CERN on trial: could a lawsuit shut the LHC down?

Originally posted by PhyroX
reply to post by dzonatas

 

That's true... In the LHC you can do nuclear fission...

Aha! More corroborated evidence!

and what? Nuclear fission happens in nature, and we are still alive (in fact, UK is planning building a fission nuclear central by 2020, start emailing ppl and carry "world-is-going-end sing!) . If you do some job, and search how a nuke works, it need some radioactive material compressed to the critical mass... Sadly for you, the LHC doesn't handle such amount of material, barely 3000 atoms per stage so... a 3000 atoms nuke! WOOO!

But wait, what's the difference here between the fission device of the LHC and the fission device of... a nuclear power plant... or a nuclear bomb?

And, you said 3000 atoms per stage, so how many stages are there? If there is more than one, by meaning of "stage", then isn't that the same as some kind of "chain-reaction"

Aha!

The carbon monoxide is toxic

Dihydrogen monoxide is even worse in purest form. Just give it time...

reply to post by dzonatas



Yes, LHC is a fission device, as gamma ray are... And there is no problem with that... So don't be excited...


Well... In a nuclear plant, they use huge amounts of radioactive material, but with a controlled reaction, a nuke is the same, but uncontrolled. (Chernobyl was a uncontrolled reaction, for example)

There are multiple "stages" (it isn't stages exactly, english is not my first lenguaje and I don't find the word... I mean atom packets), they send packets of 3000 atoms, the amount what they want, and no, it isn't a chain reaction... It's a collision, there are no chain reactions inside the LHC. They sent 3000 atoms with the hope some of them collide front by front and disintegrate, so they can watch how protons/neutrons are made of.

So nuclear plants are nukes, probably worst than nukes, and almost every country has one installed and working. There are also, natural nuclear plants, and once again, nobody dies.

Even if a weird, improbable and practically impossible, mini-explosion (with 3000 atoms you can't do greater things) happens in the LHC, that would destroy a minimal part of the equipment, so the next atom package would miss and that's it... end of the road. Look the start-up error that had the LHC: one wire misplaced, and the entire device don't work.

And yes, there are ppl that died by dihydrogen monoxide overdose

reply to post by Karlhungis



The Blind Lady has No way of conducting an unbiased, beyond a doubt ruling.

The hardship CERN would suffer from an injunction is enormous - idling thousands of workers and equipment worth billions of euros, and upending a great scientific adventure. That weighs on the scales heavily. But on the other side is an Earth-mass black hole. That not only tips the scales, it eats them up.
Usually when complex scientific issues are involved, courts turn to expert witnesses. But there is a problem with using experts in this case: none would seem to be without bias. CERN employs half of the world's particle physicists; the other half are their friends. All of them are anxiously awaiting data from the LHC to advance their field.

These Fools/Cowboys have no idea what the outcome will be but are willing to see, at Who's Expense? Ours Only, if there is no bad reaction like a black hole etc... we the people will have No Gain from this experiment BUT if CERN turns into a Hugh vacuum cleaner we will ALL go the way of Dust


Zelong.

So if it does make a black hole and it destroys the world. Will the scientists be held liable and imprisoned?

I think just for safety reasons, facilities that produce high energy experiments like CERN should be located off-world, in high orbit. Let's just say anything can happen once a particular threshold gets crossed. What if the fabric of spacetime gets ripped? Any number of possibilities can be disastrous...

All I see are a bunch of paranoid nuts that think that us lowly humans are capable of creating a gravity well powerful enough to engulf the planet.

Yes, the scientists might be invested in the potential research gained from the LHC, that doesn't make them suicidal. If it was on their conscious that a black hole was even a remote possible outcome of their experiments, you would hear more about it. They are still the best source of information we have.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by Takamuri]

Originally posted by Raud
Well, this CERN accelerator seems to remove HAARP from the top of the "devices-that-might-destroy-the-world" list.

Haven't you ever thought that HAARP may have been created to save the world ?
Let's admit for one second that HAARP can manipulate weather (this is what I personnaly believe) what if it has been created as TPTB know that earth is going to be hell in a few years, that weather change will be dramatic, so they can counteract the constantly changing weather so it won't be hell on earth?
Of course at the moment they are playing around with it, using it as a weapon for testing reasons (which of course I don't agree with).

