[BLUNTMAN2000]

Critics Fear Collider Could Doom Earth
By DOUGLAS BIRCH,AP
Posted: 2008-06-29 23:04:48
Filed Under: Science News
MEYRIN, Switzerland (June 29) - The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?
Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.

"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.

Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.

The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.

The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions - far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience.

The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million - long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries.

By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions.

Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."

One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.

On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers representing the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case.

The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research.

The lawyers called the plaintiffs' allegations "extraordinarily speculative," and said "there is no basis for any conceivable threat" from black holes or other objects the LHC might produce. A hearing on the motion is expected in late July or August.

In rebutting doomsday scenarios, CERN scientists point out that cosmic rays have been bombarding the earth, and triggering collisions similar to those planned for the collider, since the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

And so far, Earth has survived.

"The LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, what it has been doing for billions of years," said John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN.

Critics like Wagner have said the collisions caused by accelerators could be more hazardous than those of cosmic rays.

Both may produce micro black holes, subatomic versions of cosmic black holes - collapsed stars whose gravity fields are so powerful that they can suck in planets and other stars.

But micro black holes produced by cosmic ray collisions would likely be traveling so fast they would pass harmlessly through the earth.

Micro black holes produced by a collider, the skeptics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the earth's gravitational field - and eventually threaten the planet.

Ellis said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by the British physicist Stephen Hawking.

As for strangelets, CERN scientists point out that they have never been proven to exist. They said that even if these particles formed inside the Collider they would quickly break down.

When the LHC is finally at full power, two beams of protons will race around the huge ring 11,000 times a second in opposite directions. They will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space.

Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets - to guide the beams around the rings and prevent the packets of protons from cutting through the surrounding magnets like a blowtorch.

The paths of these beams will cross, and a few of the protons in them will collide, at a series of cylindrical detectors along the ring. The two largest detectors are essentially huge digital cameras, each weighing thousands of tons, capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.

Each year the detectors will generate 15 petabytes of data, the equivalent of a stack of CDs 12 miles tall. The data will require a high speed global network of computers for analysis.

Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in 1999. The courts dismissed the suit.

The leafy campus of CERN, a short drive from the shores of Lake Geneva, hardly seems like ground zero for doomsday. And locals don't seem overly concerned. Thousands attended an open house here this spring.

"There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.

The Associated Press.
2008-06-28 16:56:55

[The Urban Spaceman]

Not to worry - I have Gort watching over the particle accelerator! any of those particles or black holes that may appear he'll snatch right up for Saucer Fuel. That way if things go South with the experiment at least Gort and I can get outta this Solar System before the particles hit the proverbial fan...
and I thought WT was a black hole! Earth is next...
we might not even MAKE it to Dec. 21st 2012!

[Medpatient]

very interesting, I am still confused as to exactly what this thing is suppose to do though.

[BLUNTMAN2000]

Well don't hold your breath,It's powering up as we speak.
Hope Gort is ready to fly!

[The Urban Spaceman]

Originally Posted by Medpatient

very interesting, I am still confused as to exactly what this thing is suppose to do though.

the particle accelerator is intended to either prove or disprove some of the current theories of Physics. String theory, Dark Matter, new types of sub-atomic "particles", and a bunch of other stuff we mere mortals cannot possibly comprehend.

either that or it is gonna blow us all to hell and back!

[healing Herb]

And u thought the class of 1930 was the shit when they came up with the A-BOMB...

THEN THE CLASS OF 1943 COMES UP WITH H-BOMB!


THEN PAY TO DISMANTLE ALL THE WARHEADS?

AUGUST HUH?


WHY COULDENT THE USA TEST THE A- BOMB ON AN UNINHABITED ISLAND INSTEAD OF 2 PLACES IN JAPAN...DURING THE WAR..

BECAUSE WE ARE KILLERS...


AND THIS NEW TECH IS MORE PROOF THAT INVESTMENTS OF HUGE SUMS OF MONEY TO CONTROL..CONTROL...CONTROL!

HOW MUCH?.......The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research.



HOW BOUT CONTROLLING GAS PRICES? INFLATION...RECESSION?

CANCER...DIABETTIES..ETC..ETC..

NOOOOoo...lets find another way to blow up the outside world!


BLUNTMAN is that sour d in your avitar?

[Medpatient]

Originally Posted by The Urban Spaceman

the particle accelerator is intended to either prove or disprove some of the current theories of Physics. String theory, Dark Matter, new types of sub-atomic "particles", and a bunch of other stuff we mere mortals cannot possibly comprehend.

either that or it is gonna blow us all to hell and back!

Ahh I see, yea that is way beyond what I am able to comprehend.

[kennabis]

i love this post, so don't take this wrong. our watery planet has been taking hits, in the form of space junk since the beginning of time. and along comes the biped, thinking with the newly formed vertebrate nervous system. wow, we have to save ourselves, from impending doom from space. as we struggle for human rights, we can now worry about this fantastic doom, that only our scientists, and "our" money can save us from. do you think the starving millions, with their extended belly's and no running water care about planetary bodies colliding.? i love science and what it has done for us, i just think we have the cart in front the horse nowadays. and, scaring people with these storys, just goes to show how our government keeps our minds occupied, with terror and helplessness. this is another example of the ole switcheroo, worry about a threat from somewhere else, so not to deal with what is right in front of us. no disrespect

godspeed

[BLUNTMAN2000]

Originally Posted by The Urban Spaceman

either that or it is gonna blow us all to hell and back!

Thats just the idea,we don't know where they'll blow us to.

[healing Herb]

Originally Posted by BLUNTMAN2000

Thats just the idea,we don't know where they'll blow us to.

AT LEAST ILL BE MEDICATED WHEN WEE GOOO0000oooo..pop

[BLUNTMAN2000]

Originally Posted by kennabis

i love this post, so don't take this wrong. our watery planet has been taking hits, in the form of space junk since the beginning of time. and along comes the biped, thinking with the newly formed vertebrate nervous system. wow, we have to save ourselves, from impending doom from space. as we struggle for human rights, we can now worry about this fantastic doom, that only our scientists, and "our" money can save us from. do you think the starving millions, with their extended belly's and no running water care about planetary bodies colliding.? i love science and what it has done for us, i just think we have the cart in front the horse nowadays. and, scaring people with these storys, just goes to show how our government keeps our minds occupied, with terror and helplessness. this is another example of the ole switcheroo, worry about a threat from somewhere else, so not to deal with what is right in front of us. no disrespect

godspeed

So True,
The Earth might survive---But will the Human Race?

[The Urban Spaceman]

Originally Posted by Medpatient

Ahh I see, yea that is way beyond what I am able to comprehend.

You and me both brother! I tried to read some Steven Hawking and fell asleep trying! I also tried some of those Physics for Nitwits books - they made GREAT kindling for the old fireplace! Gotta leave that stuff for Gort - his neural-net processor is much better suited for "science".

Originally Posted by kennabis

i love this post, so don't take this wrong. our watery planet has been taking hits, in the form of space junk since the beginning of time. and along comes the biped, thinking with the newly formed vertebrate nervous system. wow, we have to save ourselves, from impending doom from space. as we struggle for human rights, we can now worry about this fantastic doom, that only our scientists, and "our" money can save us from. do you think the starving millions, with their extended belly's and no running water care about planetary bodies colliding.? i love science and what it has done for us, i just think we have the cart in front the horse nowadays. and, scaring people with these storys, just goes to show how our government keeps our minds occupied, with terror and helplessness. this is another example of the ole switcheroo, worry about a threat from somewhere else, so not to deal with what is right in front of us. no disrespect

godspeed

K - you hit the nail RIGHT ON THE HEAD! the government just LOVES to keep the peasantry (US) occupied with terror and helplessness. and worrying about how we are gonna be able to buy enough gas to get us to work so we can buy more gas!
the old switcheroo indeed!
peace
spacey

[KushMeister]

I'm all for reaching to the limits in the name of science...in most cases.
I dunno much about this thing at all, but my question is...

What gives these guys the right to switch this thing on, even if the threat of Armegedon is infantisimal? I mean, do they feel they are higher than God, and have the right to gamble with the lives of all humanity?

Now I know that the odds of anything serious happenning are probably so minute they don't even register....but if ya ask me (which apparently no one ever did), I just don't know that I'm in love with those odds...no matter how high they are.

Why can't everybody just smoke pot and chill?

'It's the End of the World as we Know it, and I Feel Fine!'

[The Urban Spaceman]

Originally Posted by KushMeister

but my question is...

What gives these guys the right to switch this thing on, even if the threat of Armegedon is infantisimal? I mean, do they feel they are higher than God, and have the right to gamble with the lives of all humanity?


'It's the End of the World as we Know it, and I Feel Fine!'

it is called Hubris my friend! and it will most likely cause the death of the Human Race (unless Gort and I get to ya first! Dec 21, 2012 IS coming ya know - and the robot army!)

[healing Herb]

Originally Posted by xsk8rdoodx

Time for a re-read...How does 5.8 BILLION sound?

uuuhhh...overall...europe and other countrys..bottom line coming out ... say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.



America's chinsy 531 million is a piss in the wind.

unless that pee...was the school lunch program or driving training etc...welfare...vagina dipped cigar's..


:partysmile: