Bring on the Black Holes !

[Blacklight]

They're fireing up the LHC tomorrow. A friend emailed me an article about it (And an opposing viewpoint article as well)
I personally can't wait to see what this machine discovers.

LHC First Beam Tomorrow 10 September 2008
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html

World's Biggest Physics Experiment Moves Closer to Completion
By Art Chimes
Washington, DC
08 September 2008

..
Technician on work platform inspects the massive CMS detector, which tracks particle collisions at CERN's Large Hadron Collider

The biggest science experiment on Earth is expected to take a big step forward on Wednesday. As we hear from VOA's Art Chimes, an international team of scientists is getting ready to fire up the Large Hadron Collider, even as skeptics fear it could have disastrous consequences.


Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known by its French acronym, CERN, are planning to send a beam of particles racing around the 27-kilometer ring of the Large Hadron Collider for the first time.


The LHC, as it's known, is the world's most powerful particle accelerator. CERN physicist Tejinder Virdee says it's designed to explore some of the most fundamental questions in physics.


"At the end of this, it is possible that our view of nature, of how the nature works at the fundamental level, would be altered in the same way, for example, that Einstein had altered our view of space and time about 100 years ago," he said. "So the scientific results could be extremely important.
"

The Large Hadron Collider is housed in a circular tunnel, buried under the French-Swiss border just outside Geneva.


Beams of subatomic protons and other particles will zip around the ring, accelerated up to nearly the speed of light by some 1,800 superconducting magnet systems.


Protons will reach an energy level of 7 trillion electron volts, seven times more powerful than in any existing accelerator. The project has cost an estimated $5.8 billion.


When the LHC goes into full operation, scientists will aim beams of particles directly at each other. When particles collide — up to 600 million times a second — special sensors will detect and record the collisions, and a network of computers will analyze the vast amount of data generated.


It's designed in part to mimic conditions present at the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang, almost 15 billion years ago.


Researchers will also be looking for a subatomic particle known as the Higgs Boson. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that it exists… but it has never been seen. CERN physicist Mike Seymour says the elusive Higgs Boson has a nickname that conveys its importance.


"People call it 'God's particle' because it really has a very important central role in our whole theory of what everything is made of, of matter," Seymour explained. "Because without the Higgs particle we wouldn't be able to understand why any of the elementary particles have masses. The more we discover about the Higgs mechanism, the more we will understand about the dynamics of the early universe.
"

As scientists and technicians prepare to send a particle beam all the way around the LHC, some critics have wondered whether attempts to reproduce conditions at the beginning of the universe may create a black hole that could destroy the Earth.


A CERN team that studied the matter concluded there was no danger of that happening, and lawsuits filed by opponents have not succeeded in stopping work on the LHC.


CERN physicist John Ellis says simply, the skeptics are wrong. "LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, it has been doing for billions of years, and all of these astronomical bodies including the earth and the sun, they are still here. So there really is no problem.
"

Well, let's hope not. The first beam of particles is set to make that 27-kilometer trip around the Large Hadron Collider on Wednesday.


-----------------------------------------
Assessing Black Hole Risk
By Anthony O'Donnell
Sep 8, 2008 at 12:39 PM ET

Technology is great for modeling risk if one starts with the right assumptions. But sometimes those assumptions are hard to come by. Take the admittedly extreme example from this CNN story. Some people think what a certain small group of scientists is about to do could destroy the world.


The fear is that the world’s largest particle accelerator, about to be activated several hundred feet below the French/Swiss border, could cause a black hole that could swallow up the earth. The accelerator will attempt to replicate the conditions of less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, according to the article, and some people have evidently taken legal action to have the experiment stopped.


Physicists acknowledge that the accelerator could, in theory, create black holes, but one John Huth, quoted in the article, says assertions about the possibility of earth-swallowing black holes are “baloney.
”

The article reports that Huth said in a recent interview that even if the accelerator created small black holes, and even if one such black hole were stable, “it could just pass through the earth without being detected or without interacting at all.
” Said Huth:

“The gravitational force is so weak that you’d have to wait many, many, many, many, many lifetimes of the universe before one of these things could [get] big enough to even get close to being a problem.
”
That sounds more reassuring than the reporter’s conditional “could” in the paragraph above, but it points to the need of underwriters to rely on specialists in order to adequately assess risks.


For my part, I’m willing to adopt Huth’s insouciance and bet any sum of money that the world won’t in fact disappear into a void when the accelerator is turned on.
Any takers?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No danger from creating a black hole? What do they take us for?
Sep 9 2008 By Richard McComb

Be afraid. Be very afraid. When anyone, particularly a scientist, tells you there is nothing to worry about, you know damn well there is only one thing to do: worry.


We are now only hours from the big switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider.
Sounds harmless, doesn’t it, the Large Hadron Collider, like something you might find inside your Dyson or under the bonnet of your car, next to the “big end”?

It is also strangely evocative of flared-denim, bearded 70’s rock groups, like Van der Graaf Generator and Bachman Turner Overdrive: “And here they are, the band of the moment, smashing their way – quite literally – to the top of the charts.
Give a big Top of the Pops welcome to Large Hadron Collider … ”

The Large Hadron Collider (not to be confused with the Large Hardon Collider) has been called the Large Hadron Collider for good reason, namely not to scare the living bejesus out of us.


Because if it was given its real name – Professor Doom’s Big Scary Machine That’s Going To Re-create Black Holes And We’re All Going To Disappear Into Them And Die, Arrrgggghhhh – no one would sanction £3.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on it.


But this is exactly what we have done. Somewhere, straddling Switzerland and France, deep underground, buried under mountains and lots of cows, the eggiest egg-heads in the world have built a 17-mile tunnel in which they plan to experiment with their very dark materials.


The Large Hadron Collider is so big even the Abu Dhabi royal family would have to check with their bank manager before buying it. Astonishingly, the technology amassed within its subterranean corridors boasts faster computing power than the brains of Prof Stephen Hawking and Dame Carol Vorderman put together.


Inside its deep, and we can only hope, jolly well reinforced vaults, scientists hope to unlock some of the secrets of the universe in what is being called the world’s biggest physics experiment. The boffinry going on in here, from tomorrow, is baffling. And to someone banned from taking O-level physics (by the basketball teacher – go figure!) this stuff is baffling to the power of E = mc2, cross-reference McComb’s Law of Dimitivity {S+ Akc3/4hG, Birmimgham 2008}.


The Large Hadron Collider – let’s call it Colin, for short – will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang, when the universe went pear-shaped. To do this, Colin will fire tiny stuff, smaller than dinner-party cheese footballs, around magnetic tunnels and will study what happens when they smack into each other. You or I, of course, could provide the answer to this taxing question for nothing. (Answer: there will be a lot of squishy cheese on the walls, figuratively speaking.
)

However, the crazy guys at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) appear to be aiming for a slightly higher level of analytical sophistication and will be looking into the very nature of the cheesy goo, otherwise known to Dr Strangelove and chums as quark-gluon plasma.


CERN wants to know why some of this super-hot Big Bang fondue, so to speak, was destined to become inter-galactic cheese strings, while other bits became extra-terrestrial ready-prepared sandwich-size gouda slices and earth-bound Dairylea Lunchables.


This isn’t too alarming, until one considers the collisions in Colin will spark temperatures 100,000 times hotter than the centre of the Sun. Haven’t these people heard of global warming? This news will not go down well among the flooded residents of Frankly, Bournbrook and Morpeth, I can tell you.


What’s more, there will be 600 million of these collisions EVERY SECOND. Sure, there will be computer back-up but if Karl-Heinz blinks he will miss it. And keep missing it, gazillions of times.


Then there is the small, or rather whopping, matter of re-creating black holes. Now, I’ve read Prof Hawking’s A Briefer History of Time, so I know a look-see at a black hole only comes with a one-way ticket, no refunds.


The CERN boffins say they are only going to make lickle-ickle black holes, about the size of a midget’s bucket, so there will be no harm done.


The mad fools.Watch them disappear into the vortex, just like Oddjob in Goldfinger when he gets sucked out of the plane.


That’s what happens when you go near a black hole.


Boom! The clue’s in the name, stupid: they’re black, and they’re holes.


There is also a host of other evidential material that points to the dangers of messing with nature, matter and anti-matter, like Honey! I Shrunk The Kids and Dr Watt’s Frankenstein monster in Carry on Screaming.


Mark my words, if they start messing with black holes, I have a warning for the scientists from the prescient Bachman Turner Overdrive: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
”

[SteamWake]

There only going to fire it in 'one direction' with no particle collision.

You will have to wait a few months for armageddon Im afraid.

[Stealth Hunter]

Excellent! It's good to know that things are coming along so swiftly.

