The end of the world was nigh. What happened? The LHC at Cern

I remember a thread on p.ie about the Cern facility beginning to operate this month and people expecting black holes and time travellers, or something interesting.

Did nothing happen. Haven't we any experiment results back yet. For all the money poured into it, I wanted a black hole at the very least.

Tests at CERN - Will the earth be destroyed in May 2008?

We've yet to see..

ibis in that thread says that Black Holes are routinely created in the atmosphere when high-speed particles collide - at much higher energies than will be used in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN ...

I'm under the impression (from one book) that Black Holes are purely theoretical and exist largely in maths though there is evidence of them in that they explain high-energy phenomena observed in the universe.

They may not exist though ...

Auditor #9 wrote:

Tests at CERN - Will the earth be destroyed in May 2008?

We've yet to see..

ibis in that thread says that Black Holes are routinely created in the atmosphere when high-speed particles collide - at much higher energies than will be used in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN ...

I'm under the impression (from one book) that Black Holes are purely theoretical and exist largely in maths though there is evidence of them in that they explain high-energy phenomena observed in the universe.

They may not exist though ...

It has been postponed until June. They tried it last November, but had to stop because of an explosion as they had got some calculations/assumptions wrong.


http://labunleashed.com/?p=166


http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/16/671015.aspx

I started that thread as it seemed to me that CERN is part serious science, but part 'toys for the boys' and it was very unclear who, if anybody, is the independent regulator that sets checks on what they do.

Then I got distracted by an economic black hole that appeared over the US and is sucking the global capitalist system into itself.

Funny enough, I think the Americans attenpted something similar a few years ago, but the budget was cut. After billions had been wasted, of course. I foresee a similar fate for this money-hole.

Any idea what velocity the hadron collider gets up to? As a percentage of the speed of light? Can we have spins in it when they're finished with the big sums? (Human body reduction like 'Inner space' allowed for)

Destroyed in May 2008?

Damn, I'll be in New York.
If I'm going to get destroyed, I'd like to be at home.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Destroyed in May 2008?

Damn, I'll be in New York.
If I'm going to get destroyed, I'd like to be at home.

There goes florida in July.

If you were in space at the time and came back to earth as it shrank(according to some German expert) Could you go on a godzilla/cloverfield-type rampage after landing the space shuttle on Asia?

Here is a really good link, which includes the BBC documentary. The project is costing 6 billion. The world wide web itself is a by-product of CERN: has it turned into a black hole into which our lives are being sucked?

http://jeffmilner.com/index.php/category/science/physics/

Cant get a hold of that docu.Tv-links has every bloody other horizon

Heres a few other clips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTw5KJeHrZ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fJ6PMfnz2E&feature=related

Higgs himself pictured in Time


They are looking for a particle named in his honour or will be named properly in his honour if
found

Higgs Boson: A Ghost in the Machine

Link to illustrated Cern update -here!

After looking at that I wondered whether the disruption to the med. net cabling (remember that P.ie thread) contributed to the delay at Cern.

CERN SITE LINK

Things seem to be moving along at CERN.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Higgs himself pictured in Time


They are looking for a particle named in his honour or will be named properly in his honour if
found

Higgs Boson: A Ghost in the Machine

He looks like Woodie Allen's brother!

Is there a particle physicist in the house?

http://www.particleadventure.org/

Lets face it, they have no idea what is going to happen, do they?

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.

There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe.

Official CERN website

cactus flower wrote:

Is there a particle physicist in the house?

http://www.particleadventure.org/

More's the point, is there an anti-particle phyisicist in the house? They'd spark off each other.

cactus flower wrote:

Is there a particle physicist in the house?

http://www.particleadventure.org/

Did you study physics for Leaving Cert cactus? In honours physics we get the rudiments of particle physics and it's fairly interesting if explained well and more importantly if you're in the right mood for it. Imagine 100 years ago someone devised ingenious experiments to weigh and measure properties of the electron ...

Results from physics experiments back then created the foundations for chemistry theory which is a tapestry of patterns involving the electron and which successfully explains the interactions of thousands of elements and compounds.

Imagine that everything and anything was explicable in terms of half a dozen simple-ish rules and objects and you have the motivation for this experiment:the search for knowledge about everything and anything.

There's something Faustian or Tower-of-Babelish about that..