Just food for thought...

Oh yes and CERN will not be shut down, too much money gone into it!

i havent been following CERN too heavily, but from what i recall they are trying to make a particle go near the speed of light.

What i dont understand is how this will create a black-hole.

Wouldnt something need to be going significantly faster than the speed of light in order for it to become a black hole?

Black hole's have such a strong magnetic field that they suck in all the light around them. Light goes the speed of light(duh), so clearly a blackhole has enough gravitational force to suck something going the speed of light in.

So, if someone could just explain to me, how would something going the speed of light create a black hole?

reply to post by demonseed

i havent been following CERN too heavily,
So, if someone could just explain to me, how would something going the speed of light create a black hole?

Me neither demonseed. I think you will find its more to do with the stopping. The impact of these particles slamming into each other from opposing directions. This is how they think they can create Dark Matter

CERN in a nutshell
The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

CERN Wiki


Zelong


[edit on 23/2/10 by Zelong]

Originally posted by PhyroX
Yes, LHC is a fission device, as gamma ray are... And there is no problem with that... So don't be excited...

I'm not even worried about Iran, yet there are scales to worry about.

One says A is natural, and another says B is natural, yet A says B is not natural, so this is unnatural for A to be natural. Unfortunately, B already proved themselves as natural.

Does size matter? (Don't go off-topic with this one... )

There are multiple "stages"

Let's Keep It Simple, and compare it to "stage" lights:

LHC: beam, laser -- "spot lights"
Nuclear power plant: half-circle, parabolic, -- "hemi lamp"
Nuclear bomb: floods, scoops, omni-luminescent, ... let's say 3D modelers call it "sun"

atom packets

Vehicles.

...disintegrate, so they can watch how protons/neutrons are made of.

Aren't we already on quantum level? This is a waste of money to have to go back to the atomic age. I feel like all these organic rings are suddenly be called benzene again.

Todo... todo... this blackhole sent us bach to the past... devolved!

We're not that stupid even if we have no brains.

There are also, natural nuclear plants, and once again, nobody dies.

Shine a few protons through them, maybe they'll exchange a few and suspend hydrogen... a miracle!

Otherwise, hydrogen leaks. I'll believe 'free energy' first before I believe that no hydrogen will ever get inside the LHC to conduct a 'safe' experiment.

They should stop the LHC and spend all that money on hydrogen suspension technology. Somehow they think the "beam" technology is gonna go faster than the hydrogen leaks. Hmm... let's review blackholes even in theoretical terms. Yep, don't need to prove this one to see the truth.

Aha! No wonder they tried to make bigger and bigger 'particle accelerators'.

I'm done in this thread, yet if they really want to juice up the LHC, then let me know so I can release a blackhole and get down to BTB.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by dzonatas]

Originally posted by Muckster
reply to post by InfaRedMan

 

Don't you mean a black hole would theoretically be destroyed? It's not like the science has been tested right?

Excellent point

It always amazes me how people speak about "theories" as if they are "fact"

NOBODY knows for sure!!

Theory means fact in science, the terminology is often switch interchangeably in regular society. Yes, black holes would be theoretically destroyed, just like they will be theoretically created. To my knowledge, all the LHC is doing is colliding two particles together. The same which happens every day in nature.

Within current international treaties and national laws of France and Switzerland, CERN will not be shut down by a lawsuit.

The organisation is designed to be immune to such attempts. It is, in fact, a sovereign entity. Within its territory, its personnel is not subject to any national jurisdiction. Outside of it, key people are granted diplomatic status. Access to its premises is possible by customs points only, and no national or international law enforcement body is entitled to enter it without permission from the organisation itself. Last but not least, it has its own law(s): environmental regulations and experiment safety rules included.

These facts are outlined in a presentation by Eva-Maria Gröni ger-Voss*, CERN Chief legal counsel, a .ppt file that can still be found at
web.eu-egi.eu... - check the properties of the .ppt document and then look the author up on the web.

The interesting parts of the presentation are at slides 13-18. Its conclusion: "The example of ITER [the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor] demonstrates that the status of IO [international organisation] is still considered appropriate for large scale international projects"

Mrs Groni ger-Voss again explains the workings of CERN here - cdsweb.cern.ch... .

Sometimes, things are indeed hidden in plain sight.

*the forum script thinks that mrs' Voss name may be a racial slur, so I spaced it out a little.

Has anyone contemplated the Billions that have gone into developing this project. No court or country can halt this project.

what I don't understand is why is everyone afraid of these black holes? I thought black holes were all or most of the mass of a star smashed into one small object (small compared to the orginal size of the star). these mini black holes are going to have no mass at all. whats the problem? how do they eat the world?

Who knows if if the LHC is safe? CERN says its safe, but they have been wrong before.

Dr Lyn Evans, who leads the accelerator construction project at Cern, the European organisation for nuclear research, said the explosion had been potentially very dangerous. “There was a hell of a bang, the tunnel housing the machine filled with helium and dust and we had to call in the fire brigade to evacuate the place,” he said. “The people working on the test were frightened to death but they were all in a safe place so no-one was hurt.” An investigation by Cern researchers found “fundamental” flaws that caused the explosion, close to the CMS detector, one of the LHC’s most important experiments.

www.timesonline.co.uk...

Looks like even the CERN scientists have problems with math.

And I found this article.

The LHC, they suggest, may be sabotaging itself from the future — twisting time to generate a series of scientific setbacks that will prevent the machine fulfilling its destiny. At first sight, this theory fits comfortably into the crackpot tradition linking the start-up of the LHC with terrible disasters. The best known is that the £3 billion particle accelerator might trigger a black hole capable of swallowing the Earth when it gets going. Scientists enjoy laughing at this one. This time, however, their ridicule has been rather muted — because the time travel idea has come from two distinguished physicists who have backed it with rigorous mathematics.

www.timesonline.co.uk...

Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, but I know some of you guys might be interested in it.

Okay, I have been watching the whole CERN thing develop for the past several years, and I have come to several unnerving conclusions;

1.) The more research you do on CERN specifically, (for example for all you conspiracy people out there, did you know that the CERN logo actually has "666" in it?), with all of the many many glitches and problems and 'bird droppings', the more uncomfortable you tend to become about the proficiency level.

2.) The argument that we are dealing with such small quantities and for such a brief time seems pretty lame when you consider that a relatively small clump of uranium 239 is needed for catastrophic results, and basically the smaller we've gone into the atomic structure of things the more powerful forces we find there.

3.) CERN is basically one humungous, gigantic, incredibly powerful magnet, by far and away the most powerful magnet that mankind has ever built. Aside from the fact that the Earth supposedly has a huge iron ball at it's core that we really don't want to start wobbling around for any reason, we also have our Sun beginning to enter Solar Maximum at the same time that we are ramping up the energy at CERN -- a large part of Solar Flares, (like the current magnetic filament), and Solar activity is magnetic in nature. Kind of like Earthlings building a huge bull’s-eye for any iron based meteorites/ Solar energies, our very own increasingly decrepit satellites that are orbiting the planet, etc...

Okay, enough of my ranting for now -- I could go on for quite a bit -- even a Nostradamus quatrain that eerily seems to talk about it-- suffice it to say that we should most definitely enjoy our Life as fully and peacefully as we possibly can -- just in case, (the world is dodging soo many bullets right now that the odds are going way up on one finding it's target -- and CERN is one monster bullet!)...

Peace

These Fools/Cowboys have no idea what the outcome will be but are willing to see, at Who's Expense? Ours Only, if there is no bad reaction like a black hole etc... we the people will have No Gain from this experiment BUT if CERN turns into a Hugh vacuum cleaner we will ALL go the way of Dust

Zelong.

I beg to differ that "the people will have no gain". Pretty much every piece of technology we so critically depend on for our daily lives has arisen as a result of science, and more specifically, physics.

As a prime example, when Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea of what we now know as the internet - the use of linked files and hypertext transfer protocols - he was building it as a way to transfer information between computer systems run by scientists of different nationalities, running different systems and software. Guess where he was working when he put the plan for this network together?

CERN.

Just because you cannot see how smashing particles together would impact your daily life in a literal sense does not mean it would not - you have to take a wider, longer-term look. Theoretically, the knowledge learned by experiments run at the LHC could offer profound insights into the nature of matter, the cosmos, enery and coutless other subjects. This, in turn, could lead to revolutions in communications, electronics, quantum computing, healthcare, manufacturing, computing, networks, and more. The possibilities are endless.

Yes, the knowledge gained directly from experiments may only benefit scientists and their theories, but it is the shower of incidental discoveries that will benefit you and I.

Science should not be something we fear. Yes, it can be misappropriated and weaponized. But, I am afraid we are humans, and that will always be the case. If we humans are to ever survive in this universe, we will have to learn to leave our home and venture into the cosmos - and for this we need technology, discovery, cajones, and knowledge. If we shay away from learning, we render ourselves a willing victim to the next natural extinction level event.

Given the 50/50 chance that we wipe ourselves out in the pursuit of knowledge that will allow us to move forward, or the 100% chance that something natural will take place that is beyond our control that will wipe us out, I will happily take my chances and vie for the path of discovery.

All the people fearmongering need to remember that the best-qualified people to consider the *possible* consequences of the LHC are the people building it and using it. They all have families and, I would suspect, would not want to be sucked into a back hole any more than the next guy. However, they are also incredibly more knowledgeable about the technology being used, the physics involved, and the theoretical possibilities that emerge than any chicken-littles on here that panic and simply say it should be turned off and that progress is bad.

It is human nature to explore and discover. Take that away and we are no longer human. To quote Carl Sagan:

"we are a way for the Cosmos to know itself".

Originally posted by InfaRedMan

Originally posted by PhyroX
C'mon guys...

The LHC is absolutely safe.

Phew.. I'm glad you came in and told us something different to those scientists. I feel completely at ease now!

Even if a black hole is created (for who don't know, mini black holes are being created around all the matter just now), it would be immediately destroyed

Don't you mean a black hole would theoretically be destroyed? It's not like the science has been tested right?

IRM

If those energies could result in black holes that were long lived and capable of growth, then we would already be destroyed, because those energies are occurring all over the universe, inside stars, high in our atmosphere, during the big bang, and yet, stars don't collapse into blackholes "spontaneously" (that is, due to a freak accident high energy particle collision) but only when they reach a certain critical mass.

So just based on the countless "experiments" that happen naturally in the universe, inside stars, during gamma ray bursts and other high energy events, we would have already witnessed "spontaneous" black hole creation if it was indeed possible merely by reaching those energies without regards for overall mass involved. Yet we only observe black holes in conditions where their only possible origin could have been a very massive star.

So all fears of a spontaneous dangerous black hole creation hinge on the claim that somehow the LHC creates high energy under conditions that are "special" (and different from all other high energy events that occur spontaneously in the universe) so that a black hole can be created... How exactly is the LHC different? other than the fact that it is far less powerful than most of those events I describe?

-rrr

I am a firm believer in shutting this LHC down. If you want to make one, build it on the moon or something. With that we would at least have a small warning to 'bug out' from the planet. Not that everyone would have that option, but still; get it off my planet.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by Blood Eagle]

reply to post by valachus


have you ever been to CERN? What you write is blatantly absurd b/c outside from the collider ring CERN it isn't a large facility. I think you were expecting to find something like this and just kinda read into it (confirmation bias, perhaps?)

By their nature, international organisations such as CERN require the kind of facilities laid down in the Protocol. Without the protection offered by the privileges and immunities granted by the individual States in which the international organisation operates, those States could decide whom to give to, and whom to refuse work permits; they could impose entry restrictions on personnel, and levy taxes on the Organization's income--that is, on the membership contributions paid by the other Member States. Such national interference would contravene the very motive behind the Organization's creation as an international organisation and pose a threat to its autonomy. The Protocol is designed to take care of these issues.

It most decidedly does not have its own border posts. What you read about is that CERN-employees aren't subject to border controls on the FR/CH border b/c not all of the CERN employees actually work in Switzerland. It goes over the border.

If you read through the whole of the link, you will see that it's more about protection from intrusion by national governments that host the project. Basically it's a security against Switzerland or France just taking over the part on their territory or denying them the authority to send whoever they want into the facility whenever they want. Also a large part of the material that you find "alarming" deals with protection from the host governments interfering in the hiring process.

I can't believe you read something sinister into that. They clearly explain why these kind of regulations are necessary for international projects - protecting the project from undue influence of national gov. interests - especially when they are located in more than one country.

[edit on 23-2-2010 by NichirasuKenshin]