[Platapus]

Welcome to my underground lair.

My plan is simple.

First, we build the world's largest atom smasher

Second, we threaten to destroy the world by making the first man-made black hole unless the world pays us

<zoom in for close up>

One million dollars!!!

[mrbeast]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Welcome to my underground lair.

My plan is simple.

First, we build the world's largest atom smasher

Second, we threaten to destroy the world by making the first man-made black hole unless the world pays us

<zoom in for close up>

One million dollars!!!

Do you call this plan...........'The Alan Parsons Project' by any chance?

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by mrbeast

Do you call this plan...........'The Alan Parsons Project' by any chance?

Wasn't it call the death star or the preparation-H? lol Maybe Dr. Evil is the on in charge of the operation? :rotfl:

[baggygreen]

I know that the chances are said to be small for the end of the world, and thats great.

I know theres a lot of priceless information to be gained, which could even help us see my dream of much more expansive space travel in my lifetime.

Potentially we'll be able to figure out a lot more things we dont even know we dont know yet.

But none of the above stops me from feeling uneasy.. if only because the scientists are basing their statements on hypotheticals, about things we assume to exist (ie dark matter) and we know nothing of the nature of them.

I know we need to do the experiment as a species, thirst for knowledge and development and all that, but im still uneasy..

[Rhodes]

Me and some friends of mine have a massive "hit the bars" tonight because tomorrow is the end of the world...

[Oberon]

1) Assemble LHC
2) Turn it on
3) ????
4) Profit!

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Oberon

1) Assemble LHC
2) Turn it on
3) ????
4) Profit!

OMG an EvE fan....

The world is comming to an end after all.

[Mike@UK]

When I first read that safety report I thought it said "Magnetic Monopolies", as if the world was about to be destroyed by some kind of cheap service station magnetic "Travel Monopoly" board.

[Letum]

There will be no black holes.
None.

No professional at CERN has ever said that it is the least bit likely AFAIK.

It may not be "impossible", but that only because many aspects of the experiment
are a leap into the dark.


It's just a interesting story void of understanding created so that people can get
excited about the project with out investing any real time or effort into learning
what is really going on.

[Stealth Hunter]

Well, look at the bright side: if a black hole does form, then we'll die pretty quick... or be reassembled in another universe, although after reading about white holes, it's more likely that our matter and the matter of everything on the planet and in the solar system would be sucked up and then reprocessed and spit out in a few million or billion years via a white hole... which really isn't that bad of a deal.

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter

Well, look at the bright side: if a black hole does form, then we'll die pretty quick... or be reassembled in another universe, although after reading about white holes, it's more likely that our matter and the matter of everything on the planet and in the solar system would be sucked up and then reprocessed and spit out in a few million or billion years via a white hole... which really isn't that bad of a deal.

It will happen very quickly thats for sure. I hope they don't screwup... I won't be able to exact my revenge on them if they do.

[Blacklight]

Here's the actual safety finding for the LHC dumbed down to understandable human levels.

The safety of the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions. Concerns about the safety of whatever may be created in such high-energy particle collisions have been addressed for many years. In the light of new experimental data and theoretical understanding, the LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) has updated a review of the analysis made in 2003 by the LHC Safety Study Group, a group of independent scientists.
LSAG reaffirms and extends the conclusions of the 2003 report that LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern. Whatever the LHC will do, Nature has already done many times over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies. The LSAG report has been reviewed and endorsed by CERN’s Scientific Policy Committee, a group of external scientists that advises CERN’s governing body, its Council.
The following summarizes the main arguments given in the LSAG report. Anyone interested in more details is encouraged to consult it directly, and the technical scientific papers to which it refers.

Cosmic rays

The LHC, like other particle accelerators, recreates the natural phenomena of cosmic rays under controlled laboratory conditions, enabling them to be studied in more detail. Cosmic rays are particles produced in outer space, some of which are accelerated to energies far exceeding those of the LHC. The energy and the rate at which they reach the Earth’s atmosphere have been measured in experiments for some 70 years. Over the past billions of years, Nature has already generated on Earth as many collisions as about a million LHC experiments – and the planet still exists. Astronomers observe an enormous number of larger astronomical bodies throughout the Universe, all of which are also struck by cosmic rays. The Universe as a whole conducts more than 10 million million LHC-like experiments per second. The possibility of any dangerous consequences contradicts what astronomers see - stars and galaxies still exist.

