markamerica

Swansont, How does the statement "people like certainty" imply that I advocate lying to them? If it doesn't(and it doesn't,) then your statement that I have reversed my argument is false. Nice try. Mark

swansont, What are you worried about? If it's negligible, why take the doomsayers so seriously? (Or "nutters", I've since learned they're described here.) People like certainty. They generally loathe uncertainty. They make choices and evaluate things based on probabilities, but they'd prefer certainties. The market is a great example of this. So when people ask: "But it's not zero?" they may instead be merely trying to evaluate what the risk really amounts to with respect to their lives. So? Would you prefer to tell them "zero" even if you knew it wasn't zero, just to calm any undue fears? It's as if you believe you're smart enough to handle the truth, but everybody else is not. Ever hear of "informed consent?" It's a concept in ethics. I'd suggest you rethink the attitude, because nothing will put an end to these experiments faster than the general public coming to believe "big science" isn't being perfectly forthcoming. Mark Severian, That's just it. I don't take anything on faith. Not from anybody. Trust is accrued over time, with respect to particular individuals, but I am not one to accept the word of anybody without checking it out for myself. That's a small part of why I'm here, after all. Think of it this way: I've seen opinions all over the map on this, and they center around two basic variables. Those variables are whether black holes will form, and whether Hawking radiation operates as proposed. Therefore, the opinions I see fall into these categories: Black holes will not be formed and therefore, whether Hawking radiation works or not is irrelevant. Black holes will be formed, but Hawking radiation will intervene to stop it from growing. Black holes will be formed, and Hawking radiation will fail to operate, or operate sufficiently to stop it from growing. Obviously, of these, only one presents any difficulty, if true. It's the only one that offers a change of state for those considering it. Therefore, it's only natural that this is the possibility to which people are drawn. I don't know who I believe, at this point. Looks to me like I have doubts that black holes will be created at all. I also have doubts about Hawking radiation, independent of my doubts regarding black holes, etc. That's why I'm here, asking questions. Sorry if the questions seem inane, redundant, or superfluous. I'm nevertheless sincere in asking them. Mark

SkepticLance, 1 in 50 million? Heck the odds of winning the Texas lotto is only 1 in 25 million. So assuming that small chance is accurate, we're looking at half the probability of winning the Texas lotto in a single drawing played with a single dollar. That's not much to worry about. On the other hand, people do win the lottery under those conditions. As for the sarcasm, well, it may be somewhat deserved in certain circumstances, but it's still not helpful. Mr. Skeptic, thanks for the answer. When I get done with my other chores for the day, I'll look at it again and think it over. Mark

and lots of sarcasm and nasty remarks directed at SkepticLance, but what it looks like from here is exactly what Lance suggests: A terribly visceral reaction against questions. Questions, for Pete's sake. This is the science forum, is it not? Who are the "nutters," exactly? Anybody who asks a question? Well golly, I guess that makes me a nutter, too, huh? Get off your high horses. If you're concerned that some level of ignorance will present problems to your experiment, enlighten the ignorant rather than chastising them. The simple truth that you're hoping to avoid in all of this is: If all those who are woefully ignorant of the nature of the LHC and what it intends to accomplish should decide that it won't be permitted, then guess what? It won't be permitted. After all, most of the money that is paying for said project, and almost all those like it, are paid by people you seem ready to dismiss as ignorant savages and/or nutters. This seems highly inappropriate, and terribly unappreciative. The least you could do is tell them why their money is being spent. No, easier to dismiss their questions as fodder for "nutters." You'd better get used to one simple fact: The average IQ is around 100. The average IQ of the folks toting this bill is not likely to be much higher. Yet you scorn questions as irrelevant or nonsensical. I seem to remember some saying about "the only stupid questions are the ones not asked." Is this the model you prefer, or are you folks going to stick to your "questions=nutters" thesis? I realize that we are not all experts on particle physics, quanta, and the like, but you know, if more people understood it, maybe you'd have less to worry about from prospective lawsuits. I realize too that some people will never "get it." I realize that for some people, ignorance is a permanent veil that will never be lifted. That doesn't mean you shouldn't test the veil, operating instead on the basis of a faulty assumption about the veil's intransigence. Now, where was I before I had to take leave of this forum? Oh yes, I was about asking some super-duper-stupid questions of the apparently more expert among us. John was explaining to me that the speeds were related to the energies involved, which spawned a new question for me(damn the luck). In the classical model, force is going to be a function of mass and acceleration. We're clearly choosing certain more massive ions over lighter ones for these experiments. We're also clearly choosing dual beams, to create a head-on collision, and your answer vexes me somewhat, but again, here is where my ignorance shows, so please, explain it if you can by whatever means you find most efficient: Since the relative closing speed of the particles can never exceed c, under any circumstances, ever, how does it make a difference whether two particles relative to one another are moving at a combined velocity approaching c, or instead a single moving particle approaching c at a fixed target? Am I wrong in thinking the same relative velocity is attained either way? If you would be so kind, please either explain it or point me to a source that explains it. As I said, this field is hardly my specialty, but I am nevertheless interested in learning about it. I'm doing my best to lift my own veil of ignorance in the limited time I can afford to such pursuits. Curiosity killed the cat, after all. Thank you, Mark

John, You know, I wondered about this, so maybe you can help me understand it, as it's a bit confusing to me. What is the point of dual beams? After all, if relativity says that c is the max possible speed of the collision, why build this thing with dual beams at all? Why not simply use a single beam and a fixed target? Seems to me like a whole lot of expense if in fact it makes no difference relative to the collision energies. Or am I missing something very elementary here? Further, if you read the entirety of the article I linked, it seems there is some cutoff point, and that space (and everything in it) acts as a giant filter to some of the higher energy particles moving about, and that at certain energies, many fewer than expected ever arrive here due to this effect. It seems to me as though the "garden variety" cosmic particles probably don't represent much danger, and it may be that even the higher energy particles that arrive aren't very dangerous either, but the question that rings out in my mind is: What about the conditions of such naturally occurring collisions would make them different from what will occur in the LHC? When I ask it this way, the only things I can come up with are: a.) the mass of the particles(?) b.) the relative velocity of the particles(?) c.) the relative angle of the collision of the particles(?) Now, in a sense, I've already covered b+c with the question about dual beams, more or less. Why bother with that, if it makes no difference to b, particularly? As for the notion that playing devil's advocate is "all well and good," of course it is all well and good. One of the problems I notice with CERN is that they don't want anybody playing devil's advocate, seemingly. I should think all scientists would welcome those sorts of examinations of their theories and experiments, but hey, maybe not. Lance, Thanks, yes indeed. It's all rather interesting, and yes, such catastrophes seem rather remote, but as you point out, it is not zero. That being the case, it raises ethical issues, and while I think the subject of ethics is too easily dismissed by some in science, this is probably not the forum for that discussion(which is part of why I think ethical considerations are too easily dismissed by science.) Experiments may happen in a vacuum, but not an ethical one. Cheers! Mark