SeathrúnCeitinn wrote:

Any idea what velocity the hadron collider gets up to? As a percentage of the speed of light? Can we have spins in it when they're finished with the big sums? (Human body reduction like 'Inner space' allowed for)

99.9999%, I believe. Really, only €6 billion? Hmm. Spread over 20 countries (not including us), that's €300 million each - the cost of the legal fees for the Port Tunnel.

Lawyers, or physicists...decisions, decisions. Not.

Auditor #9 wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Is there a particle physicist in the house?

http://www.particleadventure.org/

Did you study physics for Leaving Cert cactus? In honours physics we get the rudiments of particle physics and it's fairly interesting if explained well and more importantly if you're in the right mood for it. Imagine 100 years ago someone devised ingenious experiments to weigh and measure properties of the electron ...

Results from physics experiments back then created the foundations for chemistry theory which is a tapestry of patterns involving the electron and which successfully explains the interactions of thousands of elements and compounds.

Imagine that everything and anything was explicable in terms of half a dozen simple-ish rules and objects and you have the motivation for this experiment:the search for knowledge about everything and anything.

There's something Faustian or Tower-of-Babelish about that..

The first thing that amazes me about the experimentation at CERN is that people aren't more interested in it, and seem to think it is something it is OK to leave to the scientists. If you think of the amount of attention and angst given to stem cell research and GM foods ( and that is not too much given the issues ), wouldn't you think it would be being talked about?

Whether the intentions of the work are benign or not, I really don't know, but it is hard to think of any technology that has been turned into armaments in one way or another. CERN is presented as if it was a transition year project with no implications outside the lab.

The hope is that what they are doing will give us knowledge that will advance our understanding and our ability to live better on the planet. My fears come from the fact that the people doing the work don't even pretend that they can predict the outcome, and from the chance that new knowledge may result in horrendous military applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider - background link

"The physics" at Cern were scheduled for start yesterday, but nothing in the press. As I was looking for an update on the LHC start up, I came across this on Physics.com

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/30170

Jun 6, 2007

Quote :

LHC to skip low-energy test runs
The Large Hadron Collider will not be ready in time to perform a low-energy "engineering run", which was originally scheduled to take place this November, according to an official at CERN. This will leave the operators no chance to gain experience with the particle accelerator's steering and detection systems before the high-energy runs begin in spring next year. The delay is due primarily to the failure of a Fermilab-built magnet during high-pressure tests in March.

When it finally switches on, the €6.3bn Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN – the biggest experiment in particle physics – will accelerate protons in opposite directions around a ring 27 km in circumference and smash them together at energies close to 14 TeV. Researchers hope this will either allow them to glimpse the hotly-predicted Higgs boson or provide a window to "new" physics beyond our current Standard Model of particle physics.

Last year CERN, which is in Geneva, Switzerland, announced that the construction and testing of the LHC would be completed this November to allow for a two-week engineering run before the accelerator complex shuts down for winter maintenance. During this engineering run, the machine's operators would collide the protons at their injection energy of 450 GeV without using any of the ring's accelerating systems. This would have enabled them to gain experience steering the protons and detecting collisions before high-energy collisions take place in 2008.

In March this year, however, one of the superconducting magnets built by Fermilab in the US failed a high-pressure test designed to simulate the warming up or "quenching" that can occur when proton beams career off course into the magnets. This led many to speculate that the LHC's start up schedule would have to be delayed in order to replace the damaged magnet and redesign similar magnets, although CERN itself gave no official statement (see related story: "Large Hadron Collider faces delay").

Now, CERN spokesperson James Gillies has told Physics Web that the lab will announce at the end of June that the engineering run will be left out, although the accelerator will still be switching on in either late March or early April 2008 with an aim to start data collection two months later. "Things have been going well but pretty slowly – slower than the [previous] schedule foresaw," he explained.

Nevertheless, Gillies said that one of the LHC's octants has already been cooled to 1.97 K, and a second, adjacent, octant is following closely behind. Once they are both cooled to 1.9 K they should be able to test the anticlockwise proton beam at injection energy in a quarter of the ring. "So there is something happening this year, but it won't be colliding beams," he said.

About the author
Jon Cartwright is a reporter for Physics Web

Then they had an explosion and fire in November, as I posted previously.

After all the reassurance I have been given that they know what they are doing...

And the state of their web site would make you wonder...

Many apologies for the length of the following exchange, but it is the best I have seen in terms of simply setting out the methodological issues, and the stakes, of what is going on.

Of myths and men
Worries about an apocalypse unleashed by particle accelerators are not new, says Philip Ball. They have their source in old myths, which are hard to dispel.

When physicists dismiss as a myth the charge that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will trigger a process that might destroy the world, they are closer to the truth than they realize. In common parlance, a myth has come to denote a story that isn’t true, but in fact it is a story that is 'psychologically true'...

Well written article, thank you. However, one important fact was not included. CERN agreed to create a new safety report before the end of 2007 (according to the legal complaint) after it was brought to CERNs attention that the prior safety reports did not contain scientifically valid safety arguments (the cosmic ray arguments) that might indicate a reasonable assurance of safety. This report has not been completed. CERNs web site states that we have not been destroyed by effects of cosmic rays and micro black holes will evaporate. However, cosmic rays strike relatively stationary objects n Earth and the results travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, while colliders smash particles head on, may focus all energy to a single point and can be captured by Earths gravity. Einsteins relativity theory predicts that micro black holes will not decay but instead only grow, and Hawking Radiation contradicts relativity, is unproven and is disputed by at least 3 peer reviewed studies that find no basis in science to support it. The LHC Safety Assessment Group has been trying for months to prove safety without success. However science may still be a few years away from being able to provide reasonable assurance of safety or not at least with respect to creation of micro black holes on Earth. Professor Dr. Otto E. Rossler (winner University of Liege Chaos Award and Rene Descartes Award), Dr. Raj Baldev (Director of the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research) and others are warning of a very real, very possible, very present danger to the planet from the Large Hadron Collider. Dr. Rossler predicts that a single microblackhole could destroy the planet in as little and 50 months. His calculations have been released for peer review. If this experiment is so safe, why arent CERN scientists allowed to express any personal fears they might have about this Collider? Alleged in the legal action: Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Engelen passed an internal memorandum to workers at CERN, asking them, regardless of personal opinion, to affirm in all interviews that there were no risks involved in the experiments, changing the previous assertion of minimal risk. (Statisticians generally consider minimal risk as 1-10%). Previous safety studies ruled out any possibility of creating microblackholes in a collider. But predictions have changed and CERN has estimated the possibility of creating 1 microblackhole per second in the Large Hadron Collider. No peer reviewed safety study has ever been produced that I am aware of that speaks to the safety of creating microblackholes on Earth. If we delay for a safety study, some scientists at CERN may not be the first to discover some new science, and some Nobel prizes may be at stake. But which would more wise, conduct a full and independent adversarial peer reviewed safety study first, or just turn it on now and discover science as quickly as humanly possible? JTankers LHCConcerns.com


02 May, 2008 Posted by: James Jr Tankersley

"It seems reasonable to insist that, at the very least, such research projects commission their own expert assessment of risks, as is routinely done in some areas of bioscience. The LHC has followed the example of the RHIC in doing just that." I posted on this topic in The Great Beyond blog "Physics conspiracy: LHC could kill us all". After reading Geoff Brumfiel's rather sarcastic posting, I was sufficiently concerned to write to CERN about the concerns specifically mini-black holes, because black holes are predicted by the General Theory of Relativity to accumulate matter, rather than decay as predicted by Hawkins radiation. Here are excerpts of the conversation - Q - Assuming that this unlikely event, (the formation of a micro-black hole), were to occur – in how much time would it decay? A - The result is a lifetime of the order of 10^{-28} seconds. At the speed of light, this means a displacement of about 10^{-17} cm. Q - What would be the Schwarzschild radius of this micro-black hole? A - It(s) radius would be of the order of 10^{–17} cm, like the displacement possible before decaying. Q According to the General Theory Of Relativity, Black holes would accrete matter. Why would this not occur with micro-black holes? A - It would not happen if they decay so fast. There is no time to get close enough to anything. The gravitational field of a BH so small is extremely weak, so it cannot attract matter from far away, it will only accrete matter that were to hit its event horizon... But even if the BH were stable, namely it did not decay in the time indicated above, we have verified that its accretion would not give rise to any macroscopic effect. THIS STUDIES ARE BEING COMPLETED, AND WILL BE DOCUMENTED SOON IN A REPORT. (Emphasis mine) Q. One argument forwarded is that micro-black holes formed by CERN would have low velocities unlike those produced by Cosmic rays and thus could possibly be captured by the Earths gravity to settle at its core and accrete matter and eventually crush the Earth into a black hole. Is this possible? A - If they were created, the probability of having velocities sufficiently small (less than 10 km/sec, the escape velocity from earth) is small, of the order of 10^–6. But since, in case they really exist, there will be millions produced, this means that indeed a few of them would be stopped within earth and start accretion. This however does not mean that they will crush the earth. As I mentioned above this has been studied in great detail. For example, if BHs are formed at the LHC, they would be formed in cosmic rays collisions with the earth's upper atmosphere. BHs are typically created as charged objects, since they are produced by colliding quarks. A charged particle, even though travelling at high velocity like these BHs, slows down in matter very quickly since it interacts electromagnetically. This is physics well known since many decades, and the conclusion is that such BHs would stop inside earth, or the sun, or jupiter, or sirius, etc.etc.etc. Putting altogehter, CRs have repeated the LHC experiments a huge number of times, and if BHs existed, or were dangerous, we would know it by now.


03 May, 2008 Posted by: Richard Dawson Very Pollyanna, but neglects the facts. 1. The lack [thus far] of any catastrophe at RHIC, or, previously, Bevalac, adds zero evidence to the contention that the LHC will produce no catastrophe, since the potential problems are all related to specific energy levels, and each such collider is far more powerful than the last one. Sooner or later, eventually, it is virtually inevitable that we wil build machines to make Black Holes or Strangelets, or which will destabilize the Quantum Vacuum; if not done by accident, some researchers will go there on purpose, because the knowledge prize in doing so will simply be irresistable. 2. For reasons previously discussed, there can be no reliance on natural Cosmic Ray background behavior as predictive of what will occur inside the LHC or RHIC. If the same conditions of relative impact energy, byproduct vectors, etc. were common in the natural environemnt in the upper atmosphere or Lunar surface as would be generated inside the collider, there would be no justification for building the apparatus. Instead, much less extravagant high-altitude Research Balloons or a Lunar Lander instrument package would easily suffice to provide the same data. The notion that nature provides an 'existence proof' that Bad Things cannot happen in these colliders is trifling, disingenuous and insincere. 3. Other forms of 'technocalypse', such as Grey Goo, (or Strong A.I., for that matter) are not the musings of "commentators", but warnings of the pioneers in nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, themselves. Scientists in the emerging, dynamics fields of Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Nanotechnology seem to be generations more mature and sophisticated in their risk management mentality, policies, protocols, and procedures, than the high energy physics community, despite its much longer history. 4. Perhaps the unqualified legacy of monumental failure and waste exhibited by the high energy and plasma physics community is instructive here. After more than 50 years of building ever larger and more powerful colliders and plasma reactors, at a cost of untold Billions of dollars, NO useful scientific breakthroughs have ever been recorded from either such device, and both a Fundamental Understanding of Matter, and Controlled Fusion Energy remain totally elusive. The abject failure of particle physicists to have achieved their objectives (i.e. discovering the Higgs Boson) with prior collider experiments - although widely predicted to have done so - indicates the low reliability of their certainty in the outcome of these experiments. Consistently wrong, over decades, in their assertions that 'the last big machine' would illuminate the structure of matter - or ignite a controlled breakeven reaction, for that matter - leaves us with no alternative but to conclude that the same physicists may be no more accurate in predicting the behavior of 'the next big machine. The math doesnt fix this, since each such project had 'good math' to contend it would meet its scientific objectives, and yet, repeatedly, failure ensued. The rich, deep, and unbroken record of failure in these "Big Physics" projects is a Red Flag that the warnings from the fringe on potential distasters should be heeded. The physicists who propound the reliability of their assumptions have yet to be proven right once, whereas, the alarmists only need to be right 'once'. The Precautiionary Principle would seem wisely applied in these collider debates.

06 May, 2008 Posted by: David Wenbert Posner's suggestion that catastrophic risks, however small, should be reviewed in advance by an independent board is a sound one, but why does he single out just scientific experiments for this treatment? Surely, every human activity that could in any way create a national or global calamity - however improbably - needs to be vetted in advance? No risk is insignificant when dealing with millions of lives. Even now I hesitate to click on submit in case this post should accidentally collide with another of literally earth-shattering import!

