CERN to Skeptics and Doomsayers: Large Hadron Collider Won't Destroy the Earth.

I personally grow weary of hearing all the garbage and mumbo jumbo from conspiracy buffs and john titor supporters that CERN will destroy the world. I remember reading this article a while back and decided to post it.

Contrary to the somewhat feverish claims laid out in an recent lawsuit, when our favorite particle-smashing, Force-finding Large Hadron Collider is switched on soon it will not result in the destruction of life as we know it. Such claims are "complete nonsense" say the scientists at CERN (and everywhere else,) in response to the suit. They should know: it's their machine, they designed it and they've been telling everyone for a while that their research shows it's safe.

James Gillies, a CERN spokesman, suggests this is rubbish in this response to the New Scientist: "The LHC will start up this year, and it will produce all sorts of exciting new physics and knowledge about the universe." It's no threat at all, he says: "A year from now, the world will still be here." The LHC is actually designed to probe the boundaries of physics, and while a 2003 safety study did conceed that micro black holes or magnetic monopoles may be formed, they would be short-lived and offer no threat.

gizmodo.com...



Embrace your inner CERN!

This was an exhaustive review of all the physics and potential problems, and they have found that the LHC won’t kill us all. I hate to disappoint the doomcriers, but reality has a way of disappointing them time and again. The fact that we’re still here is pretty good evidence of that.

My thanks to Brian Cox — yes, that Brian Cox — for sending me this info. As he pointed out in his email to me:

Please pay particular attention to a key point that is often missed in these “discussions”. The argument based on cosmic ray collisions is not limited only to cosmic rays impacting on the Earth, but on every astronomical body in the observable Universe, including very dense ones such as neutron stars. It is estimated that the Universe conducts of order 10^13 complete lifetime runs of the LHC every second, with no observable consequences at all. This is on top of very sound theoretical arguments that IF micro black holes can be created, then they must also decay. This statement is based not on speculative stuff like extra dimension theories, but on pretty basic quantum mechanics.

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

Looks like the Earth is safe from the big bad CERN...

Mod Edit: Edited Title



[edit on 7/13/08 by FredT]

When are they firing this thing up again? Or have they already?

I've looked into it myself and I think its all a bit disturbing but then again Einstein worried that the Atom bomb explosion wouldn't stop.

Discover magazine says were safe...

[edit on 13-7-2008 by Techsnow]

reply to post by Techsnow


Don't know if this is accurate or not still but I've been following the countdown here.

www.lhcountdown.com...

reply to post by Mad_Hatter

Cern to Morons

Nice opener, Do you represent Cern ?

[edit on 13-7-2008 by Swingarm]

I cannot wait for this thing to fire off. I have a feeling its going to jettison humankind into a new era of living. Say goodbye to the information era, say hello to the, time-traveling, space faring, planet terra-forming, anti-grav, quantum era

Ha, wouldn't it be ironically hilarious if the reactor now did in fact destroy the Earth?

EDIT: Crud, didn't want just a one-liner, so I thought I'd ask a question too. What if nothing happens? What if it gets turned on, and all the new things (like hoson-biggs) don't show up (or don't not show up by which their existence can be inferred, as it were)? What would it mean for QM?

[edit on 13/7/2008 by rexpop]

What would be crap is if NOTHING happened and they just wasted their time lol.

I sure hope not, I have high hopes for what they can find out with this.

Originally posted by Xilvius
I cannot wait for this thing to fire off. I have a feeling its going to jettison humankind into a new era of living. Say goodbye to the information era, say hello to the, time-traveling, space faring, planet terra-forming, anti-grav, quantum era

And why do you think that?

What exactly COULD the LHC mean for us as humanity, bot in negative and positive ways?

Well worst case scenario, we destroy ourselves. Either way thats one ending no one can avoid, death. On the otherside, we understand certain things, like how matter manifests out of nothing, why nature prefers matter vs antimatter. Ever since I first heard about the LHC i've had nothing but good feelings about it. I guess it's my own personal want for LHC to be a success and help further humankind into its next stage of evolution.

its possible nothing will happen except a new age of science dawns, however considering scientists dont fully understand what a black hole really is and coupled with the fact that quantum mechanics is still really in its infancy, i dont find their statements very comforting.

turns on LHC
>BANG!< smashes particle
Scientist 1: "oops ! /my bad forgot to take (insert unknown variable) into account"
Scientist 2: Ahh nuts !

very comforting indeed.....

dont get me wrong, all in all i think the LHC is a good thing, i just dont trust many scientists.

[edit on 13-7-2008 by Demandred]

I remember reading somewhere that the LHC has the potential to produce 1 micro black hole a second, although they would only be the size of an atom. Now you must take a few things into effect. One of those things being gravity. A blackhole in space is fine, hugeness, in a vaccum. however its only influenced by its own gravitational pull. So what would happen if a blackhole was formed at the size of an atom under the earths gravitation field? theoretically it should collapse in on itself and reduce to hawking radiation. but what if it doesnt? our planet would be devoured within seconds. I dont see it taking a black hole time to build up energy, not if it sucks all forms of matter into a void. But you could go on forever on the subject, inifinite amount of possibilities.

I also read that it will simulate the conditions micro-seconds after the big bang. Scientists will be able to study how the universe came into existence. This may result in the creation of a micro-universe, separate from our own.

www.straight.com...

McPherson went on to explain that ATLAS is one of four detectors that will monitor these collisions, which will re-create conditions similar to those that existed within billionths of a second of the big bang. Experiments at ATLAS will, essentially, take us back in time, close to a point when everything that exists began from an unimaginably small point of infinite energy, when the entire universe was no larger than a sphere one-third of a metre in diameter.

Why all the nutty people carrying on about CERN and LHC?
Because its designed to discover the god particle
If they find out the meaning of the universe all them preachers are gonna lose there mansions and bmw's pretty fast

Originally posted by Xilvius
Well worst case scenario, we destroy ourselves. Either way thats one ending no one can avoid, death. On the otherside, we understand certain things, like how matter manifests out of nothing, why nature prefers matter vs antimatter. Ever since I first heard about the LHC i've had nothing but good feelings about it. I guess it's my own personal want for LHC to be a success and help further humankind into its next stage of evolution.

OK, but what will the understanding of how matter manifests out of nothing and why nature prefers matter vs antimatter do for us?

What, for example, technologies could be created with those understandings?

I thought the thing that people talk about, is the idea of mini black holes, they tend to say that because hawking radiation is just a theory, that is where the danger lies.

Personally I'm not worried much, although it may just be theory, as it comes from hawking I will put a fair bit of faith in it.

reply to post by Being_From_Earth


What, in heavens name, is a God particle?

Look at this thing!

The God Particle

Is that what they are going to use to try and create this?

It sounds scary, and it is. Building the LHC in a tunnel was a prudent move. The particle beam could drill a hole in just about anything, although the most likely victim would be the apparatus itself. One minor calamity has already happened: A magnet all but jumped out of its skin during a test in March 2007. Since then 24 magnets have been retrofitted to fix a design flaw. The people running the LHC aren't in a rush to talk about all the things that can go wrong, perhaps because the public has a way of worrying that mad scientists will accidentally create a black hole that devours the Earth.

Your blog contains a few errors. The 2003 RHIC Safety Report concluded that micro black hole creation was not possible, and the 2008 LHC Safety Report concluded if micro black holes were created, they would either evaporate from Hawking Radiation or grow too slowly to be a threat to Earth in its expected remaining 5 billion years of life.

The authors of the report were not certain which was true, but they argue that stable cosmological bodies such as neutron stars would not exist if micro black holes were dangerous.

The problem is that the stable cosmic body argument may be flawed according to initial reports of peer review challenging these arguments. (From what I understand, extremely powerful magnetic fields around neutron stars may tend to protect them from charged cosmic rays and neutrinos may pass through neutron stars). CERN's Scientific Policy Committee also categorized the neutron star and cosmic ray argument as unverified (but highly plausible).

Hawking Radiation theory may not exist as several published peer reviewed papers argue, and growth rates of micro black holes are unknown. Dr. Rossler's theory predicts that a single micro black hole could consume Earth in 50 months to 50 years.

Professor Otto Rossler's June 25th interview with 20 minuten News outlines his concerns (Translation from German)

Legal actions currently before US Federal Court in Hawaii are lead by Nuclear Physicist Walter L. Wagner.

For more detail, I suggest LHCFacts.org or LHCDefense.org

[edit on 13-7-2008 by JTankers]

[edit on 13-7-2008 by JTankers]

I have read the six page article from national geographic but i still dont really understand what is to gain with understanding of how matter manifests out of nothing and why nature prefers matter vs antimatter.

Understanding is one thing, but turning this knowledge into something we can benefit from is another. Its not like we can suddenly turn oil or energy or food for african people out of nothing, right?

reply to post by TheNetherlands

How does an infinitely dense universe become a vast and spacious one? And how is it filled with matter? In theory, as the early universe expanded, energy should have condensed into equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which would then have annihilated each other on contact, reverting to pure energy. On paper, the universe should be empty. But it's full of stars and planets and charming French villages and so on. The LHC experiments may help physicists understand our good fortune to be in a universe that grew with just enough more matter than antimatter.

To sum it up, its an attempt to find free energy. But I know what you're saying, it seems like its a crack attempt.