Colliders Are Forever

M's OFFICE LONDON

What do you know about CIRC in Geneva, Commander Bond?

Not much sir. Centre International pour la Récherche Circulaire. About says it all. They've built the world's largest Dyson Ball Vac according to CIRC PR, but physicists are a canny bunch. Half the time they don't know what they're talking about. It might look like a giant Dyson Ball Vac but it might not work like one.

Good. That confirms our intelligence. Might not be a Vac at all. Find out for us in case it's anti-British. This is the beast, a hundred meters underground. (unrolling a giant schematic) 27 km around. A great deal of suction.

$10 Billion to date, sir.

Not a total waste we're finding. Picking up dust as far as London. But where are they going to put it all eventually when they shut it down for cleaning? Not our problem fortunately. Touch and go on other fronts. Accidents, some new theories on what might happen at the Doomsday Machine. But they say they've got more baffling concerns. Seems they've found a physicist in the blower, but he's not one of theirs. Looks like the spitting image of one of the Cenral Vac Café waiters, who has suddenly disappeared. Uppity sort who always wanted to be a physicist. It's probably him having a lark at their expense or he's simply lost his marbles. In any case we have a security risk. CIRC wants some answers. Problem is the waiter's spinning stories that are so fantastic they might be creditable like quantum physics theory. CIRC is bamboozled.

Surely it's rather obvious. A personnel problem. CIRC fires the waiter. He finds another job. Hardly a security issue.

In the best of all possible worlds. Not sure where CIRC fits in. Thing is there's a Russian connection. Our friend Dimitri Obolin, the waiter, has some support from the Russians working at the Dyson Ball from FermiBall the rival American Vac. The new Russian Upright Vac project has expressed interest in trading him for one of their waiters. Rather complicated. Camilla and HRH the Prince of Wales are due to visit CIRC tomorrow. Something about Hitler's New Bunker, no not the National Library this time. It could be a new chapter in the Cold Vac War we thought had blown a fuse. Where you come in 007.

GENEVA, HOOVER NOVOTEL LOBBY

Welcome to Geneva, Mr Bond and the Hoover Novotel. I see you're on Dyson business. CIRC will be covering all your expenses. There's a delegation waiting to receive you in the Poussière Dorée Bar. Your suite is ready if you'd like to shower and change. Should I say you'll be down soon?

Bit early. Don't know if I can face physicists before supper. How many?

Four I believe.

Is this standard procedure? A welcome committee?

For VIPs yes and government people.

Then the Hoover is a CIRC hotel?

No, it's a public hotel but we cater largely to a CIRC clientèle and the airport. The Dyson is just down the road.

Very convenient. Think I'll look in on the delegation now. Is the suite big enough for entertaining? Do you have a penthouse available?

Usually booked, but I can check. Yes, we have one coming up. It won't be ready for an hour or so.

Fine, I'll have it then. Rather quiet for a big hotel? Apart from the Dyson noise and dust. I suppose people in Geneva are a bit nervous? Are you?

About the Dyson? It's the press stories, you know, end of the world. We're used to that. Though the Dyson energies are going way up soon, Mach 3.5 if that's what you mean.

Sorry. (turning) Is that you Q--ing? Splendid surprise.

What on earth are you doing in Geneva, James?

Consulting, sightseeing. Time for a drink?

Yes, rather a good idea. Why not?

It will have to be a quick one in the lounge. Otherwise engaged. (to the concierge) Send over a vodka martini shaken not stirred and a Pimm's Number 1 or if that's too arcane, make it a Long Island Iced Tea.

(walking to the lounge) Sorry about barging in. Happened to be shopping at the bijouteries, clocks and watches, partly professional interest, and then I get a call. You know your car at Heathrow? Blown up. Your flat in Kensington burglarized, and you're being audited by Inland Revenue, but we think we can fix that. We don't know who's behind it.

No, but we do have (sitting) a security breach, Q. Well? You have nothing. Is that all?

Isn't that enough? There's a bit more from M if you'll stop being testy. We know now that CIRC owns this hotel. Novotel just runs it. Under the circumstances, better ask for another room. I'll have it hoovered for you later.

Hoovered? Don't forget a box of chocolates and flowers for the maid. No. Listen closely. Don't. CIRC is supposed to be on our side. In the field, things aren't just technical. What else did M say?

Your Dimitri may be from a parallel universe.

Which parallel universe Q? The one in London? Might have mentioned it earlier. I see. Some aliens, some Russians check into the Hoover? To pick him up and take him home?

Cubans, a trade delegation. You might recall the big Vac projects started in Cuba in the 1950's.

Looks like there's a lineup for CIRC's Loony Bin. There's a welcome committee of four from CIRC waiting for me at the bar. Know who they are?

From CIRC evidently, unscheduled it seems. Hadn't heard. Not on your schedule?

Exactly. Are they official or unofficial?

Splitting hairs aren't we?

What do you think field agents do while you people have your endless meetings and cucumber sandwiches?

Besides crashing cars and blowing things up? Can't say. Plenty of sweaty sex? Don't envy you Bond. It's a hard life. Not a casino girl in sight. (drinks arrive) Alright, I've finished. You're right. Looking tiresomely suspicious, this CIRC business. Did you know a CIRC helio landed on the roof here about 40 minutes ago?

Is it still there?

Was 10 minutes ago. Ingenious really, a special helio screw to avoid turbulence. Modified Sikorsky--

Why the helio? CIRC is a stone's throw away. There's the Dome out your window.

Traffic snarl. Security is very tight around the Dyson. Been here a few days. Shouldn't have bothered really. All roads closed. Some protesters packed off in Police vans. CIRC said they might try Mach 3.5 today. Rather more dust around. And that nerve-wracking woo-woo-woo. Imagine all this nonsense to save the environment? Anyway, no choice but to fly in your delegation.

Then everything makes sense. Everything's fine. Just some extra security for their Dyson and the VIP, me. I don't like it.

If that's all, I'd better be off. Bond? Maybe it's all routine, except for your Morgan.

Blast you Q, you're a big help. Is M convinced I've walked into a trap? Have my orders changed?
Don't think so?

Can I trust CIRC?

Can't say.

Think back. What did M say?

Hornet's nest, don't spare the horses, provide assistance. 005 fell off a building.

Fine. Now cover my back and tell London it's Jack. Do you have a wire with you? Any sort of transmitter? Can you track me?

No, not officially on duty. Brought my wife along. She still thinks I work in insurance.

I'm activating you Q. Now provide assistance. Think.

Think? You mean I'm Triple-0? This is a nice surprise. Or is it? You've got your mobile? Good. Call Universal Export and slip me your Bluetooth earpiece. It's only good for 10 meters, a bit dodgy, not encrypted but keep talking and London and I will know what you're doing.

Charming. I've changed rooms by the way for a penthouse suite, but I might be in the bar next. Keep in range if you can. I don't want to disappear. Hang around the gift shop. Buy a paper. Company's coming. (both stand to shake hands) Nice to see you again. Do keep in touch.

Right you are, James.

(as Q leaves the concierge brings a woman over) Mr Bond, this is Dr Ersuite from CIRC. She's with the delegation.

(shaking hands) A pleasure Mr Bond.

Just on my way. An old school friend waylaid me.

We're running late. The café is full of some noisy Cubans. Hope you don't mind. Our delegation has gone up to your penthouse. Just follow me. (walking to the elevators) We'll be changing elevators up on the last public floor. You'll like the DG's suite. It's very private.

A nice bonus. (Q comes up) Oh it's you again old boy. Feeling your oats?

You'll never guess. Forgot this bit. Manchester United is in town. Can't make out when they're playing. It's these French papers. (unfolds his newspaper for display) Imagine, calling them boozy bastards. See about tickets if you like and call me.

Manchester United en faillite. Les comptables en justice, ces «Boozy Bastards»
Alien décovert à CIRC
Nouvelle scandale Dyson, la «X Machine»

Sorry my French isn't up to yours. More meetings on tap. Call me in London when you get back.

Right you are. Thought I'd hang around for supper. Superb brasserie on the tenth floor with a view, tables outside when the Dyson's off. Think I'll call Doris and make a night of it. Drop by if you can old sport. Did I tell you I found a Rolex for 50 quid? So real it might be hot, probably a knockoff, but who can complain? Here it is. A beauty. The Swiss must be slipping. Knockoffs in Geneva, what next? Here's an idea! What about going to the island later to watch The Spout? They light the thing up, rather splendid.

Not on I'm afraid. Give Doris my regrets. If you like let's try tomorrow. Meet me here at the bar 2 PM.

Ever try the Grosvenor for high tea and croquet? Camilla and Charles might drop by. Doris would love it.

Perhaps the hippodrome. Now if you'll excuse us? Can't keep the lady waiting.

So sorry. (to her) Dreadfully sorry. Thought you wanted the elevator. (smiling, wandering backwards) Well tomorrow then. I'm off.

I can't seem to shake him. Have to keep him happy. He's on the Board of my Club. You were saying, Dr Ersuite?

(elevator arrives) Yes, I hope you're enjoying Geneva? CIRC knows how to make their guests very comfortable. After our meeting, I might have a surprise for you?

PUBLIC ELEVATOR INTERIOR

(doors close) Quite. While I freshen up, you can shave your moustache, Dr Borovda.

I don't know what you are talking about.

Who's with you? (Bond shoves his Beretta into her neck) Where is Dimitri?

Don't shoot.

I'm trying not to. What's in your shoulder bag? A Glock. Not standard CIRC issue. Talk. (karate chop, she falls heavily) Three seconds.

Oow. You hurt me!

Broken collar bone. Anything else I can do?

Please! I'm not with them. I was raised in the State Orphanage, indoctrinated. There are two of them. The CIRC people are dead by now. You're the fall guy. Shoot Gyorgi when the door opens.

(elevator door opens, Gyorgi waiting) It might be a seizure. She just fell. Take her down to the lobby and call an ambulance.

(Gyorgi leans into a kick, knocked down, Glock to his head) Ooooh.

But he's not dead.

HOTEL HALLWAY

(Bond throws her flying over the body) Move. No one is dead yet as far as I know. Fix your hair. I'm right behind you. Where's Dimitri?

(she stumbles to her feet) In the helio on the roof. CIRC wanted us to transfer him to you.

(Bond jabs the Glock into her back, shoving her across the hall) Talk!

They panicked, CIRC panicked. The alien story is all over the papers and they want deniability.

Why!

Dimitri might be genuine. He says he works for CERN Geneva, a nuclear lab, a particle accelerator, that he thinks will blow up his world.

His world?

There is no CERN Geneva. Only in his world. We have his ID, we have strange plastic cards, some phony Euro currency and diamonds, lots of diamonds, large stones, clear and uncut, but polished like ice.

From where?

We don't know. Not from the Dyson, not from CERN.

They're genuine diamonds?

Highly radioactive.

What's going on at Dyson?

I don't know. I'm with CIRC PR. They don't tell us anything. It's supposed to be about carbon capture, global warming. The Dyson collects carbon dioxide, dust, cosmic dust is what they want. That's all I know.

Is this the elevator? Who's the Russian waiting for us in the penthouse?

He's an American. Tall, strong like a football player. Wyman Follers. Big W.

Just him?

Yes, just him.

The helio pilot, is Wyman the pilot?

Yes.

The helio, what make?

Sikorski.

Tell Wyman you had to kill me. Tell Wyman I killed Gyorgi. Tell Wyman you have to take the helio and get out with Dimitri. Will it work?

Yes. Maybe.

How many real CIRC people?

Just one, a physicist.

One too few I think. You want Dimitri and me or is it just me? But I'm the fall guy? How many are there!

Two!

(bang) You're finally probably right. (pulling out his phone) Bond here. Backup requested now. Hoover penthouse, Hoover roof. Intercept Hoover helio. Are you deaf!

(phone) We don't cater parties. Strictly on our premises.

Yes you do.

(phone) Not on the Hoover Dam.

Hoover Hotel blast it, in Geneva now. Call Q, call the Geneva Police and shut up.

(phone) Geneva New York?

Geneva Geneva, Dyson Vac Geneva, Switzerland! I'm going in. I'm taking Dimitri and the CIRC helio.

PRIVATE ELEVATOR TO PENTHOUSE

(door opens to W waiting) Is there some mistake? You seem to be in my suite.

Where's Dr Ersuite?

No idea. Are you with CIRC?

You met her, you saw her?

No. (Bond shoots through his jacket pocket 3 times) I'm in a bit of a rush.