The last post is ill informed, as the Precautionary Principle is applied in a wide spectrum of infrastructural projects, and in mining and quarrying: projects that don't by and large carry any risk to the planet as a whole.

The fact that the CERN fans label anyone who questions their safety approach as anti-science is predictable, but not comforting.

My view that these guys are a little bit out of control has not changed.

what explosion?

http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/large-hadron-collision-at-cern.html

This one.

http://labunleashed.com/?p=161

It's only slightly worrying for me as I'm going to die anyway and if I die in a black hole created under the swiss Milka Chocolate factory in Cern then that would be like, totally cool.

Ibis on the p.ie version of this debate said that similar energies occur naturally in the atmosphere on a regular basis or something like that. Or that it is thought that black holes might be created regularly in the atmosphere by high-speed collisions of particles and then I read up there that on earth it's different because gravity is stronger ...

In fairness they are using schwarzschild (black hole) equations - as far as I know - to predict and model events that might happen. Schwarzschild was the poor soldier back in the first world war who, instead of cleaning his gun played in his tent with Einstein's equations which were hot off the press that time. He theorized black holes and singularities and then was killed prematurely by the war. How many great genuises war has taken from us can never be calculated.

As well using those equations which are the priniciple 'evidence' we have that black holes might exist at all - some phenomena have been observed cosmically to infer the existence of black holes but they are still theoretical in essence and derive from the work of your man above. Hopefully we won't see one too soon but if we do I'll be ready to start watching my Stargate collection straight away...

Auditor #9 - I had a look back over that p.ie thread that you linked - it was a cracker: mix of funny and tragic, if you know what I mean. You did a valiant job of trying to keep the thread's scientific head above the water in the face of all comers, whether cynical or confused.

My take on this is twofold. Firstly, that this is potentially an amazing event in human history and should not be ignored and secondly that even at first glance there is a lot to be concerned about.

I am not anti-science at all, but I think that proper safety controls should be applied to experimentation, whether is is GM foods or particle physics and I'm in favour of applying the precautionary principle.

I have no real grasp of the detail of the science being applied here, but it is very clear here that we have a group of very clever people who are not very smart, (or smart people who are not very clever) engaged in ferocious competition for a big prize. They may individually feel that it is worth risking a lot so they, personally can "win the race". I had thought that Cern was the only facility having a go with LHCs but it seems there are at least two others, creating big competitive stakes.

The Cern experiments with the LHC are a step into the unknown on the basis of theoretical physics that are speculative in character and have not been proven. There have already been a succession of mistakes and setbacks in the project that was originally scheduled I think for 2006. Contrary to the impression that some people try to give, there is a lot of objection within the scientific community to what is being done, not only from a bunch of witch doctors and fairy chasers.

There is every appearance from the supporters of the LHC experiments at Cern that they are people who are determined to convince themselves and the rest of the world that there are no risks, rather than people who have assessed the risks and are giving an objective view. It has been widely reported that Cern staff have been directed to say there are no risks irrespective of what they believe. That is unhealthy.

Quote :

The lack [thus far] of any catastrophe at RHIC, or, previously, Bevalac, adds zero evidence to the contention that the LHC will produce no catastrophe, since the potential problems are all related to specific energy levels, and each such collider is far more powerful than the last one. Sooner or later, eventually, it is virtually inevitable that we wil build machines to make Black Holes or Strangelets, or which will destabilize the Quantum Vacuum; if not done by accident, some researchers will go there on purpose, because the knowledge prize in doing so will simply be irresistable.

So far the main output from Cern appears to be the internet, and I'm not knocking that. But a lot of money and career time has gone into it at this stage and pressure for 'results' must be building up. There don't seem to be many so far, and the nightmare of this whole exercise being the 20th century equivalent of the alchemists' dream of turning base metal into gold must pass through the minds of those involved.

The situation at Cern, with physicists saying that there is a risk, however minimal, of creating a destructive black hole, is beyond any single risk humanity has ever taken before. The guys who are doing it couldn't even estimate correctly what it would take to hold their magnets in place. It is extraordinary that it is passing with so little comment. IMHO these people should be brought back under much firmer 'civilian' control.