Warren Platts,
That last post of yours is utter Nonsense.

Prove that the LHC puts the Homeworld at Risk or Get off your high and Mighty Soap Box.


You are Stating it as FACT now- and it's getting more than a little annoying how you feel compelled to paint yourself as Earths Mighty Heroic defender and misrepresent the facts just to justify your ego boost.

It's not up to me to prove that the Homeworld is at Risk--although I'm doing that anyway. It's up to you to prove that it's not at risk. At least that's the way it's supposed to work in any other situation where the environment's at risk. But not at the LHC, apparently. I've seen more of a public input process for a forest management plan in Boondock, Wyoming than I see for this LHC thing. I tell you what, I will never again put up with a European criticizing American environmental policies in the future. . . . This is ridiculous. Actually, it's more sad really.

You know Warren Platts, Earlier when someone commented on how your whining on an internet forum instead of actually DOING something about it...
Your reply included the commentary of "Going to the LHC with a Bomb."

Seriously?
You know... Those guys ARE getting death threats from utterly ignorant Luddites who have similar misconceptions as you.
Many of them are just followers- which is what you appear to be doing too. Only I think you fancy yourself as a leader among followers.

Do you realize that you made a terroristic threat?

You have totally used the most Inaccurate analogies in order to pander to fear-- In order to slather that fear across whatever readers find this forum on a google hits minds as well.
Such as the Lottery. Yeah 1/6 odds but you think it's comparable.

Like using meth when pregnant.
Whatever. You admitted early in the thread that you Lack the Expertise and Knowledge. Yet you seem to have made up your mind.
You have concluded that the LHC is this destructive threat that is going to destroy the world.

You're no better than those TU24.org fearmongers that sent crowds of folks to BAUT for a short time pleading to know if that asteroid was actually going to hit Earth.
I bet they felt Very Heroic- Up until it missed.

You should be completely ashamed of yourself.

At least Pippen over here has the decency to say he's uncertain and would like reassurance.

You have none. You're just wildly speculating and making claims that are Utter Nonsense and Bunk.

You don't even Know what the Higgs Boson is!! You just said so!
You have no idea what kind of knowledge will be gained from the LHC. It is not that fancy. It's just mundane continued research. Exciting to those in the field- Yes. But it's not going to give us Warp Drive Anytime soon.
It's not going to end poverty or hunger. It's just More of the Same.
More of what we've been doing all along.

What you would suddenly and supposedly fearfully like to bring to a halt because you have severe misconceptions about what they are talking about. And rather than set out to correct those misconceptions and learn something- You instead choose to rabble rouse and stir up needless fear.

You are not a degreed scientist.
You have no idea what the LHC is, what it's for or what it will do.
You're just another person that enjoys playing on other peoples fears. One that has even included a terroristic threat in his wild claims.

We have torches, pitchforks, and hounds too.

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Olsen the moderator.

Heh. We've said much the same thing here, except for that last paragraph. On BAUT, he'd probably get a suspension for that, though I understand his frustration.

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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

But OK, here's the proof once again, just for you sir:

Proof #1: It is uncertain whether the universe exists in 5 or 6 dimensions.
Proof #2: It is not uncertain that any mBH's produced by the LHC will have velocities less than Earth's escape velocity (this would be an unprecedented event in the history of the Earth).
Proof #3: It is uncertain whether Hawking radiation is a real phenomenon.
Proof #4: It is uncertain whether metastable mBH's will grow exponentially.
Proof #5: It is uncertain whether the extrapolation of the semiclassical approximation to the behavior of multidimensional mBH's deep within the quantum gravitational realm is valid.
Proof #6: When the chain of events that would have to happen to destroy the world is looked at link-by-link, there is no single showstopper that can prevent the world from being destroyed.

Corollary: When the subjective probabilities for each event are multiplied, the product is a much, much greater number than the probability that a burrito in a microwave will destroy Mother Earth.

yah i know

__________________
clear skies

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

Mak: Pass the pepperoni please.
Fazor: "Hail, Bautainia! We pledge our hearts to thee! Science and woo, some babbling too, and astron-oh-meee!"
slang: And it made ash out of yew and tree.

How much of this is uncertain and how much of it is just uncertain in Your Mind?

