largehadroncollider

8/3/2019 largehadroncollider

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April Patrick

Period 3

The Large Haldron Collider: Destroyer of Worlds, or Physics Parthenon?


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The experiment, planned to start in less than a week, includes unknown andunacceptable risks, risks that some say are worth it because they want to know whatreally happened13.7 billion years ago and if they can recreate the earliest state ofmatter we can get important clues about the kind of matter that makes up you andme.The Large Hadron Collider could be dangerous, and the benefits are not worth the

risks: mini black holes, strangelets and monopoles. A Critical Review of Safety PapersConcerning Black Holes at the LHC, August 2009 written by Eric Penrose of the HeavyIon Alert network, does an excellent job of documenting the very real and presentdanger of the CERN experiment: I conclude that safety with black holes accepted aspotentially emerging from the LHC has not been demonstrated. Moreover, a theoreticalbasis for catastrophe, within our lifetime, from available modern physics theory and withfeasible parameters, has not been excluded. Any one scenario of danger: effects ofdangerous levels of black hole radiation, hazardous geological consequences from nonradiating black holes accreting in earth even if slow, and potential implications fromfully considering Vilkoviskys minimum attained black hole half mass model, shouldpresent sufficient cause for concern. If you require even more proof, you can read How

CERNs Documents Contradict its Safety Assurances: Plans for Strangelet Detectionat the LHC.

The Atom, the basic unit of matter, consists of a dense, central nucleus surrounded by acloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positivelycharged protons and electrically neutral neutrons. The electrons of an atom are boundto the nucleus by the electromagnetic force [of the Earth]. In other words thecomponents of an Atom, protons, neutrons, and electrons cannot be divided from eachother. 3,500,000,000,000 volts of electricity could terminate the laws of matter and thehuman race. The Collider tunnel is actually a brazen bull, medieval chamber built totorture the Earth. Steve Myers, CERNs director for accelerators and technology, wasquoted as saying the challenge of lining up the beams was like firing needles acrossthe Atlantic and getting them to collide half way. The choice of the term needles isironic. According to the accelerator physicist Rdiger Schmidt, each unimpeded hair-thin beam (there are two) is capable of melting 24,200,000 pounds of cooper, 11,000times a second. Imagine for a trillionth of a second you are the Earth and are trappedinside a Collider Torture Tunnel where you are subjected to 3.5 trillion electron volts ofelectricity.

During the various stages of the experiment, the earth will suffer limitless pain ashundreds of trillions of Gaeas protons are hurled around a ring-shaped accelerator at99.99 percent the speed of light. As the synchrotron raises the temperature in thechamber to a trillion degrees, Gaea will suffer cycles of constriction, joint-rendingcramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation and searing pain. Then another agony beginsas the proton beams, now unstable from being whipped around the circular accelerator,are discarded into specially designed 10 ton absorbers called beam dump blocks, eachrequiring a shield that weighs 1000 tons. Having been kicked out of its torture track, anewly freed beam is now steered via septum magnets toward the beam dump. Thebeam travels in a straight line down the 700-meter tunnel affecting the Earths tectonicplates. The magnets compress causing (shock) and mini-seismic earthquakes.


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Source: The Black Hole Case: The Injunction Against the End of the World;Eric EJohnson; Tennessee Law Review Vol.86 8192009; Page: 829

A. The Strange Matter on Long Island

Besides black holes, the leading disaster scenario for particle-physics experimentationis the strangelet scenario. According to theory, a strangelet is a tiny, stable chunk ofstrange matter. Undoubtedly, a strangelet sounds much less frightening than a blackhole. In fact, it sounds something like a benevolent character from the Pokmon animeseries. But the cute name belies the theorized danger. The fear is that if high-energyparticle collisions created a strangelet, the object would initiate a chain reaction thatwould convert all of Earth and everything on it into an inert hyperdense sphere aboutone hundred metres across. Ironically, the strangelet controversy seems to have beentouched off by a physicist trying to allay fears of a black-hole disaster. In 1999, when theRHIC on Long Island was getting ready to start up for the first time, concerns were

