Wow 7 hours later and no supporting documentation for QGP occurring anywhere else? Still just the same tired line about how many times nature has conducted the experimental program, you've got to be kidding me people? Did you try to find any documentation? Quick lesson in linguistic logic is needed here obviously.
1. Fruit grows on trees. << True
2. All trees are fruit trees. << False
3. In an orchard all trees are fruit trees. << True, while possibly not technically a true statement the speaker makes an obvious attempt to qualify his/her statement, with no intention to deceive.
1. Cosmic Ray collisions with planetary and solar bodies often release more energy than the collisions in the LHC. << True
2. The area of the Earth's surface is about 5x1018 square centimeters, and the age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years. Therefore, over 3x1022 cosmic rays of 1017ev or more, equal or greater than the LHC energy, have struck the Earth's surface since its Formation. << True, from the above orchard example speaker has made it clear that this is a reasonable guess based on the science and math available with no intention to deceive.
3. Nature has already completed about 1031 LHC experimental programmes since the beginning of the Universe. << False, the speaker uses no qualifying statements and the purpose is to deceive.
No previous statements even of a theoretical nature suggest that QGP is created during a cosmic ray collision with a planetary or solar body. Creating QGP is a stated goal of one of their experiments. No previous statements suggest that "real space" can be unlocked to access 5th/6th/7th dimensions from cosmic ray collisions with planetary or solar body another stated purpose of their experiments.
When one of you comes up with a source stating. "QGP is theorized to be created in cosmic ray collisions with planetary or solar bodies." Then I eat my words, suck it up and apologize, like the big boy I am.
cjameshuff go look up what QGP is and when and where it is theorized to occur.
Prove me wrong with a source. In the course of posting on this thread I have learned to substantiate my positions and verify my sources. I have posted those sources all of which are reputable in each of my threads. This is not a "who can shout loudest wins" discussion.
Bonus:
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. << True, previous statements from Van Rijn have verified that he lives in a fantasy land. All posts are consistent and the writer has shown no intention to deceive us on this point.

That's 10³¹ LHC experimental programmes.

As previously noted, that statement that you believe false is from the LSAG report, Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions, section 2, "The LHC compared with Cosmic-Ray Collisions." It's interesting that you believe they are attempting to be deceptive, but given that you seem to think you understand this subject better than they do, there isn't much point in continuing this.

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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

When the LSAG report says without qualification that there is "no risk" despite the fact that the report is based on the G&M paper that makes use of non-worst case, debatable assumptions, and therefore replaces uncertainties with other uncertainties, then, yes, the LSAG report is an attempt to draw the wool over the eyes of the sheeple.

What? No takers?

Yeah why get quantitative? All we need to know is that the probability that the world will end because of the LHC is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really low.

I hope you boosters realize that your argument is exactly the same as what the creationists deploy: that evolution is about as likely to occur as some crazy, philosophical, scifi, quantum mechanical event like a burrito farting out a miniblack hole.

From a creationist website:

And I'm still waiting for those of you old enough to have read Steven Weinberg's The First Three Minutes back when it came out what you would have thought the probability was that the idea that the expansion of the universe was slowing down would be overturned.

Remember that when you think about how there is no way that CERN scientists could ever be wrong.

And nobody's bothered to calculate the value of the Earth.

OK, let's just worry about money, and none of those intangibles--like life--that we earn our money for.

I found a reference that the total number of financial assets (stocks and bonds and such) in the world's markets as of 2005 is about $140 trillion USD. So let's just call it $10¹⁴ as our starting figure. And let's assume that the world economy grows at a mere 2% per year. How long shall we extend our analysis. Neverfly says we'll probably get hit by a gamma ray burst within 100,000 years, but cjameshuff is personally concerned to see that we make it to 1,000,000,000 years.

However, I'll just call it 10,000 years. Why? Because that's all my calculator can handle. So, here's our equation to project total value in 10,000 years:


Does anyone understand where I'm going with this?

I snipped the rest of your post as essentially meaningless and certainly valueless. You have obviously decided what you want the sentence to mean and will defend that meaning in the face of all comers.

Much as you seem to have decided that the world is doomed if the LHC goes online and will defend that premise in the face of all science, math and reason. A rather classic example of, "My mind's made up, don't confuse me with the facts."

Please do not include me in this. I chose your error in grammatical understanding as one you might actually acknowledge. I will not argue the science and engineering (and certainly not the risk calculations) with you as you have shown a propensity to ignore, dodge, or redefine anything that disagrees with your preconceived conclusion.