Huh?
Even if they don't- it's irrelevant.
MBH's lack the necessary mass and behavior to do any kind of damage.
Currently, Cosmic rays have already done this "experiment" naturally and although most do have the velocity to escape- Not All Of Them Do Have it.
This is all ASSUMING that ANY mBH's are made.
Not very uncertain. And even IF Hawking Radiation is invalid, these MBH's, again, lack the mass to actually gobble up anything. HTis is just another of your many misconceptions.
Imagine that you are in a spacecraft name "MicroBlackHole" and you are assigned the task of running through the asteroid belt without steering and hitting as many asteroids as possible. Your minimum quota is at least ten.
Actually, no it isn't. See above.
Actually no it isn't. It may be in your mind and lack of understanding though.
There is a great multitude of showstoppers with each point you make. In other words- your supposed uncertainties are not really uncertainties.
It's far more likely that they reinforce eachother as a matter of fact.
Given one factor of odds, then add in another factor of odds- in which the odds are 1/a much much much much much bigger number than a trillion (like you tried using trillion out of one before)and the chain of events has to be in the ONE each time- in a line- one after another- throughout the entire chain- in which you then have a Big Fat Maybe.
Sounds the same as your burrito fart to me.
Wrong.
It's much much much much lower. See above.

Yeah, where's Al Quaeda when you really need them!
Absolutely not! I made it quite clear that (a) I can't travel to Europe, even if I wanted to--which I don't; (b) the thing is 100 meters below solid rock; (c) I would get caught anyway; to which I'll add (d) bombing the LHC would only be a temporary setback at best; (e) terrorism is counterproductive because it would rally world opinion in favor of the boosters; (f) terrorism is unethical.

So before you can put anymore words into my mouth, allow me to make my position crystal clear:

Okay, I'm convinced. Anyone using a big font and bright colors must be taken seriously.

__________________
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

This from the guy who has repeatedly addressed "lurkers" under the misguided notion that he is some kind of Resistance leader fighting for the welfare of the Planet.
Scare tactics? Let's stir up some fear- "Lurkers! Hear me oh Silent Ones!"

Warren Platts, It becomes increasingly clear that those trying to discuss the issue with you are up against a Belief.

You believe that the LHC is a threat. It's a belief, not a scientific analysis.
You ignore the science in order to justify the belief.

And when you cannot maintain your argument, you then appeal to "the lurkers" to maintain their fear of this 'evil sinetist contraption.'

One more post out of you (I think this last one was the Third or Forth) in which you increase your font size to the highest available and I'll be utterly convinced that your posts seek to inspire fear and not rational science. As well as just ignoring you from that point on.


ETA: What's this tidbit?:
"And let us pray that the CERN scientists are lucky enough to have guessed the unknown laws of nature correctly. "
Insurance?
So, unlike Nancy leider you are plannning ahead in case things fail to go boom. > "Those goofy sinetists must have gotten lucky."
Are you sure that you don't want to ask the Zetans for help?
Maybe they can interfere again.

Joules are much larger than that, perhaps you meant eV?

Apply 1 joule to knocking a 5-gram nickel up in the air. Ignoring air resistance, it will reach a height of 20.4 meters and hit the ground 4 seconds later. The same energy will heat a cubic centimeter of liquid water by 0.24 K, or 240 nanograms, or 8e15 molecules, of water vapor by 2 million K...of course, the specific heat constant used becomes entirely invalid long before it reaches that point. Ionization, dissociation, etc...and that assumes no change in other parameters like volume: the products of the collision will rapidly expand, and thus cool. Though I assume a quark-gluon plasma is not a particularly ideal gas...

For reference, 1 joule = 6241510 TeV. Flow/production/consumption of 1 joule/second is 1 watt of power. A 100 watt light bulb could also be given the rating of 624151000 TeV/s.

Let me break it down:

1) Basing the percent on a highly debateable theory, but just for the sake of argument, I'll give you this one since you showed your work.

2) Absolutely no way to show that 90% is a reasonable amount. You're just picking percentages to fit your desired outcome.

3) Again, you're going off of unproven theory...but since that's about all we have to go on, okay. Yet you base this percent off of 15 phys PhD's...which is not an adequate sample.

4) You cannot assume odds are 50/50 just because you don't know if it's yes or no. For instance, I don't know if there's pirate's treasure burried under my house...that doesn't make it a 50/50 chance that pirates hid dabloons on this particular plot of land in Central Ohio.

5) Here you again are just pulling a number apparently out of your hat. You don't know the chance, but I for one am not won over just because you pick a seemingly staggering number that still fits your equation.