voiced that the RHIC might create black holes. A Scientific American reader namedWalter Wagner put these concerns in a letter to the editor. The magazine thenpublished the letter in the July 1999 issue, along with a response by Frank Wilczek, aPrinceton physicist who was later awarded the Nobel Prize. Wilczek opined that it wasnot credible that the RHIC might produce black holes. Then, apparently as anafterthought, he went on to say, On the other hand, there is a speculative but quiterespectable possibility that subatomic chunks of a new stable form of matter calledstrangelets might be produced[.] Although Wilczek concluded in his comment that anactual strangelet disaster was not plausible, questions about the safety of RHICproliferated in the media. Another person who took strangelets seriously was legalscholar and U.S. federal appellate judge Richard A. Posner, who wrote about the RHIC

at some length in a 2004 book, Catastrophe: Risk and Response. On the basis of acost-benefit analysis he performed, Posner concluded that the RHIC was likely notworth the risk. The strangelet controversy is not limited to the RHIC. When CERNoperates the LHC in heavy-ion mode using its ALICE detector, the triggering of astrangelet catastrophe is arguably a possibility there as well. Thus, it should be notedthat the CERN teams paper championing the RHICs safety was not necessarily atransatlantic act of selflessness.

Whether the LHCs ALICE/heavy-ion program will put the Earth at additional risk of astrangelet conversion is an interesting question, but one that is beyond the scope of thisarticle. As odd as black holes and strangelets are, they are not the only disastershypothesized by CERNs detractors. Others are even weirder.


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Question 3: How do the scientists at CERN counter the arguments of the critics?

Source: Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions;LHC Safety Assessment Group (JohnEllis, Gian Giaduce, Michelangelo Mangano, Igor Tkachev, Urs Wiedemann); Cern.ch;http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf

In the case of microscopic black holes, there has been much theoretical speculationsince 2003 about their existence and their possible experimental signatures, asreviewed in [2], where references may be found. In the case of strangelets, detailedexperimental measurements at the Brookhaven National Laboratorys RelativisticHeavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) of the production of particles containing different numbers ofstrange quarks [3] enable one to refine previous arguments that, in the event they exist,strangelets would be less likely to be produced at the LHC than at RHIC. In the case ofthe hypothetical microscopic black holes, as we discuss in Section 4, if they can be

produced in the collisions of elementary particles, they must also be able to decay backinto them. Theoretically, it is expected that microscopic black holes would indeed decayvia Hawking radiation, which is based on basic physical principles on which there isgeneral consensus. If, nevertheless, some hypothetical microscopic black holes shouldbe stable, we review arguments showing that they would be unable to accrete matter ina manner dangerous for the Earth [2]. If some microscopic black holes were producedby the LHC, they would also have been produced by cosmic rays and have stopped inthe Earth or some other astronomical body, and the stability of these astronomicalbodies means that they cannot be dangerous. In the case of the equally hypotheticalstrangelets, we review in Section 5 the data accumulated at RHIC on the abundancesand velocities of strongly interacting particles, including those containing one or more

strange quarks, produced at RHIC and in previous heavy-ion collision experiments [3].All these data are very consistent with a simple thermodynamic production mechanismthat depends only on the effective temperature and the net density of baryons(nucleons). The effective temperature agrees well with first-principles theoreticalcalculations, and the net density of baryons decreases as the energy increases, againin agreement with theoretical calculations. Calculations for heavy-ion collisions at theLHC give a similar effective temperature and a lower net density of baryons than atRHIC. This means that the LHC could only produce strangelets at a lower rate, if theyexist at all. We conclude by reiterating the conclusion of the LHC Safety Group in 2003[1]: there is no basis for any conceivable threat from the LHC. Indeed, theoretical andexperimental developments since 2003 have reinforced this conclusion.

Question 4: What is your opinion on potential for the world of the LHC and why?
http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdfhttp://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdfhttp://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf