Talk:Large Hadron Collider

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Supportable Risk Calculation

In dicussions of risk it is important to separate risk from danger, this doesn't seem to be being done here. E.g. walking a wire inches above some mud is high risk and low danger. Walking a wide plank across an abyss is low risk and high danger.--86.142.37.107 (talk) 14:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Are CERN’s calculations of no risk from MBH (Micro Black Holes) supportable and accurate? Has CERN published any scientifically supportable risk analysis other than the article titled: Microscopic black holes will not eat you… published at http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html?

My research [of existing published sources] indicates a risk of up to 10% of a single MBH being captured by Earth’s gravity per month of LHC operation. Supporting assumptions and estimates: CERN states that microscopic black holes might be created at a rate of one per second (http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2007-06-11-black-holes-extra-dimension_N.htm). Assuming that that CERN’s prediction is correct, [experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I.] Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience estimated in 2004 that 10 million microscopic black holes could be created by LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in a year and 1 in a million would be captured by Earth’s gravity if Hawking Radiation fails to cause the MBHs to evaporate (http://www.livescience.com/environment/060919_black_holes.html). James Blodgett published survey results from 15 physicists estimating odds between 0% and 50% that Hawking Radiation would fail, with an average estimate of 9.9% for failure (http://www.lhcconcerns.com). However [Greg Landsberg] Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience also estimated that a single stable microscopic black hole would grow so slowly that it would not be a threat to Earth, though other physicists estimate much faster growth patterns. --Jtankers (talk) 22:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

...We discus this over and over again. Those sites are not reliable source of information!116.240.137.216 (talk) 02:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Please cite compelling scientifically verifiable sources that attest to the assured safety of LHC operation with respect to MBH evaporation. My research [of existing published sources] suggests that none exists. Please also cite processes that will allow LHC to detect stable MBH creation without attributing the resulting matter detection deficit to alternate phenomena, so that LHC operation might be halted if stable MBHs are created. --Jtankers (talk) 15:54, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

I think you and many editors mistake Wikipedia or more precisly this talk page as a forum for addressing your concerns, or trying to prove or disprove them. Frankly it's irrelevant, now as I have written ad nauseum, some of these fears have gained media attention, the article addresses this. One 'scientist' had fears published regarding the RHIC, the articles notes this. Anything else is irrelevant to this article, until they meet wikipedia's verfiability, reliably sourced and the whole plethora of guidelines I and others have mentioned previously. This article or it's contributors are in no position to assuage your concerns regarding MBH's, Stranglets, the third secret of fatima, or anything else that maybe keeping editors up at night. It is not here to examine the issue and draw conclusions. The article is not here as a platform to make readers aware of anyones personal fears, again I repeat until they become notable or published. You started your second paragraph with my research indicates, when this is published I will be the first in the queue and add the information. Until that time I would read this page and there is an e-mail address at the bottom. I'm sure there you will find people/scientists that will be able to analyse your research and it's findings at the level you so require. ^Khukri 23:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

The main article is widely referenced in the media as verification of the safety of LHC. However there is a lack of compelling scientifically verifiable sources assuring this safety with respect to MBH evaporation. (Unfortunately my research is only of existing published sources, I updated the post above in brackets.) --Jtankers (talk) 02:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

If there is an published article that refers to here stating that MBH's are safe, then it is incorrect (as I have previously stated this article is not for drawing conclusions) and is the fault of the publication for not being well researched. The article cannot state there is a problem until someone notable in a verifiable source states there is a problem or concern with MBH's. From the opposite position the article cannot state they are safe until CERN or another scientific body refutes the arguments raised again as a verifiable source. As there (as far as I am aware) is not any reliably sourced information on either side of the argument then neither point should be included. I'm surprised the media is using it as a verification of safety as the paragraph on MBH's and the section about it devouring the earth should be either re-written or referenced, as to me it is sensationally worded and unreferenced. Unless references can be found I will most probably have to remove it.

Can you link a few of these articles on the talk page, I would be interested from a Wikipedia point of view how the media have drawn conclusions. Thanks ^Khukri 08:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The main article is widely referenced and respected in the blogosphere by both those who support or dismiss the safety issue. The main article is probably as balanced as possible given the lack of compelling scientifically verifiable sources assuring this safety or not with respect to MBH evaporation. To not present the basic arguments on both sides would suggest that this is a settled issue. The safety issue is arguably one of the most relevant issues related to the LHC as we approach the ‘go live’ date of May 2008. --Jtankers (talk) 13:41, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

This reminds me of the "teach the controversy" strategy in the intelligent design vs. evolution debate. In both cases, there is no controversy in the scientific community. The LHC article acknowledges that there are some concerns outside of the scientific community. Any more coverage of the dissenting "scientists" and non-experts would be an unbalanced coverage of the opposing side. If you could find a list of five scientists who oppose the LHC, then one could find a list of five thousand scientists who know it presents no harm to humanity. Khukri and others repeatedly make it clear that Wikipedia has strict standards for quality. I have the feeling that discussions like these belong more on user pages, but I hope that this extra visibility helps others who are new to the "controversy". PSimeon (talk) 15:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

We're talking about the possibility of exterminating millions of species, billions of lives and ending that great messy blob of potential that is intelligent life in this part of the universe, not about whether some schoolkids are going to grow up ignorant. What is the acceptable risk? As for things published... In Darwin's time you could find one person who accepted natural selection and ten thousand who disputed it, what does it matter? If *any* educated published physicist is actually worried about the LHC, he should be heard and refuted properly, over a sensible period of time corresponding to the seriousness of his claims being true. In this case, their claims being true would be incalculably catastrophic - but is anyone aware of ANY delay to this project caused by safety concerns? Construction started 13 years ago and has continued apace, with the only setbacks being due to funding and technical difficulties - and the safety reports are only coming out this year? Where's the time for rebuttal? craigTheBrit (talk) 23:00, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Professor Dr. Otto E. Roessler warns that the scientific community claims the success of the experiment may result in the black hole destroying the planet within 50 million years. His own calculations indicate that this time frame may in fact be closer to 50 months ... (http://www.golem.de/0802/57477-4.html, translation at http://www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=52) --Jtankers (talk) 21:58, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Two of Prof. Rössler’s papers have been posted (one after the other in the same PDF) at: http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/OTTOROESSLERMINIBLACKHOLE.pdf The first suggests a mechanism for non-linearity in mini black hole accretion. This disputes the idea that it will take a very long time for a mini black hole to accrete the earth. Some of Professor Rössler’s calculations about the growth of black holes in the earth will be published in the journal "Chaos, Solutions and Fractals". Interview in German of Prof. Rössler by P.M. (a large German publication) on youtube: http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=_TjYobXKebM --Jtankers (talk) 07:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Adding to the voices of well known physicists addressing the issue -- Michio Kaku refutes earth destroying black holes from LHC

Proposing a Protest and Action Section

I think that a protest and action section is needed and justified, if it's only a few people how do you explain the myspace group STOP CERN having over 1,200 friends, and the myriad of websites discussing this issue, I think the safety concerns section is not enough, people need to know there are people doing what they can to stop this.

And how does that meet notable? If they 1200 physicists with experience in these issues then certainly it is notable, have they received exposure in the main stream press? The fact that there is 1200 people grouped on myspace is not in iself notable, I've seen one group with 750,000 people titled "If I get 100,000 members my wife will let me name my child Spiderpig". ^Khukri 08:05, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

• Exactly. Myspace should not be considered a credible source for anything, ever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.76.142.137 (talk) 16:31, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

The safety concerns section is MORE than enough, if we had to cover every crackpot theory on wikipeida then every article would need an action section, for example, should "The intellegent falling support society" be included in gravity —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.35.192.193 (talk) 03:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Oppose: Again, an amazing number of folks, on the order of 10% of the population, consider it at least somewhat credible that the Apollo moon landings were faked. That means millions of people! But that still does not make it notable for a factual historic and scientific encyclopedic article about the Apollo program. There is an article on the hoax allegations, with a "See also" link from the Apollo article.

A good article on the LHC safety issues, delineating the uncertainties, written by truly knowledgeable people, and based on reliable external sources, would be interesting and likely useful, and I would support a link to it, assuming it met Wiki standards. It would inevitably be highly technical, and very difficult for non-expert readers to assess. I wish I knew enough to write such an article myself, but I do not. I understand [1] that officials at CERN, in talking to the media, have been instructed “not to say that the probability is very small but that the probability is zero” — which I do think is an obvious falsehood and really deplorable; though I can appreciate CERN's visceral urge to round "truly negligible" down to something simpler, for those millions to understand.

BTW, should not this section (and others with late dates) be moved down to the end of the page? I will wait a while and do it if no one objects, as that is the standard for talk pages, and otherwise it is liable to be missed. Wwheaton (talk) 15:50, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Ooops, I just realized that the original post must have been before March 12, and therefore in place. For some reason it is not dated. My mistake. Wwheaton (talk) 15:53, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Legal Petition Filed with USDC HAWAII

A copy of submitted complaint and affidavits, in Word for Windows format, was emailed to me personally by Walter L. Wagner, co-petitioner on 2008/03/22. I uploaded a copy to: http://www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=29 . LUIS SANCHO, et al., Plaintiffs

The main article will need links to official copies of the complaint when available (citation assistance needed). Allegations alleged in the complaint and affidavits include the following main facts in quotes, many of which may be out of context and/or text replaced with an ellipsis […] for brevity sake:

"injunction [...] from operating the LHC until [...] proven to be reasonably safe" "No absolute refutation of the adverse scenarios that have been described has yet been articulated” “suggested by defendants that the ‘risk’ of the adverse scenarios is small.” “fundamental flaws were existent in those “safety reviews” and pointed out to defendants by plaintiffs.” “current safety review is known as the LHC Safety Assessment Group [LSAG] Safety Review.” “initially scheduled for completion by January 1, 2008 […] not yet been released […] as promised” “CERN's Chief Scientific Officer, Jos Engelen, was recently quoted in The New Yorker as instructing CERN scientists not to say that the risk from colliders is low, but to say that the risk is zero” “the real risk of these proposed experiments can be as high as 75%” ” 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’. ” “2 out of 3 absurd articles received by this magazine [for publication] try to prove Einstein wrong, […] they actually only prove their ignorance of Classic Relativity.” “LHC […] producing miniature black holes at the rate of 1 per second” “Director of CERN said that “the LHC will be the closest we will ever be to God”” “experiments that would take place at the LHC could be carried out by advanced Telescopes” “potentially deadly particles might be produced […] Dr. Frank Wilczek […] Nobel Prize in physics“ “letter to Dr. Wagner jointly signed by CERN’s Director General [Dr. Aymar] and Chief Scientific Officer [Dr. Engelen], CERN “mandated a group of experts, not themselves members of the LHC experimental collaborations, to assess safety aspects of LHC operation. This group is mandated to provide by the end of this year [2007] a written report, which will be made available to the scientific community and to the general public through the CERN web pages." It is to be noted that it is this LSAG Report which is currently overdue.“ ” believe that CERN is planning to commence operation of the LHC in April or May, 2008 “ ““go for launch” decision of spaceship Challenger involved placing the lives of only 7 people at risk, whereas the “go for launch” decision for the LHC located on spaceship Earth involves placing the lives of some 7 Billion people at risk, as well as all of our future descendants not yet born.” “reliance on a “cosmic ray argument” that CERN LHC collisions should be safe. […]They reasoned that if any disastrous particle could be created, it would already have been created eons ago by nature […] overlooked during their previous safety assessment […] novel particle such as a micro black hole […] simply pass harmlessly through our planet […] Conversely, any such novel particle that might be created at the LHC […] would then be captured by earth’s gravity, and could possibly grow larger [accrete matter] […] we have ZERO information on what such cross-section for capture actually is.” “Alternative scientific methods that pose no risk exist for obtaining some of the information being sought by the LHC” “upwards of 90% of our galaxy. All available information, however, shows that Dark Matter indeed feeds upon “ordinary” matter […] Creation of such Dark Matter on Earth would then be seen to be foolhardy, at best.” “Hawking Radiation is not only un-proven, it is directly contrary to established theory of Einstein’s Relativity by which black holes never evaporate, and are forever black”

I invite someone else to summarize the purpose of the complaint, basically: "to compel promised proof of safety, and expert review of the same"

--Jtankers (talk) 01:52, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Now this is becoming notable. Not being an expert on the American legal system how do you track this injunction/petition, if it is accepted or thrown out etc; is there a us.gov wesbite that shows these actions in progress etc? At the moment it is just a word document on a website, has this been put before the court and given a docket(?) number. The initial complaint is dated 14th March what has happened since then, Jtankers you are the man in the know could you please find out it's current status please? Looks like we are a little bit behind on this one.

At the end of the first paragraph in safety concerns I suggest adding

On <date> a petition was put before the US District Court of Hawaii, requesting an injunction of 4 months to review the LHC's safety documentation and a permanent injunction until the LHC can be demonstrated to be reasonably safe within industry standards. It's current status is .......

^Khukri 07:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Posted with petition date of March <date>, 2008. I have requested date verification, docket number and and us.gov website. --Jtankers (talk) 10:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Jtankers, I just quickly reverted your changes until we can be sure that this has been put before the court (sorry), we could be adding completly false information here. The intention is clear but can you find something to show that the restraining order has put before the court please?

Here is the latest text I was editing before I thought this might not be correct.

On March 21, 2008 a petition requesting an injunction against the LHC's startup was put before the US District Court of Hawaii by a group of concerned individuals. This group including Walter L. Wagner who notably failed to have an injunction brought against the RHIC for similar concerns. See: RHIC - Fears among the public

The current restraining order is a demand for an injunction of 4 months to review the LHC's safety documentation and a permanent injunction until the LHC can be demonstrated to be reasonably safe within industry standards. It's current status is pending.

Modify the above as you see fit and when we know it's legit we can add it straight in. ^Khukri 10:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I received an email moments ago directly from co-plaintif Walter L. Wagner: Correct: March 21, 2008; Case No. 08-00136HG; before the honorable Helen Gillmor, US District Court Judge. --Jtankers (talk) 18:24, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

OK added, but we still need another source for it if possible. Is there anywhere we can see this? I had a look here but can't find anything. Is pending the correct term, any ideas? ^Khukri 18:34, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming good faith here, can we get some verifiable 3rd party source on this quite soon please? I'm scouring the news and can't find anything, and something like this would surely make the papers. ^Khukri 10:49, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Plaintif Luis Sancho, PO Box 411 Honomu, HI 96728, 808-964-5535 may be able to provide additional sources. --Jtankers (talk) 12:35, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

If you are not willing to provide 3rd party sources then I will have to remove it, because at the moment it's hearsay and documents on a POV website. I think I've been pretty willing to assume good faith here, but the onus isn't on me to provide sources (though I have tried to find them anyway). ^Khukri 12:42, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I provided submission date and Docket Number, name, address and phone number of the primary plaintiff, the Court and Judges name, and copies of the complaint, and I attest to personal verification from co-plaintiff Walter L. Wagner. I don't know how long it takes for submitted petitions to become available on-line. What is wikipedia's requirement for submission? --Jtankers (talk) 12:58, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

and therein lies the problem, you have provided the information. How can we demonstrate to the passing reader that this is verifiable information, I believe you, hence the reason I put it up in the first place but that isn't enough. We can't put in the article <ref>as per email to James Tankersley Jr</ref>, we need something verifiable. As I said above I don't know the American legal system, can we find someone on that side of the Atlantic that does know ,and can show us how to get this info because in my mind it must be in the public domain. ^Khukri 13:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I will contact plaintiffs and request the same. --Jtankers (talk) 13:16, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Elaborating on what Khukri said above, a newspaper or magazine article on the litigation would be an excellent third-party source. --Kralizec! (talk) 13:55, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed it back here until we can get 3rd party source, but who ever is in the know on this side of the argument, please don't hang around as it is certainly notable in this whole debate and should be included once verified. ^Khukri 08:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

On March 21, 2008 a complaint requesting an injunction against the LHC's startup was filed before the US District Court of Hawaii by a group of concerned individuals. This group includes Walter L. Wagner who notably was unable to obtain an injunction against the much lower energy RHIC for similar concerns. See: RHIC - Fears among the public

The current restraining order is a demand for an injunction of 4 months to review the LHC's most recent safety documentation, after it has been issued, and a permanent injunction until the LHC can be demonstrated to be reasonably safe within industry standards. Its current status is pending.

At the risk of dragging this into legal talk, what are they expecting a court in Hawaii to do about a collider on the Swiss-French boarder? Isn't this more of a push for media attention than an actual attempt to use legal mechanisms to prevent turn on?

CaptinJohn (talk) 09:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Courts were closed [2008/03/26] for Prince Kuhio Day [Hawaiian Holiday], will follow up today (clerk of courts: 808-541-1300, case no. 08-00136HG). --Jtankers (talk) 12:26, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Confirmation of legal action: http://dockets.justia.com/browse/state-hawaii/court-hidce/ and http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-hidce/case_no-1:2008cv00136/case_id-78717/ --Jtankers (talk) 12:52, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Sancho v. U.S. Department of Energy et al HI GILLMOR Environmental Matters Environment: Review of Agency Action

Plaintiff: Luis Sancho, Walter L. Wagner Defendant: U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, Center For Nuclear Energy Research (CERN), National Science Foundation, Doe Entities 1-100 --Jtankers (talk) 13:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

That looks like a very good ref. I still have to ask: How will that court prevent the switch on? If they cant actually stop it being turned on then this is really just a publicity raising exercise. A good one perhaps but it should only get a line or two in the article as it is not really notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaptinJohn (talk • contribs) 13:16, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Here isn't really a forum to be discussing these issues, if we could get a third party commentary on it that would be something worth adding. Though in my own mind I'm not sure the notability of the fact that they have the name of CERN wrong and completely misplaced the fact that it's in Europe from the title European Organisation for Nuclear Research. I thought the name of the defendant had to be exact or it can get thrown out on a technicality, but I'm not a lawyer.

Good work on the link Jtankers, thanks.^Khukri 13:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

CERN is short for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, it's in french, the abbreviation is kept with it's actual leters, but to the rest of the english speaking world is goes by the former title more frequently, either or both are proper.

Oh by the way another article from MSNBC posted this here[2], this should be a pretty decent 3rd party source. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ebenonce (talk • contribs) 00:57, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

In French it's "Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire", the naming section of the CERN article accurately explains the naming but it's never been Center For Nuclear Energy Research and it has always had the word Europe in it in both languages, which is conspicuous by its absence. I've already seen a number of comments around along the lines of, "if they can't get the name right what else can't they get right?", but I'm certainly not going to add them

I added the MSNBC link yesterday next to the docket reference, I saw it's on slashdot (but its more of a commentary) and a couple of other websites, I'll wait for some of the big newsites getting hold of it and add that as a better sources later on. The MSNBC site as too many scathing commentaries at the bottom, which isn't want we want as a reputable source. ^Khukri 07:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe, just maybe it would be worth mentionning that the court does not have jurisdiction over CERN... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.167.9.16 (talk) 15:06, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually that's innacurate, and would be why it doesn't say that in the article, many of the parts (Magnets, ATLAS, Etc) are provided by Fermilab, which is US based, the lawsuit took that into consideration with their filing, the US also funds approximately 10 percent and has the largest delegation of scientists assigned, it's almost continent that it was filed in Hawaii.

This gives ample jurisdiction to an injunction.

legal action status

Anyone know what the status is with this action, I take it's been thrown out haven't heard a thing for over a month now? ^Khukri 12:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Safety concerns: against (against the cosmic-ray argument)

Just to add to the confusion, I have (1) added a citation template to the sentence in the "Safety concerns" section, about LHC collision products being produced at low-speed and so being likely to be captured, whereas CR products would escape harmlessly; and then (2) added a sentence, "Yet again, countering this fear, is the argument that if such micro-black holes or stranglets were in fact dangerous, and were created by cosmic-ray interactions with the Earth, then they should also have been created in huge numbers in the Sun, stars, planets, and ISM, so that the Universe would be filled with them (many cosmologically red-shifted), and traveling at all speeds — in which case stars and planets (including the Earth) ought to be constantly capturing them and thus being devoured, with spectacular results — which are not observed", which also needs a reference, of course. Neither of these arguments should endure without a reliable external source, which I hope (in view of the attention this is receiving lately) someone more expert may be able to provide.

The logic for (2) is correct, I suppose the only danger would be if black holes do decay, just slower than we thought, or if strangelets have a lifetime of e.g. 0.1 seconds, so that in space, they vanish, whereas in the LHC, they accumulate the earth. I won't add that, but it is a counter argument. The main thing is, we have no idea what will happen with the LHC till we switch it on! Buckethed (talk) 17:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

No idea about strangelets, but I believe the rate of accretion onto a black hole, even one at the center of the Earth, should be severely limited by the Eddington Limit of astronomical fame. This, fortunately, does not involve exotic physics. My understanding (not to be trusted in itself, alas) is that nothing very noticeable would happen for a time long compared to other hazards, such as the life of the Sun, because the thing would grow extremely slowly at first, during its microscopic phase. Wwheaton (talk) 02:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Further questions for experts are, (1) is it correct that collisions at 7 TeV would all be essentially simple, pure quark-quark affairs, due to the extreme Lorentz contraction of the interacting hadrons, (2) should not such collisions produce black holes with a mass (and size) much much less than the Planck mass & correspondingly small gravitational capture cross-section, and (3), at electron Gamma-factors of 100,000 at 50 GeV in the lab (at SLAC), far exceeding those at LHC of ~7,000 (but in the CM at LHC), would not lepton-quark interactions already explored constrain these questions? Are references available about these issues that someone not expert in relativistic quantum field theory could understand? Thanks Wwheaton (talk) 23:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Someone seems again to have re-erased some additions made to the safety concerns section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.137.64.26 (talk) 17:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I moved some stuff to a seperate heading, do you mean that? Buckethed (talk) 17:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

My friend Oldnoah has misunderstood my statement above. I do not claim that cosmic rays originate outside our galaxy (though the ultra-high energy variety clearly do, as they cannot be confined by galactic magnetic fields). My claim is that if UHE CRs (which clearly do exist) do make long-lived microscopic BHs when they hit the Earth, then they will be hitting everything everywhere in our galaxy, the Sun, planets, etc, and have been been doing so since time immemorial. Thus, on the argument (also unsourced) I was seeking to balance, the Galaxy should be full of such micro BHs flying around. Assuming this process has gone on for a long time, they would have accumulated, and some would be moving slowly enough to have been captured by the Earth, the Sun, or other stars. The results should be quite obvious if this happens often, as there are lots of stars around. I do not really object in principle to my statement being removed, as it certainly needs sourcing, but if so I would like to see the argument before it likewise sourced or removed. I put the "fact" tag on both, by the way. I really hope the folks in the community who have studied the LHC safety issue can comment and provide such source material, if we give them a chance (a week?) before deleting. Thanks Wwheaton (talk) 03:12, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Bill:

Sorry, I did not know that was your post. However, it is still not correct, and I will delete it again for that reason primarily [as I always leave unsourced material alone if I recognize it to be correct]. If high-E cosmic rays produce micro black holes, they are travelling at 0.999999+ c relative to our galaxy, and create micro black holes that are also travelling at 0.999+c relative to our galaxy [I'll let you put in the correct number of 9s for each]. At that speed, they are believed to be essentially invisible to all matter [very neutrino like], and hence would never slow down. Only if they are created at slow speed and captured by a star or planetary body would they begin the slow process of accretion, which might take centuries to millenia to complete, as the accretion rate likely increases with increasing mass. Of course, all of this presupposes that Hawking Radiation is not real. In any event, the argument that there should be slow micro black holes created in nature does not appear to be valid. Even those moving well below c [if such could exist from doppler shifted from receding galaxies, etc.] would likely, if they struck earth [after having been pulled in by Earth's gravity] simply pass right on through.

I had taken your "doppler shift" comment to mean micro black holes created in the vicinity of the CMB emission source, which recession doppler-shifts photons from 2,700 K blackbody spectrum to about 2.7 K blackbody spectrum.