PENTHOUSE HELIO PAD NIGHT, HELIO LIT AND READY

(Bond running) We have to go now! Bond shot W! The police are coming!

Gyorgi!

Get out now! We have to run for it! (a man jumps down, Bond fires twice, kicks him over) I'm a British agent with CIRC! Dimitri! Stay inside! I'm coming in!

HELIO INTERIOR LIT NIGHT

(Bond climbs in, two bodies slumped at the back) Anyone dead?

Not dead, we are drugged, don't shoot us.

Dimitri?

Yes. Dr Dimitri Obolin, CERN. Are those CIRC people dead? They're crazy. That one said he would kill us if something went wrong.

You're safe with me.

We have to get out of here now. The Dyson Vac. CERN will blow it up.

(a hoarse whisper) It's Q. It's me Q! Bond, it's Q. Don't shoot.

Not now Q. I'm busy.

Busy!

Trouble?

Not my department. Just a mad scramble. Four penthouses, yours the blasted last.

Did you see Gyorgi? Anyone?

Georgi the one stuck in the elevator?

That's him. Dead?

Gurgling a bit. And your girlfriend, dead I think.

Any police?

Not yet.

Here, take the Glock Q. Watch the roof. (Bond aims his Beretta) Don't move a muscle Dimitri. No time to be nervous. We're British agents, not CIRC.

We must leave now! Get us out of here. The danger is real. Our Large Hadron Collider is a matter transporter. It wasn't designed for that, but that is why I am here. I'm from CERN. I'm here in your world.

That's a matter of opinion.

How else did I get here?

People believe strange stories. People tell strange stories. Especially in my line of work.

Your Dyson Vac, isn't it dangerous?

Not if it's a Vac.

Is it a Vac? Ask Dr Vander here. He's with CIRC.

Yes, Vander, Dr Vander. I'm a nuclear physicist. Who are you? Let me think.

Is the Dyson a Vac?

Not exactly. The Dyson captures dust and CO2 but there is some strange cosmic energy that CIRC claims it is capturing. It makes no sense to me.

Let me speak, I'm Dr Vander. I think we have found some new energy. We can condense it, but we can't analyze it yet. It is something physical and unknown.

Is it dangerous?

We don't know yet. In our detectors diamond becomes highly radioactive. We call it dark energy.
Dr Vander, do you believe Dimitri?

Yes and no. Well his quantum chromodynamics are interesting. They might apply to ours but it would take weeks of computing and analysis. What he says only a physicist could invent. CIRC is embarrassed. They don't want to find out if he is right or wrong. They want to get rid of him. The DG told me at the last minute we had to transfer Dr Obolin to the British. No one will take us seriously if we have an alien at CIRC.

So we can't trust CIRC?

Of course you can trust CIRC. We are scientists. Our goals are more science, more knowledge. Certainly the Vac is not perfectly safe. It might fall through the earth like a stone through water. Anything is possible in quantum physics. But is the impossible likely? Dr Obolin has to be a fake, but is he lying?

What about CERN, Dimitri? Is what they are doing safe?

Last week I would have said yes. Now I'm very worried. At never before seen energies, the LHC could surprise us. ALICE especially when we fire heavy lead nuclei beams at each other. It is an enormous particle collider, but the end is nuclear fusion. We didn't know, we still don't know about your parallel world. Our physics doesn't predict it. Our physics is obviously incomplete as is yours. If our worlds share the same matter we are mutually interdependent. It might only be clear in nuclear events, the destruction or creation of matter. When something nuclear happens at CERN, the Dyson will be affected. And vice-versa. Dr Vander, do you get unexplained nuclear events?

Listen everybody! (Dr Vander was yelling) Maybe we can prove what Dimitri says! We know about nuclear fission and fusion, but we think it's too dangerous to apply. Everyone knows there are strange events in many places. Energy vortices we cannot explain all over France. Some in Italy, in England, in Russia, China, in the United States. In 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki disintegrated and many people vanished, many were horribly sick.

In my world, we have about 2,000 nuclear reactors, fission reactors using enriched uranium. We're producing plutonium! With nuclear fission weapons in 1945 we destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Dr Obolin, this is theoretically possible. Technically possible. Many years ago we had an experimental reactor in Chicago. We made some plutonium.

Bond! Time for a reality check. Are we waiting for more trouble? CIRC is bloody well going to change their minds about dumping Dimitri when they find out how desperate the Russians are to get him. And what about the Russians? What are they doing now? They're expecting our CIRC helio and Dimitri. Let's get out of here!

(rotors start turning) Right Q. You're making sense. Hop in, we're going. Helmets on everyone. Pass them around Q. Buckle in. Radios on. Hear me?

HELIO LIFTOFF AND FLIGHT

Fine, yes, OK.

Bond, what's Jack anyway?

A bolthole in Evian. We fly south over Lake Leman. We land at the Grand Hotel. We drive away. Just don't want us shot down. Wait! I've still got Universal on the line. Bond here! Do not shoot down CIRC helio! Yell back! Heading for Evian. Take off your helmet Q. Talk to Universal!

You didn't tell them to shoot us down!

Of course I didn't. I asked for backup, for intercept. See anybody Q?

Your phone is dead, Bond. Look! Blinky light flying, port side high. Kill all your lights. Would CIRC shoot us down?

It's their helio.

Good point. Rather expensive piece of equipment. What's the radar say?

(a tense moment) Blinky light closing. We're changing course for Lausanne. Know of any Russian presence in the area?

Small jets fly into Geneva all the time, UNESCO and another half dozen UN agencies. That would be it. Occasional private yacht might have a helio, but I'm guessing.

Yes. It's the Russians. No radio contact. It's their getaway jet. They're fast, faster than us, flying loop the loop to keep behind us.

Why don't they shoot us down?

Maybe they're not sure it's us, or they don't have a missile. If we give them more time, they'll think of something. An RPG, or buzzing us into the drink. Burn us some way. I'm going to radio the airport Lausanne. Mayday! Mayday! Medical emergency. Requesting permission to land. Lausanne, do you copy?

Roger that. Identify yourself over?

UN helio B7471, Uncle Norman Bob 7471 from Geneva. United Nations flight. Request permission to land, over.

Roger that UN B7471. You are cleared to approach. Proceed to helio pad 1, main terminal roof, over.

Roger that Lausanne.

Proceed due west, via runway 40 airspace, over.

Proceeding due west via 40, four zero runway space, do you copy?

Roger.

ETA in 11 minutes, over.

Roger. Light winds 5 knots North by North West, over.

Winds North by North West 5 knots. Radio static, static building, static total, over. Can't hear you Lausanne, radio static over.

It's not the radio Bond. It's the Dyson Ball. Fire! It's bleeding orange. Over there! The sky is cracking!

Copyright (c) Alan Gillis 2009 All Rights Reserved

LHC Beams Back To Life

After a major accident a year ago and $40 Million to fix it, CERN quietly announced today that the LHC has passed some preliminary tests on its way to a restart this November. Some low power proton beams generated by the pre-accelerators were injected into parts of the LHC 27 km magnetic ring, one travelling into the LHCb detector. Like turning on the tap to see if a mended pot will leak. So far so good.

Good news for the army of some 10,000 engineers, technicians and physicists who have been sadly busy for a year fixing broken and damaged equipment and redesigning some of the safety systems that failed and some that were inadequate to signal an impending failure.

In one of the 13,000 Amp power circuits last year a single poor busbar splice between two giant cylinder magnets melted without warning, among thousands of other such splices. That burned a hole in the cooling system and with the tremendous amount of pressure in the liquid superfluid helium, there was an explosive eruption of 4 tons of 1.9K ultracold coolant that the few safety valves nearby couldn't handle. Fortunately no one was hurt and doubly fortunate there were no beams running at the time. This was a Massive Quench at the collider where not only 50 or so 10 meter and longer ring magnets were damaged in the exploding cascade, but the Quench Protection System failed to stop it. If there had been beams they would have gone astray no longer contained by the dead magnets, cutting through anything in their path in the blink of an eye.

It's the kind of accident The Science of Conundrums has been warning CERN about for a year before it happened. No other news outlets and not even science magazines and journals contacted by us were interested in following this lead until after the accident. Even CERN was reluctant to reveal its scope and seriousness, still as of this August calling it "the incident of 19 September 2008" and dismissing it as collider "teething troubles" soon after "the incident" while suggesting repairs would suffice to get the LHC online again soon.