And you might want to hold off on smug posts like this until folks at least have a chance to wake up. Some of us do have better things to do overnight than reply to you.

Some of us have better things to do with our days.

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

No, I'm not biting. I really don't know what you are asking or what your point is. This entire discussion has gotten entirely too long and rambling for me to keep up with every post.

One last question, which I really don't care if you answer or not Warren Platts: What would it take to convince you that the LHC is safe? If the answer is nothing, then there is no point to this discussion. Contact your Congressperson or the World Court and file a complaint.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Agreed. I didn't even know I was "asked" (albiet indirectly) the question to begin with until I got a helpfull PM from another member (thanks ). Let me back up a few pages and catch back up.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
Lisa: "I'm so proud of you guys that I've even tipped off the local media!"
Reporter: "Yeah, and I already have the perfect headline! 'Activity Participated in by Some'! Ah, perfect!"

Ok I'll provide a definitive answer as to why I believe there is a fundamental difference between what occurs in nature and what will occur in the lab.
The first collision will be similar to a cosmic ray collision. However further collisions occurring in each test will occur under increasing temperatures. The energy release of each individual collision will remain consistent, but the final collisions in the "experimental programme" will occur at "temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun, concentrated within a minuscule space". This is not the temperature at which cosmic rays collisions take place in nature. They fail to qualify that in their safety statement.
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/Facts-en.html
Another of my lovely analogies. A doctor using a rectal thermometer versus a torturer using a red-hot poker on your bum.

Jim, took the words right out of my mouth. Warren refuses to participate in an honest debate, and so I will not debate with him. If anyone else has questions about points he brings up and is honestly interested in answers, don't take this as refusal to discuss those subjects...just refusal to spend time writing answers that will either be ignored or twisted in meaning.


I wouldn't know where to start looking for such a thing. I'm not sure it even exists, not because it's at all in doubt, but because I wouldn't have even considered saying it. It's just stating the obvious. What do you think is so special about the LHC that only it can produce quark-gluon plasma?


The purpose is to educate and the statement is true. The only difference is that the only data nature has gathered is the absence of star and planet-gobbling micro black holes in their results. Our instruments are more subtle.


No. I won't waste my time doing so. The quark-gluon plasma is a result of the collisions, absolutely identical collisions happen in nature. Protons against protons, heavy nuclei against heavy nuclei, at comparable energies and at much higher energies. If the energy in the collision exceeds the binding energy of the quarks composing the protons and neutrons involved, they behave as separate particles instead of components of protons and neutrons. The same collisions will produce the same results no matter where they occur.

I doubt there is any interaction between the individual collisions (I'm not a particle physicist). The "clouds" of protons are of such low density that for all practical purposes they are still a vacuum and collisions are actually rare, tiny events, that on the scale of protons are extremely far apart. And though the two-proton plasma created in a collision might be "hot", the total energy content is still very tiny, and gets quickly carried away in the shower of fragments from the collision.

I would not take the "100,000 times hotter than the Sun" comment as a literal, scientific description, but more as a public relations line from the CERN PR office (ohhhh, isn't that coool).

Just my humble opinion.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Interactions following the initial collision occur at *lower* temperatures, since they have only a portion of the total energy. And they occur with cosmic rays as well.


No. Every single collision occurs at that temperature, and individual cosmic ray collisions reach and vastly exceed that temperature.

Once again, a car collision on a street is a terrible analogy. The energy densities are astronomically higher, and the collision volume is a vast empty space on particle scales. The first collision is identical to a cosmic ray collision. The second collision is no different, neither is the third, the hundredth, the millionth...

edit: temperature is just a measure of average kinetic energy of the particles in a system. In a LHC collision between two lead nuclei at 2.76 TeV per nucleon or two protons at 7 TeV per proton, and 3 quarks per nucleon, this equates to extreme temperatures, despite the energy involved being utterly unnoticeable on a human scale.

Everybody here agrees that the LHC is not 100.000 ...% safe, because literally nothing is excluded by the laws of quantum mechanics. But the probability that a burrito will fart out a mBH due to a random quantum fluctuation--while not technically exactly zero, it is stupid, indeed crazy to worry about such low probabilities.

On the other hand, there are small probabilities--like the odds of winning the Powerball--that are tiny, but not negligible, as evidenced by the fact that we actually buy the occasional lottery ticket. Now, frankly, I think that the probability that the LHC will blowup is quite a bit more likely than winning the lottery. The booster's on the other hand, think the probability is much lower than winning the lottery. So, all I'm asking is for them to quantify what they think the probability of a blowup is. You tell me what is wrong with quantification?

Well, it would put you on the spot. You would have to defend your quantification. I've defended mine--and surprise, surprise, no one has attacked my own attempt at quantification.

Or to put it more strongly, once you quantify your probability, the booster argument is dead. I think you people realize that. You know in your heart of hearts because of your acquaintance with the history of science and the rude surprises that have happened in the past that the probability that the LHC will destroy planet Earth is in fact much greater than the probability that the universe will wink out of existence due to a random quantum fluctuation. And you know that to do as Drunk Vegan did, and choose a probability of 10^-241 by just hitting the "0" button until your finger hurts can be easily shown to be a handwave--as he himself demonstrated by editing those zeros out of his post.

And I've asked repeatedly for people to quantify how much they think planet Earth is worth. And again, not one person has bothered. Perhaps because that for our practical purposes, the value has to be treated as infinite? Oh they say it's because they basically don't respect me, and so it's not worth the bother. And then they accuse me of having "decided that the world is doomed if the LHC goes online and will defend that premise in the face of all science, math and reason." Which is a total copout--and basically amounts to surrender on the part of the boosters.

Because I have provided argument after fresh, original argument, and presented reasoned responses to every point the boosters have made. And I'm the one who won't listen to reason. You've got it wrong folks. I have chosen to think for myself. You are all projecting.

Not one of you has said that you thought it was prudent that they put the lunar astronauts in quarantine despite what the laws of biology say.

Not one of you has admitted to being surprised when it was announced that the universe's expansion is accelerating rather than decelerating.

Not one of you has commented on my point that the extrapolation of the semiclassical approximation to multi-dimensional mBH's deep within the quantum gravitational regime is not in fact necessitated by the laws of physics as we now know them, but is in fact based on nothing but mere plausibility, it is not the worst case scenario, and was thus apparently cherry picked to make the safety report come out right.

And I have said what would make me think that the LHC was safe: just run one beam at a time. Frankly, I don't think it's a good idea to be creating mBH's anywhere on Earth, but if you're going to do it at all, at least do it in such a manner that the mBH's will probably be kicked out of the Earth's gravitational field. And if by using single-beam colliders, they can eventually experimentally prove that the 5th and 6th dimensions do not in fact exist, and that it is both theoretically proven and experimentally totally confirmed that mBH's cannot ever be produced in a collider, then I would say go ahead and run both beams. But to do that right now, given the current state of the art, it is not prudent.

And so I will not be shouted down. I don't write for you anymore. I write for the lurkers, that they may know that it is OK to doubt the authorities, because the emperor wears no clothes.

The spectrum of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, as measured by several
experiments [5]. Every cosmic ray with an energy shown in this plot, namely above
1017 eV, liberates in its collision with the atmosphere more energy in its centre-ofmass
frame than does a proton-proton collision at the LHC.

When the LHC attains its design collision rate, it will produce about a
billion proton-proton collisions per second in each of the major detectors
ATLAS and CMS. The effective amount of time each year that the LHC will
produce collisions at this average luminosity is about ten million seconds.

I think your making my point still, even if my science is fuzzy. My math however is just fine. That statement indicates that 58 days a year 24 hours a day the the collider will be at its "design collision rate". ie 10 million secs / 60(min)/60(hour)/24(day)/365(yr)/2(atlas/cms) . That does not take into account it running not at it's "design collision rate" . Even if my head is somewhere up my backside about the temperature(which I have not been convinced it is) explain to me how that can possibly be equivalent to what happens in nature?
My reasoning for the temperature however is based on the QGP theoretical requirements for existence of extreme heat and density. ie. the beginings of the universe or the core of a neutron star. They not only need to create it, they need it to stick around long enough for their detectors to get a picture/signature of it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If I am wrong, I'll drop to my knees and bow down begging forgiveness. I just haven't seen any evidence that I am wrong yet other than "no , you're wrong because I said so", and a repeated copy/paste of their safety report, which is what I read to bring me here in the first place!!

And I've asked repeatedly for people to quantify how much they think planet Earth is worth. And again, not one person has bothered.
You fail to specify valuation terms, but we all know where you're going and that point is moot anyway.

You're basing your argument on the fact that the catastrophic event probability is non-zero. The burrito statement was to point out that everything's catastrophic event probability is non-zero. All the data and studies to this point show these tests to be safe--in other words, their no more dangerous (from a earth-ending event standpoint) than sneezing is.

