt about that. And again, where does this 1:50,000,000 number come from?

From CERN's page on LHC safety:

Times On Line article about the magnet failures
A mistake in the design of the magnets has absolutely nothing to do with mistakes (or not) in particle physics. Do you have a relevent example of a massively wrong calculation from particle physics?

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Do you just not get it when you get told that compared to cosmic rays, the energy of a particle at the LHC is basically zero? That when this is taken into account, the biggest proof that the LHC wont make a black hole is the fact that you are reading this post, since that means the Earth wasnt sucked down already?

My understanding is that any miniblack holes created by a cosmic ray would be moving faster than the escape velocity of the Earth. With the LHC, on the other hand, they will be aiming two beams at each other. So there's a small, but not trivial probability that a resultant miniblack hole would be moving less than the escape velocity of the Earth.

I'm serious. Why wouldn't they want to make black holes? According to their calculations, Hawking radiation would render such black holes harmless. Indeed, it would be a chance to confirm that Hawking radiation does in fact happen.

I'm not a snitch.

Then you should be able to support your declarations that:

and

And, I'd still like to see an answer to this question:

Large Hadron Colliders a DANGER??

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Actually, it's likely that, if they existed, mini black holes from cosmic rays would be captured by the Earth and (to a greater extent) the sun. Obviously, if they are, we aren't seeing the effects, so this places constraints on their possible existence. But an even bigger constraint is the existence of white dwarfs and neutron stars. Being dense, they would collect micro stable BHs, if they existed. Yet we observe many white dwarfs and neutron stars, which means they aren't turning into black holes.

Here's a paper on the subject (note, pdf file):

http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/CERN-PH-TH_2008-025.pdf

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Pretty much, as far as I can tell.

You just ignored everything I said, didn't you? Except the last line, since you were able to take it to mean something entirely different when removed from the context of the rest of my post. And you were banned? I wonder why...

Once again: Earth isn't the only thing in the universe. MBHs borne of cosmic rays might escape Earth's gravity, but going through the core of a star is another matter entirely. If they don't evaporate, they either don't absorb matter at any meaningful rate or don't form in the first place, or you wouldn't be here. At the very least, degenerate objects like neutron stars and white dwarfs would immediately catch a MBH and collapse into small black holes, and the skies would be full of black holes with masses too small to form directly, and utterly devoid of white dwarfs or neutron stars.

The collider is *not* designed to make black holes, it is *not* known to be able to make them, it is in fact thought that it is most likely incapable of doing so. If it *is* capable of doing so, then that represents very interesting information about the nature of the universe in some areas that are currently in doubt...it indicates that there are most likely small scale spatial dimensions, by my understanding. If predictions of Hawking radiation are incorrect, their formation without subsequent evaporation would also be informative, their reluctance to absorb further matter giving further insight into the universe. Who benefits? All of future humanity. Claiming that a handful of researchers are the only ones who benefit is absurd, given the computer and global network you're making those claims through. Without decade upon decade of research into obscure electronic, electromagnetic, and quantum mechanical phenomena, none of it would be possible.

I guess the 1 in 50,000,000 was the figure that was originally quoted for Brookhaven facility. But the LHC will have much higher energies than Brookhaven.

As for the desirability of producing miniblack holes, here's an article from the CERN Courier

(my italics)

How about the last paragraph from that very article.
And how about responding to my post, also with a reference from CERN, that the formation of black holes is not supported by main stream ideas, and there formation is highly speculative. My take on the article your referenced is that the ideas expressed are highly speculative.

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