iNow, Neither am I much on conspiracies. I tend to think in terms of coincidental, contemporaneous failures... Or what I suppose one could call a conspiracy of stupidity born of hubris. To briefly continue the analogy, do I believe that anybody at NASA wanted the Challenger to explode during its boost phase? Hardly. I doubt seriously that any two people were conscious of the concerns the other might have about the o-rings and the cool temps expected at launch. Institutionally, I am sure there was no edict that "We shall not make noise over potential o-ring problems." That said, nobody wanted to be the fly in the ointment, either. In this way, there was no conspiracy... It was just a lack of courage multiplied by the number of people who did not express doubts, concerns, and reservations. This is what happens in large bureaucracies, and I've yet to see a single one in which it doesn't occur. There needn't be any conspiracy... Just an environment that tends toward the discounting of risks when weighed against sticking one's own neck out. Creatures of any bureaucracy are terribly risk-averse, but this applies to their lives and careers, personally. It says nothing of the result this garners from the bureaucracy at large. SkepticLance, Like you, I have my doubts about doomsday scenarios, but at the same time, I notice a generally non-critical attitude among those who ought to be doing the most thoroughly critical evaluations. Of course, that may be my perception, and my bias, but that's how I see it. More bothersome to me is that CERN did issue an advisory to staff to stop talking about micro black holes in terms of exceedingly low risk, and instead stick to the idea of zero risk. Now, I understand from a PR standpoint why they might say that, but it's exceedingly bad PR to ever let anybody know they said that... For those who see a conspiracy behind every collider, that's just way too much ammunition. As for your "Fermi Paradox," I've seen it stated in various forms in a number of places. As you probably do, I am more prone to apply Occam's Razor and merely suggest that the reason we've no evidence of more advanced societies having visited is simply because they don't exist, or if they do, are no more able to overcome the obstacles of space travel over interstellar distances than are we. Nevertheless, it is an interesting premise, and provides at least a pause for introspection. Playing "Devil's advocate" can be fun. I'm not nearly an advanced enough student of this field to offer theories about all of this, but I am a curious bugger and seldom run out of questions. One of the things I do with my fellows at work is to play devil's advocate, and they do the same for me. While sometimes, it all comes out fairly simply, on occasion, somebody hits upon a question, or points out a contradiction, or otherwise brings to light some flaw that poses a serious threat to our goal. When this happens, the value of the exercise becomes clear. Besides, if I counted all the times a newcomer to my field asked a question that was so simple, and yet so probing, and absolutely demolished somebody or other's great idea, I'd be busy for a good long while, and would surely run out of fingers and toes. One of those "out of the mouthes of babes" kind of things... Cheers! Mark