You want to know what probability is low enough for us to consider it to be zero. I'll bite on this one. To me, that is when the probability is no greater than the inherant probability in quantum theory. The burrito in the microwave, if you will. And since the study and subsequent follow up study, as well as all recorded observations and calculations to this date conclude that the LHC experiments do not pose a threat, I consider this event to be no different than any other event.

Now, if you want to claim that the LHC will pose more than a burrito risk, then it is up to you to demonstrate that probability.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
Lisa: "I'm so proud of you guys that I've even tipped off the local media!"
Reporter: "Yeah, and I already have the perfect headline! 'Activity Participated in by Some'! Ah, perfect!"

I'm more than happy to say that the Earth is infinitely valuable. But I personally think that the threat from the LHC is infinitely tiny and I think multiplying those two numbers together as a way of making a decision is nonsense. I think there are much more probable threats to worry about.

That was not my question. I was not asking how you would run the instrument (it was pointed out that the LHC could not operate like that, you might as well not run it). My question was, what piece of information would convince you that what CERN is doing is safe. My take on your comments is that nothing will convince you.

Look, it is not up to anyone at BAUT to decide to run the LHC or not. I'm not worried, you are. I don't know what to tell you so you are not worried. I don't see the point to further debate. But don't let me stop you.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I couldn't reply because I was eating a burrito.

Oops!

Well, the odds of THAT turned out to be quite large.

Might want to stay upwind for a few hours.

__________________
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
-Dorothy Parker

Can you please provide some information about which temperatures are associated with cosmic ray collisions in nature?

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Ignorance convinces" -- slang's dad
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson

My qualifications by the way are admittedly none. I have a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics(Applied) and have taken 8 credit hours of physics. The only props I will give myself on the physics end is that I took Physics 181/182. Those are "Introductory Physics for Physics Majors." Math and Engineering majors were only required to take Physics 161/162. I briefly considered a minor in Physics, but decided that I had my hands full enough with my Math classes and I hated writing lab reports. So no , I don't have a PhD in Astro or Nuclear Physics. Thats why I've said I trust the scientists at CERN not to "blowup" the world so to speak. I just have been unable to agree with the assertion of theirs that "nature has done the same thing as we are going to do". When it's fairly obvious that they have changed the frequency and conditions under which these collisions take place. I've had laboratory components for my physics, chemistry, botany and zoology classes. So I am able to distinguish differences between experiments performed in a laboratory and in nature.
For my part, sure I'm wrong all the time, but I love to learn. I've already learned some new things since I came to this forum. I've just asked you other posters to give me some reputable sources to review, that way if/when I am wrong I can learn from my mistakes.

OK Fazor!

As you know, several events would have to happen in order to blow up the world. First mBH's have to be created in the LHC. Then the mBH's have to be trapped within the Earth. Then they have to be metastable. Then they have to grow fast enough to eat out the Earth on the inside within 10 to the however many years in the future you think we should care about planet Earth.

Let's treat these in order.

For an mBH to form, the universe has to be made out of more than 4 dimensions in order for the plank distance to open up enough. But, apparently, on 5 or 6-D mBH's would be dangerous. So what's the probability that the universe is made out of 5 or 6 dimensions. I've heard theories that propose up to 23, and of course we need more than 3. So there are 20 possible dimensions. So what do you say we just give each dimension an equal a priori probability, and so the probability that it's 5 or 6 would be 5% each or 10% for both.

Then there's the probability that the mBH will be trapped. Pretty much everyone agrees that at least many of the mBH's will have velocities lower than the Earth's escape velocity, and so will be trapped. Shall we go with 90% for that one?

So what's the probability that the mBH's will be metastable. The main argument against stability is Hawking radiation, although Plaga tried to demonstrate that mBH's could grow to the Eddington limit even with Hawking radiation and that the Hawking radiation could be a threat in itself. However, G&M said Plaga was off by 23 orders of magnitude, so we can leave that out of our calculations. So what is the probability that Hawking radiation will fail? Well, noting that Hawking radiation has never been empirically detected, out of a poll of 15 PhD physicists, the median probability that Hawking radiation would fail was 2%. Want to go with that?

Then there's the probability that a metastable mBH will grow. Now, under several, consistent theories of black holes, such mBH's could grow, or maybe they might not. There's no telling. So it's a coin flip really. So let's call that 50%.