Did I miss anyting? No, none of this makes you inherantly wrong, it makes your argument unsupported.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Yeah, extra dimensions. See the link to the CERN guy in Van Rijn's post above, and scroll down to the bottom where he addresses the safety concerns. He seems to think extra dimensions are highly unlikely despite the fact that they've been the rage in physics for the last twenty years at least. He thinks it's less probable than no Hawking radiation, so let's rate that at 0.1% or 0.001.
That's right, these are all conditional probabilities. What you do is rate each probability, and then combine them in the end to get the total probability. And let me reiterate that cosmic rays have not in fact done the "same experiment". The products of cosmic rays are 1-way affairs. Put an 8-ball on the little dot, then aim the cue ball directly at it, and shoot with all your might, and you will see what I mean. At the LHC, however, it's more like two cars getting in a high speed, direct head on. The two cars kind of fuse together, and stop moving. So any mBH's formed at the LHC will be at rest with respect to the Earth. That would be quite unprecedented were that to happen. No one disagrees with this one, so let's keep it at 90%, or 0.9

One step at a time my lad. Let's take Hawking radiation. Although the CERN guy was quick to mention that extra dimensions have never been observed, he failed to mention that Hawking radiation has never been observed. It is in fact controversial within the physics community. Out of a pool of 15 physicists, their probabilities ranged from 0 to 0.5. The median, however, was 2%, so let's go with that.
I wish you were right, my friend. But in fact that part of the equation is poorly constrained. That is why they had to bring in the whole neutron star/white dwarf argument. The laws of physics--as they are known now-- cannot constrain the growth of mBH's. They might not grow; but then again they just might. I called it a coin flip myself, because I specifically want to choose conservative, worst case scenarios, because after all Mother Earth is at stake. But we can put a fairly low probability on it if you want. How about 2%--the same as Hawking radiation.
Again, I wish you were correct. However, you may at least take comfort in the thought that this is not my original idea (well actually I've got that backwards, don't I). The fact is, we have no empirical evidence of what the quantum gravitational regime is like. This was pointed out in Plaga's paper (sec. 5) and was not discussed at all by M &G's rebuttal, because M&G admitted as much in their first paper, when they said that they did not use "worst case" assumptions for every uncertainty. This is the big one here. The worst case scenario is that the semiclassical approximation breaks down for multidimensional mBH's deep within the quantum gravitational regime and that cosmic ray produced mBH's will pass harmlessly through both the Earth as well as neutron stars and white dwarfs. Moreover, the CERN guy says that the most unlikely possibility is that we exist in 5 or 6 dimensions, so we need a higher probability than we chose for #1, so how about 1/2 of a percent that maybe such an extrapolation is unwarranted by the eventual empirical facts that we do not yet have in hand. So that would be 0.005.

You are quite correct that each of the uncertainties reinforce each other so when combined they produce a probability much smaller than any single one of them. So shall we?


So our total probability is about 2 out of 1 billion. So you can see how each of the probabilities reinforced each other to come up with the tiny total probability. And you were also correct in your earlier post that drew attention to important disanalogies between lotteries and the kind of probability we are dealing with here. The probability that Mother Earth will die because of the LHC is not a statistical probability like lotteries, or even repeatable disasters in nature like hurricanes and floods. Rather, it's a subjective, Bayesian probability; it's more of a bet, really. It's more like what the British oddsmakers do. Like betting on whether Sarah Palin will be President in 2016. (BTW, they had her in 2nd place right behind Romney, though most people had never heard of her, so this process works when many people pool their subjective probabilities. Stock markets are based on the same principle.) What it really represents are the odds you would demand if you took the other side of the bet and bet on world destruction. That is, if you bet $1 USD that the world will be destroyed within the next twenty years because of an LHC induced mBH (assuming of course that you had a nice condo on the Moon so you could survive to collect the bet), then you should get paid $1.8 billion USD for the $1 USD you put up. What's going to happen is going to happen. Mother Earth will either live or she will die. There are no statistical ifs, ands, nor buts about it.
Once again, I wish you were right my friend, but there's no way you can equate a 2 in 1 billion probability with the probability that a burrito in a microwave will destroy the planet.

Now you calculate the net expected utility by multiplying the probability of destruction by the value of the Earth. Assuming the Earth is worth $10¹⁰⁰ USD:

1.8 x 10^-9 x $10¹⁰⁰ = $1.8 x 10⁹¹ USD

So to make it worth it, the benefit of the LHC should be greater than $1.8 x 10⁹¹ USD. Do you think it will?

I'd suggest folks read this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7598996.stm

and read what was actually written, then compare it to Warren's assertions about the article.

__________________
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

I didn't want to have to do this, but . . .

LURKER ALERT

Fellow Doomsayers: Read carefully the dissembling words of the infamous Professor Cox du CERN

This is false--even the boosters on this thread agree that there is no such thing as absolute certainty.
Actually, it is; he details them below.
So he admits he's heading into the unknown.

That goes to show that government policies are out of date--they weren't designed to deal with existential threats to the entire planet.

This is the same old "nature's done exactly the same 'experiment' 10³¹ times!" line that Van Rijn can't get out of his head, like that old ELO song.

Check out the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't magic trick here: he fails to mention that cosmic ray produced mBH's won't get trapped by Earth's gravity, whereas LHC produced mBH's will.

Now he expresses his doubts about extra dimensions. That's because he's a particle physicist. Particle physicists and string theorists have, shall we say, a strong professional rivalry. String theorists are mere ivory tower mathematicians who never experiment, whereas particle physicists are mere bug counters just one step above ecologists. That's how they view each other. Extra dimensions are predicted by string theory. So it's not surprising that Cox takes a dim view of extra dimensions.

See, now he's going through the list, just like I did. So, you at least know I had the right framework all along.

Hawking radiation: Cox fails to mention that, like hypothetical extra dimensions, Hawking radiation has never been empirically detected, despite decades of looking for it. Hawking is a certified genius, to be sure. But that hasn't prevented him from being radically wrong in the past. Heck, he used to think that the Universe is decelerating! Imagine that!

It's true that mBH's are tiny. However, they will rapidly orbit the Earth--within the Earth! And according to one of CERN's own publications, if the string theorists are correct the LHC could become a "black hole factory" producing mBH's at the rate of 1 per second. So they could possibly wind up releasing millions of mBH's into the Earth each year. Even if the vast majority don't hit much of anything, when there's millions and millions of them it's virtually guaranteed that some of them will. Anyone can flip heads ten times in a row--if they keep flipping enough coins.

There's plenty of evidence of big black holes eating all kinds of things. And if a mBH grows to the point where it can eat a star, it's not exactly an mBH anymore, is it? And here he skips over the part about how it is necessary to extrapolate the semiclassical approximation to multidimensional mBH's that exist deep within the quantum gravitational regime. However, there is no evidence that such mBH's will actually decide to obey the semiclassical laws. Why should they? So it is possible that cosmic ray induced mBH's might pass harmlessly through neutron stars because of their super high velocity, and that's why we see neutron stars, but the LHC produced mBH's, since they will be basically at rest with respect to Earth, will get sucked into Earth's gravity well.

Wait a minute. In the first paragraph he said, "This is not based on theoretical assumptions." If it is only string theory that says one can make mBH's, it is only semiclassical particle physics theory that says that one cannot make mBH's. And Hawking radiation is only a theory at this point. And the extrapolation of the semiclassical approximation to the quantum gravitational regime is a theoretical extrapolation. In short, the entire argument that the LHC is "absolutely safe" is shot through and through with theory.

I got to admire his chutzpah! I wouldn't be surprised in the least to learn that Karl Rove is a paid consultant for CERN, were it not for the obvious disdain of the US that some CERN people exhibit. . . .

DO NOT LOOK AT THE MAN BEHIND THE SCREEN! Yeah, freedom of speech . . . Note the blatant insult of thoughtful people who are merely concerned about the safety of their home planet. It does wonders for his credibility. Note also that he did not mention the value of an entire inhabited planet--that would draw attention to exactly what is being risked. Note also that he did not mention possible alternatives to the LHC--like citing the thing off planet, or at least using single beam technology (which would at least eject any mBH's produced out of Earth's gravity well). And note that he did not assign any numerical probabilities to any of his theories that the safety of the LHC is supposed to be based on. That is because, no matter how you slice it, the probability of world destruction is quite large indeed when what will be lost is considered. We've got all our eggs in one basket, and now we're about to bet the bank. Let's hope we get lucky. . . .

I find it truly amazing that we still see this kind of shouting and hollaring. It is incontrovertable that this experiment has already been made on the earth via cosmic rays.

It's been done on the earth, the moon, every planet, the sun ...

And they are all still here.

The whole universe is still here. By the logic shown by the doomsayers in this thread, every cosmic body bigger than a baseball should be a black hole by now.

And they aren't.

I'm not in agreement with Warren on stopping the LHC and never have been. Some of his logic is shaky, but heck so is mine! I do feel that Warren has every right to be scared though. He is requesting prudence in the undertaking of unknown scientific experiments(yeah yeah nature cosmic rays etc). Accidents can still occur, ie. a magnet mount snapping or whatever unrelated to the actual experiments. CERN has not guaranteed 100% safety. If Warren feels that a 1 in a trillion trillion odds of a catastrophic event occurring is too high odds for his comfort he has every right to speak up and protest. So please guys, knock his science around a bit like you did to me, no problem there, but don't knock his fears. His arguments at times have been irrational, but not paranoid or delusional. If he has felt the need to shout and use caps and colors it's no doubt in frustration to some of the responses I myself have seen posted and a sincere attempt on his part to express his concerns.
Another of my usual brilliant analogies(although personally true for me). I don't jump out of airplanes, because I don't like the odds of my parachute failing even with a backup parachute. Noone can convince me with all the statistics in the world to do so. Warren doesn't want to jump out of this airplane, and I am cool with that. He's kicking and fighting the whole way because someone else is shoving him out of the airplane without his consent, and I don't blame him.
Peace out Warren and fight the good fight. I'm on the other side on this, but I respect your struggle.

Uh, Pippin, if a magnet breaks, you'll get zero energy in the beam, fast.

It's hard to get the little critters to actually hit each other, you know.

System failure is as close to 100% likely to have zero energy, and break a bunch of hardware as anything can get to 100% likely.

half an hour to an hour left turn it on already!

Bye everyone,

I'm off to try and score a big stash of heroin somehow. . . .

snip..

There's no way anyone could possibly guaranty %100 percent safety. Why should CERN be held to such an impossible goal?

Did the computer you bought come with a 100% guaranty that it won't catch fire?
Is the food you bought at your local grocery guaranteed to be 100% free of botulism or salmonella?
Does your seat belt come with a 100% guaranty that you won't sustain injury in an accident?

The world is a dangerous place. It's amazing just how much dangerous and deadly stuff people use all the time and take for granted, but don't give a second thought of the dangers.

__________________
"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

won't be needing it man

I'm not saying anything is likely, or what the odds are. I am reminded of that Mars probe that plummeted to its death because some idiot didn't notice that the europeans all used meters and the americans all used feet. There was nothing unsound at all with their science, it was just human error.
Speaking of human error, and speaking so to speak hehe, I will agree with Warren that Professor Brian Cox has issues.
"(b) exist, but do not eat neutron stars and are therefore harmless, probably because they evaporate away very quickly indeed!"
No relation to the price of tea in china last I checked.
"This non-story is symptomatic of a larger mistrust in science, particularly in the US, which includes intelligent design amongst other things."
Guaranteed to cut off any possible future funding from the religious right currently running the US government.
A scientist should always stick to science, not state his opinions. By stating his opinions he discredits anything he previously stated as fact. ie. was it really a fact or was it his opinion that everything is 100% safe. And no I'm not trying to reopen the can of worms, just stating the observation that knowing when to keep your mouth shut can sometimes be more important than knowing what to say.

We are all so conCERNed, Dr Cox!

"...Either he's is dead, or my watch has stopped..." Dr Hugo Z Hackenbush (Groucho Marx), A Day at the Races

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clear skies

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

Mak: Pass the pepperoni please.
Fazor: "Hail, Bautainia! We pledge our hearts to thee! Science and woo, some babbling too, and astron-oh-meee!"
slang: And it made ash out of yew and tree.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...sons-that.html


check it out. I love wired.

yeah, and i hope you guys haven't left any beer bottles lying around in there...

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clear skies

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

Mak: Pass the pepperoni please.
Fazor: "Hail, Bautainia! We pledge our hearts to thee! Science and woo, some babbling too, and astron-oh-meee!"
slang: And it made ash out of yew and tree.

Scientists aren't allowed to have opinions? Wow. Is it only scientists that aren't allowed to have opinions? I find it interesting you seem quick to discount his arguments because he mentions an opinion, but you seem quite happy with Warren's . . . stuff.

This is more about how best to deliver a message, correct? And not about whether one can have an opinion?

__________________
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

it was turned on 21 minutes ago, I think it's safe to say we're okay

Nah, it just takes time until the black holes consume enough matter for them to register.

Feel any heavier yet?

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The dog, the dog, he's at it again!