Regards, Oldnoah (talk) 23:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)Oldnoah

OK, I see your point. We agree then, I guess, that there would be micro-black holes from ultra-high-energy cosmic ray interactions in the "modern" universe, say back till reionization, the end of the "cosmic dark age", when stars began making supernovas, sometime around z=7 or before? However, I agree that is probably not enough for a product BH to be captured, or significantly slowed to a speed where it would be likely to be captured. In the absence of Hawking radiation I would wonder about the mass spectrum of small primordial BHs formed earlier in the Big Bang, but I am not competent to go there tonight, nor probably anytime soon. Guess I better think some more. Thanks! Bill Wwheaton (talk) 03:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

For the cosmic ray argument - the universe is a big place, and cosmic rays are flying around everywhere. The majority of black holes will be at 0.9999c or so, however.... These cosmic rays will also collide head-on, or at different angles, creating a whole range of vary speed MBHs. These would be a LOT rarer than the relativistic ones - but still would be there. If a single one is enough to destroy earth, then it would have happened (the sun, at least, would have vanished by now).

Against the cosmic ray argument - even with the argument above, how about, if Hawking radiation does indeed exist, but is only 1/100 as powerful as we think?. The black holes may last 100 times as long, and therefore the MBHs made in space will vanish, whereas ones made in the LHC will be captured. Negating this argument is the fact that two cosmic rays could still collide inside the earth / sun, so by now the Sun, at least, should be gone still. By the way I don't recommend putting any of this into the main article :) Buckethed (talk) 18:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I am not an expert, but I believe that if the Hawking radiation exists at all, then there is little question about the rate and thus the lifetime, as the whole theory depends on BHs having a certain entropy and temperature, the latter related to the area of the event horizon (I believe T proportional to 1/M), and radiating at the corresponding thermal black body rate. If this is wrong, then there is probably a fatal error in the whole concept, and little reason to think they radiate at all—just my guess. Anyhow, I agree that unless there is more reliable information available from an external source, none of this belongs in the article. Wwheaton (talk) 00:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Hawking radiation has been proven to exist, in experiments with phonon creation in supersonic flow Bose condensates 20:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC - 8) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.1.255 (talk)

Too bad we do not have a citation for this amazing news :) .--LF1975 (talk) 13:11, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[Correction] That tends to contradict evidence provided by the 1999 University of Colorado bosenova implosion which may have resulted in creation of a stable micro black hole, though the incident is still a mystery to science. From Supernova to Smoke Ring "Achieving a pure BEC in rubidium-85 required the cloud of atoms to be cooled to about 3 billionths of a degree above absolute zero, the lowest temperature ever achieved. Making the self-interaction mildly repulsive causes the condensate to swell up in a controlled manner, as predicted by theory. However, when the magnetic field is adjusted to make the interaction attractive, dramatic and very unexpected effects are observed. The condensate first shrinks as expected, but rather than gradually clumping together in a mass, there is instead a sudden explosion of atoms outward. This "explosion," which actually corresponds to a tiny amount of energy by normal standards, continues for a few thousandths of a second. Left behind is a small cold remnant condensate surrounded by the expanding gas of the explosion. About half the original atoms in the condensate seem to have vanished in that they are not seen in either the remnant or the expanding gas cloud. Since the phenomenon looks very much like a tiny supernova, or exploding star, Wieman's team dubbed it a "Bosenova." The most surprising thing about the Bosenova is that the fundamental physical process behind the explosion is still a mystery." --Jtankers (talk) 05:39, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

This really seems like an incredible explanation for the bosenova event, to me. To form a BH, it seems the atoms in the BEC should have to come within the event horizon of a BH of their total mass. Such an event horizon would be remarkably small, to put it mildly. But to force those atoms into such a small quantum box would take a terrific amount of energy, by the Uncertainty Principle, and where could that much energy come from, in a low-temperature system? Surely not from gravity?! Very puzzled. Wwheaton (talk) 18:29, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Never trust classical physics when dealing with limits (see Newtonian laws). At almost 0 Kelvin strange things may happen. That's very different from the conditions at the supermassive star cores. --LF1975 (talk) 08:35, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

To probe small distances, you need high energies, in consequence of the uncertainty principle. This is all about quantum mechanics and relativity, nothing classical. The microscopic physics, on a scale much smaller than an atom, should neither know nor care about the temperature, which has meaning only for a large ensemble. Thus I remain skeptical that the bosenova could have anything to do with a microscopic BH. Wwheaton (talk) 17:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

"Negating this argument is the fact that two cosmic rays could still collide inside the earth / sun, so by now the Sun, at least, should be gone still".

That might have been be true if our solar system would have been at the middle space-time distance on an space-time axis between two exploding supernovas, or aligned polar axes of the massive black holes from the centers of two galaxies (only they provide cosmic rays of sufficient energies). If there are such cases they would be impossible to detect by us, since the rays would travel millions of years to collide, it would take different millions of years to observe the two involved supernova explosions from the earth (in supernovas case), and other millions of years to (possibly) detect the collapse of a star due to the resulted black hole/s created close to it. And if that would happen a bit far from a star and close to a planet, the resulted black hole will "eat" the planet and keep the planet orbit around the star --LF1975 (talk) 06:37, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Who is Dr evil?

Wow, micro blackholes end of earth...sounds like a scary machine. Just out of a james bond movie......Landlord77 (talk) 14:48, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I don't know why they're all so concerned about the extermination of all intelligent life. If a black hole did happen to hoover-up this whole sorry mess than maybe some intelligent life might have a chance to evolve. It would be a shame for the poor little koala bears though... Far Canal (talk) 06:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

How about ethics?

Let's suppose that the risk is indeed 1 in 50.000.000. This risk, as far as I know is comparable with the risk of dying in a plane crash. And this happens. Since this risk is "shared in full" by each person in the world, is it fair that some scientists impose practically this risk on a person, however small the risk might be, without the person's consent? Let's say that the experiment would have carried such a risk that 1 in 50.000.000 people will die. If the world population is 6 billion, than that means around 120 people. From which, 60 will be women, 60 men, including all ages accordingly from 0 to 100 years. That means also new borns. Will this be acceptable? If not, why would be the risk of killing all humanity be acceptable?

And about "winning the major prize on the lottery 3 weeks in succession". Well, give me 50 million weeks, and the money to play, and I'll show you. In LHC terms, two colliding particles represent one week.

Why are fools and fanatics always so certain of themselves, whereas wiser people are full of doubts? —Preceding unsigned comment added by LF1975 (talk • contribs) 15:44, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

What does this have to do with the article? --Closedmouth (talk) 16:28, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's about the risk presented by LHC, which is not zero, as even the most staunch proponent of the LHC will admit.--LF1975 (talk) 08:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

You are talking about your personal musings and not the article itself which is why Closedmouth asked how your comments pertain to the article. If this is not addressed sufficiently in the article (which I believe it is) then that is the discussion topic, not what you believe are or are not the risks. ^Khukri 09:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right. I'm not discussing the wiki article but the LHC experiment itself. Anyway, I do not think it matters what we discuss here, the decision is taken. Without the safety study (due for the end of 2007), and that's madness in my opinion. I just wonder when that group of experts mandated by CERN will publish the LHC safety study, if ever. I think that this fact, of going ahead with the experiment without waiting for the safety study promissed by CERN itself, is worth to be mentioned in the article.--LF1975 (talk) 18:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I would certainly agree with you about the principle, that operation should not precede completion and release of a mandated safety study; plus some time for the study to be read and digested, and criticized. But the process needs to terminate, one way or the other, in a finite time (remembering that some people will certainly be unconvinced, remain fearful and demand further study ad infinitum, in this world where a non-negligible fraction of people doubt the reality of the Apollo moon landings). It is a cruel irony that the people best qualified to evaluate the risks are likely to be professionally involved with the project, and merely by being part of the "scientific elite", some will say, prejudiced in its favor.

I do not know any details about what impact studies have been required, what has been done, and how careful and honest that work has been. I do believe that the many hundreds of young scientists working on the project must have children and families of their own, and I am pretty certain that none of those people wants to endanger themselves, their posterity, or the Earth; and it is hard to accept the notion that all of them are so intimidated by social and professional pressures that they have not sounded the alarm already, were that needed. The contrary simply seems unreasonable.

But once again in any case, we cannot settle that hard question here. All we can do is report on the credible opinions of reliable external sources. If there are such sources that make a the case that the subject has not been adequately studied and fairly evaluated, then I think the article can (and should) deal with that in the safety section. If that section were to become so large and complex, and so threatening, that the tail wags the dog (of a semi-technical description of the LHC), then there should probably be a separate article on the safety issue. The existence of such an article would no doubt be controversial, but the principles for dealing with such controversy in Wikipedia exist, and the Wiki-lawyers can struggle with it. At least they are not all retained at high salaries, or thinking of Nobel prizes.... Best, Wwheaton (talk) 02:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

That 1:50000000 represents a chance that the disaster will happen at all, not the chance that it will occur at every collision. In effect, it's an estimate by a theorist that their theory could be wrong. That's the worrying thing... ask anybody who sincerely believes their model of the Universe to be correct to calculate the probability of them having made a mistake, and whatever answer you get is ultimately facetious because it depends on their on model in the first place. craigTheBrit (talk) 16:38, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

"By the way I don't recommend putting any of this into the main article" - I should just add, that if these are the last days of human civilisation it's nice to see we're still concerned about neutrality! craigTheBrit (talk) 16:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Have no fear it won't go into the article, and to be perfectly honest if I thought the end of the world was iminent, the quality of a Wikipedia article would be the last thing on my mind. ^Khukri 17:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

This is surely the dumbest thing I have read on the web in weeks. "This risk, as far as I know is comparable with the risk of dying in a plane crash. And this happens." Do you understand that there are much more airplanes than LHCs? Think about it. "Let's say that the experiment would have carried such a risk that 1 in 50.000.000 people will die.". No, lets not say that. This has nothing to do with anything!88.68.211.199 (talk) 17:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

While the quoted risk is surely small, the expectation of ~140 deaths (if one accepts the Rees risk estimate of 1/50,000,000 as accurate, which is debatable either way) is really not quite negligible, in my opinion, and must be weighted against the "human value" of the project in some way, as I tried to do above (getting 1000-2000 human lifetimes as an off-the-wall guess).

But that was really not very satisfactory either, as it stands in for the extinction of the human species, and all life on Earth. If you think of it in terms of expected years of human life lost, the number comes out infinite if one assumes the species is essentially immortal, considering only human descendants, as well as direct fatalities. To do that risk estimate right, one would really have to think of the risk of other potential extincting events (catastrophic epidemic; nuclear war; asteroid impact; gamma-ray burst; lifetime of the Sun, etc), and the odds that advances in technology (which would surely be retarded by Draconian restraints on scientific investigation) might somehow allow us to escape the various significant possible disasters. Not a real simple thing to assess, I think.

Stupidly yours, Wwheaton (talk) 22:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

The difference is that people won't just randomly die. It's not like random black holes will start appearing and somehow kill 120 people, and not anyone else. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.131.211.32 (talk) 01:58, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

No, all (with low probability); or nothing. Yet both the number of casualties and the likelihood of occurrence must somehow enter into any estimate of the "importance". I claim the risk cannot be 0, as a matter of logic, so what is one to do? Wwheaton (talk) 04:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

end of the world- when?

i remember that one of popsci issues had article about the LHC, and it gave the odds of what will happen. i remember that theres a chance for the world to end. wanna know when exactly, cuz i forgot what issue it was ( i m a subscriber and i got it somewhere in my room ). i think it said april 13. if you can, email me at royachiron [at] the mail service of google (starts with a g, ends with l,) dot com.

it's very important. to me at least. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.158.93 (talk) 14:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

edit: please, answer, it is very important. i dont wanna die sober! just exact date of that experiment! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.158.93 (talk) 00:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course there is a chance for the world to end. Because we do not know everything , that chance cannot possibly be zero. Simply based on the logic and meaning of chance, it must be positive, but no more than 100%. These facts cannot be controversial, for any course of action.

Then, from the point of view of personal anxiety, if you expect to live to be 100 years old, the probability of your dying today must be on the order of 1 in 100,000 (approximate number of days in a century), somewhat less if you are young and healthy. It would be more if you are older or have risk conditions (like being frequently non-sober due to ethanol consumption).

From a public health viewpoint, if the odds were indeed 1/50,000,000 (as has been claimed), then the expectation value for the number of "prompt" deaths would be around 140, "prompt" meaning somewhere in the time interval of 50 million to 50 years that has also been mentioned. For comparison, the average number of deaths in an typical day on Earth must be at least 250,000.

As a further point of comparison, the estimated total project cost of $5 to $10 billion US dollars might be compared with the economic value of a human lifework, say $2 to $4 million dollars (assuming a 40-year working life, at a wage of $50K to $100K per year) as some kind of very rough indication of the value, in human terms, of the LHC project as assessed by the people who are paying for it. This "human value", imperfect as it must necessarily be, works out in the range of 500 to 2000 lifetimes of work, say 1000, ± a factor of two, and can be placed against the public health cost of ~140 lives calculated if the 1:50,000,000 number is correct.

I cite these estimate because it is simply not possible to evaluate a choice without considering the likely costs and benefits in some way. Both sides of the equation must be considered, even though doing so intelligently is certainly difficult. If we just say "any chance greater than exactly 0.0 is unacceptable", then the logical conclusion for all courses of action is necessarily that we must all stay in bed (which is of course far more risky than an active life).

Hope this helps, some. Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 17:07, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

And, of course, at all moments in one's life there is a small but non-zero chance of dying. So if you wan't to be certain not to die sober, there is really only one practical solution...Far Canal (talk) 01:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for information and a clarification

Could someone please add info to the article about where on Earth the matter that will be accelerated is taken from? What are the material sources of the protons and lead ions?

The following statement could use some more explanation: "Loss of only 10−7 of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet". Does this mean that the magnets are powered by the beam? What would happen if a magnet became "quenched"?

Thanks, Martin Rundkvist (talk) 09:48, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not expert about the details (see Ion source for a bit more), but protons are essential components of all ordinary matter. The trick is to pry them loose from the atoms they normally inhabit. This is easiest for hydrogen, which is almost all a single proton orbited by a single electron, bound together with about 13.6 eV of electrical attraction. (Actually, two hydrogen atoms like to bond together to form a hydrogen molecule, H₂, adding an additional level of complexity, but I think we can ignore that here.) To separate the protons from the electrons, we ordinarily use a strong electric field, spark, plasma discharge, or bombardment by high energy electrons (released from a hot filament, typically, and accelerated through metal electrodes at a voltage much higher than 13.6 volts.) Then some protons get knocked free, and they can be attracted by negatively charged (or repelled by positively charged) electrodes, guided by electric and magnetic fields and formed into well-defined beams, and then passed into the main parts of the accelerator. Lead nuclei are a bit tougher to pry loose since they are much more positive and electrons cling to them much tighter, but the principles are similar, you just need much more than 13.6 volts to do the job.

Re the quenching of magnets, the answer is no; the magnets are powered by coils with external electrical power supplies. To make the power bill endurable, we use superconducting magnets, that are cooled to very low temperatures, where they lose all electrical resistance. So essentially no power is needed to keep the magnetic field up once it is turned on, but a very large amount of energy is stored in the strong magnetic field around the ring, that bends the protons & antiprotons into their circular paths. The "quench" issue comes if for some reason a magnet loses some or all of its superconductivity. Then the stored magnetic energy drives the current through the field coils, which have become partially resistive, releasing heat. This causes a spreading loss of superconductivity, and all the considerable energy in the field gets dumped into heat in the coils in a catastrophic runaway, which is damaging to the magnets and I think could even be dangerous to someone in the tunnel. This is called a quench. Very bad. Superconductivity can also be destroyed by the beam itself, or even a small part of it colliding with the magnet coils, which is the issue addressed in the article. This is sufficiently far afield not to be described in detail in the article. A bit of research in other Wiki articles should reveal some supporting articles to explain further. I will look around myself, and maybe some of the other authors can add links to make it easier to navigate. Wwheaton (talk) 03:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I added a link on superconducting magnetic energy storage and rerouted quench to the disambiguation page. I'm afraid this does not help much.... Wwheaton (talk) 06:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Being an archaeologist, I have an interest in the geographical origins of raw materials. If anyone knows, it would be interesting to learn where the water for the hydrogen is taken, and where the lead for the ions is mined. The material is after all being put through some pretty extreme treatment. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 06:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

A basic assumption in physics for almost a century is that all elementary particles of a given type are truly identical and indistinguishable. Lead nuclei are somewhat more complex, but neither they nor protons should remember their place of origin. Wwheaton (talk) 07:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Haha, yeah, I'm not suggesting that there's anything unusual about the particles they'll shoot into the LHC. But I find their geographical origin interesting in the same way that it would be cool to live right next to the quarries where material was taken for the Notre Dame, Stonehenge or White House. Martin Rundkvist (talk) 09:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

This bochure (PDF) says that the protons come from a "standard hydrogen bottle." Which means that to answer your question, you'd have to look up CERN's current vendor(s) for hydrogen. -- SCZenz (talk) 10:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

True. The same probably goes for the lead. You'd probably just end up with the name of some chemical supplies firm, which may in turn buy metals from wherever it happens to be cheapest at the time. Too bad: every big-name physicist should have hydrogen and lead extracted from a tissue sample and shot into the LHC. I gotta blog this! Martin Rundkvist (talk) 11:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, you have probably heard the claim that if you could color every atom in a glass of water red, say, and then dumped it in the ocean and let it mix well (which would take a while), then drew a new glass of water anywhere, it would have several red flags in it. As humans are, what—something like 85% water by mass [?]—I reckon we are all "of a piece". Cheers, Wwheaton (talk) 15:41, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

What?

The article states: "...three fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force." Where's gravity? It's one of the fundamental forces, too. Zrs 12 (talk) 01:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Gravity is one of the fundamental interactions, but it is too weak (many many many orders of magnitude weaker than other three), so there will be no gravity related experiments in LHC. --83.131.74.140 (talk) 13:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I know. Therefore it should say "..three of the four fundamental forces: ..." or "... the three strongest of the fundamental forces:..." No? Zrs 12 (talk) 19:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I modified the sentence to except gravity, but it was actually correct as it was, since it did not claim to unify all the fundamental forces, although it might possibly have been misunderstood to imply that. Let's see what the others think about it. Wwheaton (talk) 19:18, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. I would have done it, but I just wanted to discuss it here first. Don't want to upset anyone. Zrs 12 (talk) 01:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem, we all try to be friends here. I did not mean to be picky myself. Probably it is less likely to be misunderstood now. Wwheaton (talk) 04:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Where's Mr. Higgs ?

In the picture of a simulated event, where is the Higgs-Boson? Is it the two lines up stemming from an h -> jet jet process or is it the two lines right-down stemming from h -> lepton antilepton or am I completely off-track? That information should probably be added to the picture information for the picture being pretty non-saying otherwise (other than "there is a lot of stuff arriving at the detector" which would be an alternative title for the picture). Bonus question: What's the production channel for the Higgs in this event and how is the activity along the beam-line to be interpreted (e.g. underlying event or tag-jets of vbf)? --78.49.41.193 (talk) 02:29, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the Higgs boson article, it appears to be neutral, so it would not appear directly, only its charged decay products. Also, I do not know if there is a prediction for its life-time, but if it decays via the strong or electromagnetic interactions, its life would likely be so short that it would leave only a microscopic track. Wwheaton (talk) 03:16, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible

That all black holes are in fact artificial. Developed by other civiliziations that at one stage or another developed a LHC and subsequently destroyed themselves.? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.7.166.174 (talk) 23:47, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Of course almost anything is possible, but it seems extremely unlikely. We "know" (? how much do we really know, for certain?) situations occur in astronomy, in which massive stars collapse to form black holes. We see stellar explosions that appear similar to what we expect from such events. We see neutron stars orbiting each other that are spiraling inwards due to gravitational radiation, and must apparently coalesce into a black hole in a cosmically short time, say less than 10% of the age of the universe. But, if there is no Hawking radiation, a small black hole, resulting from the collapse of an Earth-size planet, would be very difficult to detect. The radius of its event horizon, for example would be about 1 cm. It would simply orbit its star, as the Earth orbits the Sun now, and never be noticed. Nothing we see is anything like that. So there is really no evidence either way. Wwheaton (talk) 03:51, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like some rough draft of Carl Sagans Contact. Aliens send blue prints for a doomsday machine. Anythign is possible... ANYTHING. Like how this blackhole crap is crap.

-G

Court Case?

What has come of the suit filled by those "concerned", given that the court has no juristiction over CERN's activities being that they are international... which this article implies it does. Stabby Joe (talk) 16:25, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I've been trying to find out the same. I've have left messages and sent e-mails, but the major anti-LHC protagonists have gone quiet on the issue. This was to be expected in my opinion, it's always big news when David takes a court case out against Goliath, and even bigger news if they succeed, but if they get no where it might make page 28 on the local advertiser which we would have difficulty finding. The jurisdiction issue is one of the thing the court could have ruled on. The argument for was that it doesn't matter where the court cases was taken to, as the fear is a global catastrophe then any court could suffice. ^Khukri 07:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Well if wanted to really stop it, he would have taken it to a European court, otherwise the CERN officials don't even have to turn up, which was even said in some of the news articles about it. Stabby Joe (talk) 22:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The initial hearing in US District Court of Hawaii is set for June 16th. Case details at [3] and [4] --Jtankers (talk) 07:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Activation date

Have they set a date for running the first test yet? I couldn't find any information in the article.. (Don't worry, I'm just curious, not worried) FredTheDeadHead (talk) 12:19, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

It's not really as simple as that, it's not like a light switch where it will be switched on and there is beam and collisions. There have been tests running on the different components for quite along time now. All but one of the sectors are now being cooled down to it's operating temperature, which should take another month or so. Then there will be machine check out tests and then there will be first beam injections maybe a month or so after that, which will take a while as they will slowly build up to the 7Tev energy. Collisions within the detectors themselves will be a while after that I'd imagine. The CERN bulletin has most of the status information if you read back through them here. ^Khukri 13:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

First beam will be 5TeV end of July. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.217.55.206 (talk) 15:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Darn, I planned my holiday in Switzerland exactly at that time. I hope no disastrous unexpected chain of events will blow up that very nice country. I also hope they (CERN) follow my advice and imbalance the beams just enough for the collision products to have the necessary speed for leaving the solar system (5.00TeV and 4.99TeV will do I guess, I'll check the exact ratio later). Maybe the LHC itself is not so precise to have exactly the same energy/speed in the beams anyway. --LF1975 (talk) 06:45, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Black hole

I am going to change

"Thus, the above mentioned opponents to LHC consider that micro black holes produced in a terrestrial laboratory might not decay as rapidly as calculated, or might even not be prone to decay and, if unable to rapidly evaporate, they could start interacting, grow larger and potentially be disastrous to Earth itself."

to

"Thus, the above mentioned opponents to LHC consider that micro black holes produced in a terrestrial laboratory might not decay as rapidly as calculated, or might even not be prone to decay."

As i couldnt find anywhere in the reference a mention of any concern to earth, mainly because a blackhole would simply fall to the center of the earth and depending on size either sit there (most likely) or at worst slowly consum the earth one atom at a time with no notable effect until the blackhole started sonsuming the crust, but i cant be arsed to do the maths to see if that would be, a a few billion years, after the sun would go supernova, after heat death of the universe.I feal a note should be made to explain the lack of danger around blackholes, but ill remove the existing bias 1st and discuss improvements before editing it further.--82.35.192.193 (talk) 04:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I've put the above in blockquotes to make it easier to read.

However, the omission of the danger to Earth is quite possibly incorrect, so that I think the proposed change should not be made, though the original sentence as quoted could use improvement.