So this is where the white dwarfs come in. Since the possibility that an mBH could grow within Earth is poorly constrained by the first principles of physics, scientists have turned to astrophysics to try and constrain the probability of mBH growth better. So if one extrapolates the semiclassical approximation to multidimensional mBH's that exist deep with the quantum gravitational regime, then one can calculate that cosmic ray induced mBH's formed at white dwarfs would be trapped by white dwarfs because white dwarfs are dense enough. But this probability depends on the validity of the extrapolation of the semiclassical approximation to a realm that it has never before been applied to. How shall we weigh this one? On the one hand, it sounds plausible; on the other, we have a history of science full of genuine surprises. Ever read The First Three Minutes? Who would have thought that the universe is actually expanding. No one ever thought of that idea until the empirical data forced it. I mean, these are mBH's we are talking about, as well as quantum gravity! On the other hand, this is your last chance to come up with a real showstopper. Shall we go with 1 in a million--0.000001.

So here we go:


Which is basically 1 in 100,000,000 or about twice as likely as winning the PowerBall lottery.

I have not been able to find that info yet. So I don't have anything to compare the LHC temperature with and Van Rijn will have a field day ripping me for this, but here goes.
LHC TEMPERATURE
EQUIVALENT
1 billionth of second after Big Bang
100000 times temperature of sun
http://atlas.ch/news/by_the_numbers.html
They don't say it's the same temperature of a cosmic ray collision, but they don't say it's not the same temperature. Hope that save's Vin Rijn a post.
I personally infer from that with my shaky logic that the collision area of the ATLAS chamber will be at that temperature during the collisions.

You make several assumptions that are not safe to make.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
Lisa: "I'm so proud of you guys that I've even tipped off the local media!"
Reporter: "Yeah, and I already have the perfect headline! 'Activity Participated in by Some'! Ah, perfect!"

A bit of a side commentary because of I am tired of the "Lottery Comparison" in regards to odds.

Warren Platts, The odds of an individual winning the lottery has no relevance to the fact that winnings occur so frequently.

"What?!", you say?

Factor in how many tickets are bought/sold.
THOSE are the determining odds that someone is going to hit it lucky.
Which are very very high compared to the individuals odds.

So saying that the odds are 1/28,000,000 of winning the lottery as a comparison of odds is nonsense. Because the odds of SOMEONE winning are about 1/32.
Or even higher.
It goes up to as high as 1/6.


Which is nothing like the odds we are discussing in this thread.

Stop manipulating information.

Then why do you base your argument on something you don't know?

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Ignorance convinces" -- slang's dad
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson

Now now.. unless you weren't entirely truthful about your identity, you have at least some skill in escorting juwelry to volcanos, combatting fierce enemies, and talking to trees.

__________________
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Ignorance convinces" -- slang's dad
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson

Well, someone has delusions of grandeur...
For the lurkers: take a brief look at Platt's part in the discussion and decide for yourselves just how much respect he deserves. Particularly note how often he misrepresents what his opponents say. Or his latest...ravings...


But they do:
"As seen in Fig. 1, the highest-energy cosmic rays observed attain energies of
around 10^20 eV, and the total flux of cosmic rays with energies of 10^17 eV or
more that hit each square centimeter of the Earth’s surface is measured to be
about 5x10^–14 per second [5]."

Collisions of the same particles, at equal and greater energies. They don't have to say equal and greater temperatures, because it's true by definition of temperature. The same particles collide with the same energy, leading to the same number of fragments interacting in the same ways in the same volume of space, thus reaching the same temperatures. And this happens a quarter million times a second on Earth alone.

Again, just what do you believe is different about a collision that occurs in one of the LHC experiments?


A tiny ball of quarks and gluons will briefly be at this temperature before exploding outward...into empty space, the atmosphere or body of a planet, the core of a star, or into the detectors arrayed around the ATLAS chamber.

I believe that the danger in the difference between the natural occurrences of these phenomenon and recreating them in the lab comes down quite simply to this: maniacal laughter. If there's no maniacal laughter, then the experiment will be okay, or at the least not entirely destroy time and space.

If there *is* maniacal laughter... all bets are off. Oh! And don't mistake a haughty french laugh for maniacal laughter. That happens a lot.

Lastly, if I thought the world was about to imminently end, I would certainly spend my last days arguing about it on a message board with a only limited association to the people who could stop it from occurring. That makes a lot of sense to me.

__________________
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."

--Ambrose Bierce

http://threelittleboxes.com

To make it even worse, considering the location, there might be scientists with white coats and german accent... Now everyone knows that's a nasty combination (especially if the laughter is involved).

Touché!