Microscopic black holes

Nature forms black holes when certain stars, much larger than our Sun, collapse on themselves at the end of their lives. They concentrate a very large amount of matter in a very small space. Speculations about microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight. Astronomical black holes are much heavier than anything that could be produced at the LHC.
According to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC. There are, however, some speculative theories that predict the production of such particles at the LHC. All these theories predict that these particles would disintegrate immediately. Black holes, therefore, would have no time to start accreting matter and to cause macroscopic effects.
Although stable microscopic black holes are not expected in theory, study of the consequences of their production by cosmic rays shows that they would be harmless. Collisions at the LHC differ from cosmic-ray collisions with astronomical bodies like the Earth in that new particles produced in LHC collisions tend to move more slowly than those produced by cosmic rays. Stable black holes could be either electrically charged or neutral. If they had electric charge, they would interact with ordinary matter and be stopped while traversing the Earth, whether produced by cosmic rays or the LHC. The fact that the Earth is still here rules out the possibility that cosmic rays or the LHC could produce dangerous charged microscopic black holes. If stable microscopic black holes had no electric charge, their interactions with the Earth would be very weak. Those produced by cosmic rays would pass harmlessly through the Earth into space, whereas those produced by the LHC could remain on Earth. However, there are much larger and denser astronomical bodies than the Earth in the Universe. Black holes produced in cosmic-ray collisions with bodies such as neutron stars and white dwarf stars would be brought to rest. The continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes.

Strangelets

Strangelet is the term given to a hypothetical microscopic lump of ‘strange matter’ containing almost equal numbers of particles called up, down and strange quarks. According to most theoretical work, strangelets should change to ordinary matter within a thousand-millionth of a second. But could strangelets coalesce with ordinary matter and change it to strange matter? This question was first raised before the start up of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, RHIC, in 2000 in the United States. A study at the time showed that there was no cause for concern, and RHIC has now run for eight years, searching for strangelets without detecting any. At times, the LHC will run with beams of heavy nuclei, just as RHIC does. The LHC’s beams will have more energy than RHIC, but this makes it even less likely that strangelets could form. It is difficult for strange matter to stick together in the high temperatures produced by such colliders, rather as ice does not form in hot water. In addition, quarks will be more dilute at the LHC than at RHIC, making it more difficult to assemble strange matter. Strangelet production at the LHC is therefore less likely than at RHIC, and experience there has already validated the arguments that strangelets cannot be produced.

Vacuum bubbles

There have been speculations that the Universe is not in its most stable configuration, and that perturbations caused by the LHC could tip it into a more stable state, called a vacuum bubble, in which we could not exist. If the LHC could do this, then so could cosmic-ray collisions. Since such vacuum bubbles have not been produced anywhere in the visible Universe, they will not be made by the LHC.

Magnetic monopoles

Magnetic monopoles are hypothetical particles with a single magnetic charge, either a north pole or a south pole. Some speculative theories suggest that, if they do exist, magnetic monopoles could cause protons to decay. These theories also say that such monopoles would be too heavy to be produced at the LHC. Nevertheless, if the magnetic monopoles were light enough to appear at the LHC, cosmic rays striking the Earth’s atmosphere would already be making them, and the Earth would very effectively stop and trap them. The continued existence of the Earth and other astronomical bodies therefore rules out dangerous proton-eating magnetic monopoles light enough to be produced at the LHC.

Reports and reviews

Studies into the safety of high-energy collisions inside particle accelerators have been conducted in both Europe and the United States by physicists who are not themselves involved in experiments at the LHC. Their analyses have been reviewed by the expert scientific community, which agrees with their conclusion that particle collisions in accelerators are safe. CERN has mandated a group of particle physicists, also not involved in the LHC experiments, to monitor the latest speculations about LHC collisions.

• Download the Comments on claimed risks from metastable black holes
• Download the Statement from the Executive Board of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society (APS)
• Download this summary of the LSAG report. Translations are available in the following languages : fr de el es it jp no pl ru.
• Download the LSAG report (2008)
• Download the specialist report published in Europe (2003)
• Download the specialist report published in the United States (1999)
• Download expert comment on speculations raised by Professor Otto Roessler about the production of black holes at the LHC
• Download further expert comment on speculations raised by Professor Otto Roessler about the production of black holes at the LHC
• Download another independent assessment of the safety of black hole scenarios at the LHC