evidence. So let's see if I can sum this up. It(the creation of a black hole at LHC that grows and consumes the earth) can't happen because: 1. CERN said so. 2. It would contradict some part(s) of the standard model. 3. Hawking radiation would have to fail either to materialize at all, or operate at too slow a rate. 4. The energies involved at the LHC are too small to create one in any case. 5. Cosmic particles with higher energies ought to be creating them all the time, and the Earth is still here at something around 4.5 billion years old 6. EVEN if it does happen, the accretion rate would take far too long to matter to mankind(millions of years.) 7. This is the paranoid fantasy of evangelicals and media hype of disaster pimping journalists. I've seen other dismissals of the doomsday scenarios, on other sites, but if I missed any here, please feel free to remind me. I'm going to play devil's advocate for a little bit, because I notice nobody is doing that much, and that seems extraordinarily unscientific: 1. "CERN said so." Well, assuming we generally trust the authority of CERN, this might still be a problem, because after all, they and their partners have spent in excess of $8billion getting this puppy ready. The USDOE, one of its partners, has contributed a pretty large share of that total, around 1/7th or 1/8th. I have never, in my entire life, seen a single large bureaucracy admit that it might be doing something foolish and/or dangerous, reverse course, and hold a press conference to say "Gee, we re-ran our numbers, and lo and behold, we goofed. This experiment is far too dangerous to ever actually perform." As a veteran of several large bureaucracies, governmental and private sector, I can promise you that having spent $8 billion, they're pretty much inclined to run this thing whether it might send the universe into oblivion or not. Can anybody say "NASA", "Shuttle," "O-Rings," and "Challenger" with a straight face and seriously contend that bureaucracies do not frequently create calamities by exactly this sort of "bureaucratic inertia?" 2. "It would contradict some part(s) of the standard model." So? Prior to Galileo, or Copernicus, the notion of a non-geocentric universe violated some part(s) of the "standard model" of the time. Every time we think we have it all figured out, the universe reaches out and slaps us a bit. Or a lot. Assuming the universe and everything in it must follow the precepts of our "standard model" because otherwise, the model is broken, is a bit like arguing that if the pants I ordered on Ebay won't zip up in front around my girth, there must be something wrong with the pants or the size measurements of the manufacturer of the pants. It couldn't possibly be that I "misunderestimated" the size of my waist, now could it? Heck, it wasn't long ago that the accelerating rate of the expansion of the universe didn't fit the "standard model." So, rather than trying to cram reality into the confines of our model, we modified it, and called the process to blame "dark energy." Well, bully for the standard model. Of course, the standard model really doesn't have much clue about what causes "vacuum energy." And until this was discovered, every scientist on the planet would have told you, with something approaching certainty, that the expansion was slowing, "or at least, it ought to be." 3. "Hawking radiation would have to fail either to materialize at all, or operate at too slow a rate." You mean, sacred cow Stephen Hawking would have to be wrong [again]? Heck, he's as much as admitted that he may be very wrong about this, although he shades it in uncertainty. The truth is, and it's probably somewhat uncomfortable for most to consider, we assign far too much credibility to Hawking because he's an affable, sympathetic character. He's a very smart guy, but I think we assign a certain affirmative action to his theories because we feel bad for his physical predicament. That's certainly understandable, but it isn't science. At present, Hawking radiation has never been observed or demonstrated anywhere, and the first real experiment that has a chance of detecting it "in the wild" happens with the launch of GLAST in May. 4. "The energies involved at the LHC are too small to create one in any case." This is a guess. The most frequently publicized estimates of the energy to be released by collisions at the LHC are around 7-14 TeV. This, we are told, is too small to create a stable black hole. Estimates for how much energy it would take to create a micro black hole of the stable, potentially accreting variety are around 1000 TeV. With all this in mind, it is therefore interesting to note that the top energies to be produced at the LHC will result from the collision of heavy ions, lead(Pb), and they will be in the range of 1150 TeV. Uh-oh. 5. "Cosmic particles with higher energies ought to be creating them all the time, and the Earth is still here at something around 4.5 billion years old." Interestingly, I just read an article about this very thing today: Study confirms 1966 prediction: The most energetic particles in the universe are not from the neighborhood Also interesting, to me, is the fact that the LHC will be using dual beams. I wonder how often heavy ions have head-on collisions at speeds approaching c, in nature, and where that's likely to happen. Surely, it happens in supernovae, but where else? 6. "EVEN if it does happen, the accretion rate would take far too long to matter to mankind(millions of years.)" I have seen estimates as high as 6 billion years, which is likely to be long beyond the end of the earth, having been consumed by the red giant sun on its way to ignominious death. I've seen estimates in the millions of years, which is a little less comforting, since there is some chance humans will still be running around then. I've seen estimates in the thousands, and the hundreds of years. All of these are based on a relatively slow initial accretion rate due to the effects of Hawking radiation(see above). The proposed accretion rates might well be a good bit faster if Hawking radiation fails to step in to save the day, and those estimates run from a few decades to 50 months of terror, down to four minutes and thirty seconds. Well, in the latter case, at least it will be fast, and CERN will be indemnified against lawsuits. 7. "This is the paranoid fantasy of evangelicals and media hype of disaster pimping journalists." To address the first half, I am aware of some people of an atheistic mindset(self included) who are not so certain about all of this. The assumption that only the stupid or the religious(and apparently, to some here, the latter is a reasonable substitute for the former,) have such concerns is troubling to me. The sort of people who tend to follow these issues with enough interest to make any sort of judgment aren't generally stupid, and may or may not be religiously guided. This thesis seems like an altogether unscientific assertion: "Only stupid people are concerned about micro black holes." As for media types, sure, they love a good disaster-in-the-making, but they also know their audience, and they know that few in their audience pay any attention to much beyond the sports or entertainment pages. Okay, a few probably read the comic strips, and the want ads. The truth is, however, that too few people even know what the LHC is, let alone what it may or may not be capable of producing. I would be willing to bet that even with the lawsuit story of recent weeks, less than 2% of the adult population of the United States has ever heard of the LHC or CERN. Half of those who may have caught a snippet or two about it will either dismiss fears out of hand, trusting in their government to protect them from "lunatic europeans with destructive machines" or simply never follow it up. All in all, however, I'm not so convinced as some here that there is nothing about which to be concerned, and neither am I willing to categorically state that photons have no at-rest mass. Regards, Mark