A microscopic black hole (BH) that did not immediately evaporate due to Hawking radiation (which physicists consider the most likely outcome) and became gravitationally bound to the Earth would probably pass through the material of the Earth almost freely for a long time, losing energy slowly, as even the dense matter within the Earth is mostly empty space on a microscopic scale, and gravity is a very weak force compared to all the others. Occasionally it should capture elementary particles, such as photons, electrons and quarks, or possibly whole protons and neutrons. (Because the capture cross section would seem to be very small, this process might go very slowly, I am not sure. But the gravitational force is much much smaller than the Weak Force, which governs the interactions of neutrinos, and these practically do not interact at all.) But eventually it should lose enough energy to reduce its orbit to be entirely within the Earth. Possibly after a very long time (compared to geological time), the BH would be expected to settle to near rest at the center of the Earth, and its gravitational capture cross section become comparable to the size of an atomic nucleus. At some point it would accrete material rapidly enough to surround itself with a very hot ionized plasma region, as accreted matter is strongly compressed and heated.

At this point the regime astronomer's are familiar with would apply, and radiation pressure from the hot core surrounding it would inhibit the infall and accretion, in accordance with the Eddington limit. How fast the growth process would proceed after that depends on the "radiative accretion efficiency", that is the ratio of the accretion energy radiated to that falling through the event horizon, leading to growth. If this efficiency were high (close to 100%), the growth rate would be slow, the mass increasing by a factor of e  ~ 2.718... roughly every 500 million years. Many factors of growth by e  would be required before anything noticeable on Earth would happen and probably the Sun would reach the end of its life first. But the efficiency would probably be significantly lower than 100%, so the growth time could be substantially shorter. When the accretion rate reached a high enough level that the energy release became comparable to the radioactive heat release rate inside the Earth, the effects would be expected to become noticeable on the surface, as increase seismic and volcanic activity, which would eventually become catastrophic.

These are just guesses by an older physicist with some astronomical background; the growth rate during the earliest times when the BH would have a mass of at most 14 TeV could be very long or perhaps fairly short. Perhaps a younger expert in field theory can say more. Wwheaton (talk) 14:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I added a reference to Dr. Otto E. Rossler's thesis which has been released for peer review and predicts the possibility of as few as 50 months Earth accretion time: [5]. To my knowledge, CERN's LSAG Safety Assessment Group report has not yet been officially released for peer review. --Jtankers (talk) 03:44, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Walter L. Wagner suggests other possibilities at: [6] I believe the problem that most people have with Hawking's idea is that, generally, there would be three different possibilities for a black hole sitting in the vacuum of space. First, of course, under Einsteinian theory, it would simply just sit there, unchanging, unless matter were to come nearby and fall into it. That was the original theory, of course, before Hawking began talking about 'quantum effects' at the 'event horizon'. We of course make particles and antiparticles every day. In our nuclear medicine departments, every day [including today] we slam protons into O-18 to make F-18, a positron emitter. When the F-18 decays [fairly rapidly because of its short half-life, which means we need to actually make it several times per day in some of our facilities], the nucleus loses a little bit of its mass, which is converted into the mass of a positron [and a neutrino], as well as their kinetic energies. This is then quickly converted back into energy, as the positron only travels about 1 millimeter before it encounters and electron, annihilating with two opposite-momentum photons of about 511 KeV each. We also routinely make antiprotons by slamming high-kinetic energy protons into targets, creating lots of particles and antiparticles, some of which are antiprotons, which we then magnetically separate, store, and later collide with protons [as at Fermilab]. We always need to inject energy, however, to make such particles. Hawking believes that the energy of the black-hole, however, can provide the mass for particle creation. While the idea is interesting, it is entirely different than what we do in the laboratory. To sum up his idea, he envisions that a particle and antiparticle form at the event-horizon as virtual particles. When one falls into the black hole, the other wanders away, and now isolated, required to become real. Consequently, the other that fell into the black hole is required to reduce the mass of the black hole [to conserve total mass], being the equivalent of having 'negative mass'. That is the other odd thing about his idea. It could be just as easily argued that a black hole would accrete a positive mass particle, requiring a nearby antiparticle to disappear. However, in the vacuum of space, there would be no nearby particles, and such scenario would likely be suppressed, just as Electron-Capture radioactive decay is altered or suppressed if the nearby electrons take a different chemical configuration, or are absent [preventing the decay]. [reposted comment written by Walter L. Wagner] --Jtankers (talk) 03:30, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting. I know that it has been said (maybe not recently) that a similar thing should happen in ultra-strong electric (E) fields, as at the surface of a high-Z nucleus, causing spontaneous breakdown of the vacuum into electron/positron pairs. Because magnetic (B) fields transform into electric fields under special relativistic boost transformations, I believe there was also a claim that B fields over a critical value, of order 10¹⁴ G, would also be unstable. It now appears that we observe super high-B field neutron stars ("magnetars") that exceed this limit, and nobody seems to worry about the old critical field issue, but I do not know why. The situation seems somewhat similar, but I am way over my depth here. I would be interested if anyone can explain that E-B issue, whether it is still thought to happen, and why or why not. Wwheaton (talk) 04:24, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I checked out your link to Walter Wagner [7], and found there a physicist blog by a theoretician currently working in the field, with a good summary of why it is not reasonable to fear the LHC (dated 4/29/2008). It does have remarks by Walter Wagner that make me believe he is not a crank (which is nice), but which do not increase my anxiety about the LHC. As a whole, the expert contributers to the blog are far more knowledgeable about the subject than I, and I recommend it to all who are interested. Wwheaton (talk) 18:47, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Large "Hardon" Collider

Some smart-alecs seem to find it funny to constantly rename the LHC to 'hardon' collider.

I've changed it about 3 times now...mods? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drizzt495 (talk • contribs) 21:16, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I left a comment in the article a while ago about this, but it's been subsequently removed. The article's also been protected several times for this exact reason, but they keep coming back. It's frustrating, but there's not much you can do about it. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:18, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Amazing though, that this wasn't considered when the name was assigned. Those particle physicists really should get out more often. Far Canal (talk) 02:43, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Hawking's radiation still debated?

According to CERN,

This [black holes are not stable] is not what physicists believe in general. Those few who pointed out issues with Hawking's radiation were simply trying to get a more rigorous proof of it. But no-one ever claimed that his proof of the decay is wrong, and that therefore they should be stable.

So the statement that "Hawking's radiation is still debated" needs to be changed or contextualized. --Phenylalanine (talk) 03:21, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Hawking Radiation theory is disputed by rigorously peer reviewed studies that found no basis in science to support it, and at least one Delphi study of physicists found significant doubt...

2005 http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0503/0503052v1.pdf QUANTUM NATURE OF BLACK HOLES by Adam D. Helfer "this prediction is not without its problems... no very good responses to these concerns... completely alters the picture drawn by Hawking" and "My aim here is to argue that the correct picture of a black hole is very different. The black hole, far from being an essentially classical object with only minor quantum corrections, has a strong quantum character which profoundly affects physics in a region of space–time, a region extending beyond the hole a distance comparable to the size of the hole itself. In this region, not merely “virtual” vacuum fluctuations, but real Planck-scale physics must be prevalent."

2004 http://www.lhcconcerns.com/#James_Blodgett "James Blogget, Masters in Statistics, conducted a Delphi study of 15 physicists and estimates that Hawking radiation would fail ranged from 0% to 50%. The data are as follows: 0, 0, 1E-10, 0.001, 0.01, 0.01, 0.01, 0.02, 0.02, 0.07, 0.1, 0.1, 0.3, 0.35, 0."

2004, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0408/0408009v2.pdf, On the Universality of the Hawking Effect by William G. Unruh and Ralf Schützhold, Quote: "However, we have also demonstrated counterexamples, which do not appear to be unphysical or artificial, displaying deviations from Hawking’s result. Therefore, whether real black holes emit Hawking radiation or not remains an open question and gives non-trivial information about Planckian physics."

2003 http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0304042 Do black holes radiate? By Adam D. Helfer "Yet this prediction rests on two dubious assumptions... no compelling theoretical case for or against radiation by black holes", "…assuming that black holes do radiate should be considered tentative, and the consequences of not making this assumption should be given comparable weight."

1995, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/03759601/1995/00000209/00000001/art00785 "On the existence of quantum evaporation of a black hole," by Professor V.A. Belinski, (Paraphrase) Asserts that Hawking radiation does not exist.

--Jtankers (talk) 18:11, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

I must say (as I have said before) the probability of any theory being wrong in physics cannot reasonably be 0, because we do not know anything with that kind of certainty. And to arithmetically average probabilities seems extremely dubious to me also, because the results will be dominated by the opinions of the (two in this case) people who rate P relatively high. Knowing nothing about the biases of those two (or the others...) the averages and implications seem to me to be essentially meaningless. It would be better to take the average of the logarithms, which at least points up the absurdity of the zeros. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 20:21, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Safety Argument

The safety argument was modified to add misleading statements suggesting that no physicists reject Hawking radiation.

I changed the following statement from

"From CERN's point of view, there has never been any suggestion that Hawking's proof of black hole decay is wrong and that therefore black holes should be stable. It is further argued that even if micro black holes were created and were stable, they would pose no threat to the Earth during its remaining 5 billion years of existence."

to

"From CERN's point of view, even if micro black holes were created and were stable, they would pose no threat to the Earth during its remaining 5 billion years of existence."

--Jtankers (talk) 10:55, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Again I've removed the some of the spam links in the article, LHC defence is listed below in the article as it is linked to the plaintiff in the upcoming court case, the others are unacceptable. Read through the archive for reasons why these spam links are not acceptable.

This article has been neutral and quite stable for about a month, but there have been alot of edits recently weighting it more to the anti-LHC cause. As I have said since January when these edits really started, there are fears out there and this has been mentioned with it's reasoning as is only correct. But we cannot give it undue weight (read WP:UNDUE) to these theories as we have to remember they are the minority view. Lets not go round adding every scientist who may have concern with the LHC, as it will become ridiculous if the opposition position start adding 10 times the amount of scientists who don't think it will cause a catastrophe. There are one or two examples in there and there are a couple of refuting arguments. This article notes there are concerns, but is not a soapbox to promote these fears to a wider audience by weighting the section to the anti-LHC cause. ^Khukri 07:12, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Protection

I've re-semi protected the article due to the prolific IP vandalism again. I've gone for 2 months this time, though I have a feeling the closer it gets to physics be carried out the more vandalism we'll see. ^Khukri 22:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Kind of a grueling experience. Bill Wwheaton (talk) 23:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Creation of 'Purpose' section?

Someone create a 'Purpose' section or some other section so that it's clear what this piece of machinery does and why it is unique from other particle accelerators. Thanks. WinterSpw (talk) 22:49, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

A brief summary of this should be in the introductory paragraph. Perhaps that needs improving. The details are very technical and probably better treated in separate articles, but the basic thing is that LHC is intended to produce collisions with enough energy to create the Higgs, and should do so if the simplest versions of the Standard Model are correct. If the Higgs is created with the predicted properties, that will confirm that the fundamental theory for the elementary particles that make up the matter we know, and the forces between then, is probably generally on the right track, though still incomplete. Any surprises will close off some possibilities and force investigation of new ones. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Bevatron half a century ago, which was designed to have enough energy to create anti-protons and anti-neutrons, if they existed. It did that, and confirmed the basic theoretical picture as it existed at that time. Wwheaton (talk) 00:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Activation date

I recently heard that the LHC will activate on june 6th, 2008. Great five days before my 15th birthday. If the world will be destroyed before june 11 i'm going to be really peeved hahaha. 72.192.48.119 (talk) 20:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

You appear to be safe. See the previous section with the same title, quoting end-of-July as the expected turn-on time. And of course they will have to have not just beam, but collisions, which means two colliding beams need to be focused on each other, down to a few micron sized spot. Wwheaton (talk) 03:27, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

What is a "Magnetic Monopole" and what will happen to the earth if it happens?

I don't quite understand what a magnetic monopole is can someone put it in easy to understand terms please? if the LHC creates them what happens to the earth?72.192.48.119 (talk) 20:25, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Accretion?

About the micro black hole section in the LHC article, what does it mean by "earths accretion less than 50 months? Sorry if im asking too many questions i just need to understand the dangerous "slightly possible" outcomes of this thing. 72.192.48.119 (talk) 20:29, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh that's just the amount of time that Otto Roessler estimated it would take for a stable MBH to accrette the planet into a total compressed size of about 30 Cm. nothing to worry about, unless you think it's plausible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.137.64.26 (talk) 01:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

A BH with the mass of the Earth would have a radius (of event horizon) of about 1 cm. The accretion rate of a non-microscopic black hole should be limited by the Eddington luminosity divided by the accretion efficiency. As the mass increases due to accretion, the rate of accretion should also increase in proportion, so we would have an exponential process. If the efficiency were the absolute maximum possible, 100%, this exponential growth time could be as long as about 500 million years, but many (? 20 or 30?) such periods must elapse before the thing would disturb the planet, since it starts very small. Off the top of my head I would not expect the efficiency to be terribly small, >0.1% I'd say, which would speed things up to a growth time scale of 500,000 years, or a time-to-catastrophe of some millions of years. I cannot prove that the efficiency could not be 100,000 times less still, and the time scale 5 yr, though that seems pretty unreasonable to me. (Pure opinion, alas.)

I think we have to accept that the probability, logically, simply cannot be zero, because there are always things we do not know. God could decide to smite the planet tomorrow because we are all terrible sinners for being so greedy for power; how can anyone reasonably argue that the probability of that is exactly zero? Or we could get zapped by a gamma-ray burst. Or many other things. So to live our lives at all we have to recognize the possibility that a probability that is not zero can still be negligible in reasonable terms. How do we decide that? By reason, as best we can, I guess; but nobody promised it would be easy. Wwheaton (talk) 01:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

There is no know mechanism which allows this catastrophic scenario, therefore it is not possible to determine how likely it is that this will occur. It is, however, possible to calculate "upper limits" of probability based on observations of past occurrences. --XUniverse (talk) 10:46, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Earth accretion in this context means destruction of the planet. The arguments are detailed fairly well at LHCFacts.org --Jtankers (talk) 22:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Mosquito myth ?

Thousands of sites and papers discussing the LHC claim that 1TeV equals the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito.
Few others claim this is the case for 7TeV, which is the energy of a single accelerated proton at LHC.
Even several Wikipedia pages make a similar claim. (ref. 1 & 2)
I couldn't find any page which shows calculations to prove this.
According to my own calculations however, the claim is way off.
Only the planned collision energy of Pb cores (1048 TeV) will come close to the kinetic energy of a small mosquito.

I am not a scientist, so I'd like someone to check my calculations before I start editing pages. After all, there are 4500+ pages claiming something different...

$1eV=1.602\times 10^{-19}J$ (ref. 3)

The formula for kinetic energy is $E={\tfrac {1}{2}}mv^{2}$, Where energy(E) is measured in Joule, mass(m) in

kg and velocity(v) in m/s. (ref. 5)

A mosquito's mass is up to 2.5 mg and it's speed is 1-2 km/h (ref. 4).
Let's use 1.8km/h for the speed, which is exactly 0.5 m/s to ease calculations.

Mosquito mass in kg: $2.5mg=2.5\times 10^{-3}kg$
Kinetic energy of the mosquito = ${\tfrac {1}{2}}\times 2.5\times 10^{-3}\times 0.5^{2}=3.125\times 10^{-4}J$

Difference in energy at 1 TeV: $1.602\times 10^{-7}J$ versus $3.125\times 10^{-4}J$
Difference in energy at 7 TeV: $1.121\times 10^{-6}J$ versus $3.125\times 10^{-4}J$
Difference in energy at 1048 TeV: $1.679\times 10^{-4}J$ versus $3.125\times 10^{-4}J$

Conclusion:
Only the collision energy of the lead cores approaches the kinetic energy of a lazy mosquito.

References:
1) http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Physics/Archive_January_2008
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeV
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito
5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy

p.s.
If the calculation is wrong, I'd really like to know what I've missed.
an-nau (talk) 16:00, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Mosquito mass in kg is 10^-6 not 10^-3 (milligrams not grams). So 1 TeV is the appropriate energy for its flying not too fast. Ilya O. Orlov (talk) 09:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
You're right, I've looked at it a million times, so I don't understand why I keep overlooking such an obvious mistake... an-nau (talk) 11:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Don't feel too bad, I've made such stupid errors 10⁶ ... er, 10³ times. This is why we need colleagues and referees.... Wwheaton (talk) 18:36, 19 May 2008 (UTC)