Even on the day of the accident, according to Scientific American, "CERN said on Friday that "The LHC is on course for [its] first collisions in a matter of weeks", just a day later it announced the minimum two-month repair job."

Not soon, and not just repairs. A long and closer look at the collider by CERN determined that there were thousands of similar defective busbar splices that could fail. That to avoid another accident equipment will have to be installed to monitor the resistance developing in any high tension splices while the weakest ones would have to be replaced, eventually all defective busbars replaced so the LHC could run at design energies. That many more safety relief valves would have to be installed, indeed the Quench Protection System would have to be redesigned. Even so a recent CERN Press Release of August 6, 2009 cited also below, avoids a full account and plays down some loose ends. "However, there remain a number of cases where the resistance in the copper stabilizer connections is higher than it should be for running at full energy." . . . "This means that no more repairs are necessary for safe running this year and next."

Are they all fixed or not? OK, good enough. But The New York Times reports, finally getting fed up, August 3, 2009 in Giant Particle Collider Struggles, that Steve Myers, Head of Accelerators said in a recent interview that 5,000 splices will have to be redone. Does Dr Gillies also have a law degree he's not telling us about?

In any case the accident shouldn't have come as a surprise to collider men. Back in 2000, CERN's EEWG had been experimenting with a new type of busbar design for easier much more rapid production. Minutes of their meetings demonstrate the team was well aware that busbars were crucial elements and could fail in various ways even unexpectantly after 4 years in service as one had at DESY. In their discussions full testing of each splice was difficult, costly and time-consuming. Testing at superfluid helium temperatures was also ruled out as impracticable. Sample testing was done using much warmer liquid nitrogen even though they wanted to avoid a "black sheep" getting through.

If CERN could have tested each of the 10,000 busbars, all in fact unique, because soldered together by hand one at a time, they would have avoided "the incident" aye an' forsooth Jim, and saved $40 Million and a year's downtime.

Even just before the accident and the big First Beam media event, CERN was sanguine nothing would go wrong, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. 5 TeV before winter shutdown and 7 TeV before that magnet trouble. (See NYT above.) The media event cemented grins in place. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing went wrong! Even if the much feared test was really no test of the accelerator accelerating and the collider not colliding anything that day, CERN had the media and the public in its lap, tails wagging all day long. A triumph.

Then 8 days later the LHC failed catastrophically with no beams.

Now after a sober reapraisal and with a new Director General of CERN, Dr Rolf-Dieter Heuer from DESY taking office this January, there's a new spirit of caution. Like the low key unannounced LHC tests this past weekend. The modest report of their success. Much more important, more openness, more communication at CERN on the progress of repairs and an announcement this summer that 3.5 TeV would be the maximum per beam, until later. Presumeably modifications to design and equipment would have to be installed along the way to ramp up to higher energies safely. A breath of sanity at last.

How long will that take? According to the August 6, 2009 CERN Press Release, much sooner than I think, well before what is humanly possible.

The procedure for the 2009 start-up will be to inject and capture beams in each direction, take collision data for a few shifts at the injection energy [0.45 TeV], and then commission the ramp to higher energy. The first high-energy data should be collected a few weeks after the first beam of 2009 is injected. The LHC will run at 3.5 TeV per beam until a significant data sample has been collected and the operations team has gained experience in running the machine. Thereafter, with the benefit of that experience, the energy will be taken towards 5 TeV per beam. At the end of 2010, the LHC will be run with lead ions for the first time. After that, the LHC will shut down and work will begin on moving the machine towards 7 TeV per beam.

That's still a guns blazing shootout at Boot Hill. Injection accomplished [September!]. Circulate beams [November?]. Collisions at 0.9 TeV [December?], then let her have it boys: 3.5 TeV and 7 TeV collisions and maybe a slow draw for 5 TeV and 10 TeV collisions, with some real heavy lead shot at [???? TeV?] for the [2010!] finale. Go for broke y'all at 7 and 14 TeV in [2011?]

Sure about that? Nope.

At a CERN meeting recently on LHC Status you can watch here, Steve Myers goes on at length on repairs, retrofits and modifications that are expected to take place over 5 years at an anticipated cost of $275 Million, of which the $40 Million already spent is but the down payment on LHC Safety at 7 TeV.

CERN giveth and CERN taketh away. If there's a backwards causality wave that's been making some journalists smile lately about the jinxed LHC, then I think it's being generated by CERN. Hope they figure it out before it gets 'em.

At any rate we're still waiting for the first low power circulating beams at 0.45 TeV or about half of what the Tevatron delivers routinely, projected for mid-November. Nothing new as the LHC had already passed this test September 10, 2008 in a media frenzy before it crashed 8 days later.

These beams will be generated by the pre-accelerators and the object is just to contain them so they don't go astray. The real test of the LHC is not the next stage either, maybe this December, when the LHC modestly collides beams at 0.9 TeV. Old hat at the Tevatron where collisions are running at 2.1 TeV. When the LHC finally starts accelerating beams itself beyond its own injection energies and beyond the Tevatron's 1.05 TeV per beam and then collides them, we'll see some real action early 2010.

But once the LHC generates more than a hair above 1.05 TeV per beam, it will be in Terra Incognita. How sure can we be that the LHC is safe? Well Dr Heuer who's a collider man from DESY and that's reassuring in itself, as under his watch DESY didn't blow up Hamburg, said in an interview this summer "The LHC is a much better understood machine than it was a year ago." That's refreshingly honest and so must be true.

I'd say knowing Germany and the people there well, not only do Germans make great cars and drive fast responsibly, they have inherited a mantle of caution from their unfortunate 20th Century history. They really do want to avoid another cataclysm for themselves and the world.

If you've been following LHC protests, most of them have been coming from Germany, Austria and Switzerland along with the leading critics of the LHC like Dr Otto Rössler. There's still a suit before the ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights brought forward last year by them and other Europeans to stop the LHC. And now I've been informed by Markus Goritschnig of LHC Kritik that a new human rights complaint will be lodged with the UN soon.

These protests and court actions have been focused on the possible formation of dangerous objects at the LHC, like micro black holes, strangelets and magnetic monopoles with a potential for catastrophic destruction as well as a possible fatal disruption of the Universe's vacuum state. Lately more scientists have been taking an interest in this debate as well as in risk assessment and have been publishing their findings. Do CERN's safety arguments hold water? Not according to them. More on these doomsday scenarios next time and another one of my own, where I discuss the potential for ionization of superfluid helium at the LHC and possible small nuclear events. Sorry Bob McElrath.

But add the real world dangers of conventional collider accidents (like we've had at the LHC and Tevatron but at much higher energies) to the hypothetical production of strange matter etc, then what could happen? An unstoppable event as CERN PR might call it.

I'd still be very cautious if I were at CERN. Beyond 1.05 TeV CERN is obliged to test the LHC on the fly. If they ramp up beam energies to 1.1 TeV without a problem, they should maintain that energy for a month to see how reliable the LHC is before they try collisions at 2.2 TeV. Even at a modest 2.2 TeV CERN probably will see unexpected particles as the Tevatron did at 2.1 or so. If there's another overconfident rush to higher energies and bigger collisions, the LHC could miss some spectacular results. In the worst case scenario CERN could destroy the LHC even at half power. And that's where Dr Heuer wants to start after the preliminaries, at 3.5 TeV.

Good luck you guys!

--Alan Gillis

Someday This Crazy World Will Have To End

PD Smith writes on science and literature as cultural history. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian Review, the Independent and the essay below is from his recent column in 3QuarksDaily. His biography Einstein was published in 2003. Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon, Penguin and St Martin's Press, is his new book on the dawn of the Atomic Age. For links, reprints and his latest blogging, see his website Kafka's mouse.

PD Smith's "Someday This Crazy World Will Have To End" touches the same nerve in CERN's LHC megaproject that promises a new nuclear physics and a new world. The same resistance to an open enquiry or discussion of the potential dangers and merits of the LHC that Dr Edward Teller hotly dismissed about the Bomb, surfaces in CERN's disregard of outside criticism as in my article "Politics And Science At The LHC" and CERN's Dr Bob McElrath's hostile reply in his Comment on it. PD Smith also explores the relationship of Science to Science Fiction here and in Doomsday Men, as I have in my satiric essay, "The Black Hand Of Dr CERN".

The other day I had an email from an angry reader. He accused me of maligning the good name of scientists in my cultural history of superweapons. Scientists were not “doomsday men” and the phrase “an organization of dangerous lunatics” should not be applied to the secret laboratories where scientists developed superweapons. As someone who had worked in the nuclear industry, he wanted to make it plain to me that it was only thanks to such “lunatics” and their many scientific discoveries that I could enjoy a comfortable and healthy life, free from the fear of Nazism and Communism.

I must admit I was slightly taken aback by the heartfelt anger of his email. It was clear there was not going to be a meeting of minds. But in the end we did have an amicable and interesting exchange of emails.

I explained that the title of my book, Doomsday Men, was borrowed from JB Priestley’s 1938 novel of the same name, about how an atomic doomsday device is created at a secret laboratory in the Mojave Desert. My correspondent found the title provocative and even cheap. I hoped

other readers would see the irony, and, as my book is about how film and fiction prefigures our obsession with superweapons, insisted it was appropriate to use a title that wouldn’t have been out of place in the pulps.

Indeed, the whole point of the book was not to blame scientists for weapons of mass destruction, but to show how humankind’s most terrible yet ingenious inventions were inspired by a desperate dream, one that was shared by a whole culture, including writers like Jack London and HG Wells, a dream of peace and scientific utopia. In a sense, we are all doomsday men. After all, it was Wells who coined the phrase “atomic bomb” before even World War I. And it was also Wells who in 1933 described scientists developing weapons of mass destruction in a secret laboratory as “an organization of dangerous lunatics”.

The great scientific romancer HG Wells could hardly be described as hostile to science or scientists. It was his anger at the misuse of science to create weapons of mass destruction that led him to condemn such scientists. I share that anger and it prompted me to explore the cultural reasons why people from all walks of life came to think that superweapons were a solution to human problems.

Readers of Wells’s fiction were familiar with mad scientists – Griffin or Moreau, for example – as well as those who hoped to improve the world, men like Holsten and Karenin in The World Set Free (1914). In the early years of the twentieth century, popular culture turned scientists into saviours who freed the world from war with awesome superweapons. But the experience of gas warfare, then biological weapons, and finally the atomic bomb gradually changed public perceptions. As fears grew about superweapons, their creators who had transformed the laws of nature into instruments of total destruction were increasingly depicted as mad scientists. Those who had been raised up to be gods, were later cast down as devils – or at least as acolytes of that master of megadeath, Dr Strangelove.

In the atomic age, as the public learned to live with first the A-bomb, then the H-bomb, and finally the world-destroying cobalt or C-bomb, scientists were stereotyped as mad, bad and dangerous (to borrow Christopher Frayling’s phrase). “What you are doing is mad, it is diabolic,” says the scientist’s assistant in Ernest B. Schoedsack’s movie Dr Cyclops (1940): “You are tampering with powers reserved to God.” In the classic science fiction film The Thing (1951), based on John W.
Campbell’s story about alien invasion, the sinister scientist Dr Carrington is prepared to sacrifice human lives in the cause of science: “Knowledge is more important than life... We’ve only one excuse for existing: to think, to find out, to learn…It doesn’t matter what happens to us.”

Such scientists would be the end of us all, people feared. “What hope can there be for mankind…when there are such men as Felix Hoenikker to give such playthings as ice-nine to such short-sighted children as almost all men and women are?” asked Kurt Vonnegut in the brilliant Cat’s Cradle (1963). As far as film and fiction were concerned, scientists were not just Strangelovian doomsday men. Their whole outlook on life was positively warped. “If the murders of twelve innocent people can help save one human life it will have been worth it”, reasons Doctor Necessiter in The Man With Two Brains (1983).

But these are, of course, mere fictions. As physicist Sidney Perkowitz points out in his enjoyable survey of Hollywood Science (2007), although they may on occasion appear somewhat arrogant, most scientists are not megalomaniacs: “few scientists have a burning desire to rule the world; typically, they don’t even enjoy managing people and research budgets”. He does, however, concede that one stereotype may have a basis in truth – the image of scientists as being sartorially challenged: “The rumpled look is a badge of authority; to scientists, the ‘suits’, formally dressed bureaucrats, are members of a despised race.” (I’m aware this may be a controversial view. In the interest of balance, I urge readers to also consult the excellent Geek Chic, ed by Sherrie A. Inness, especially chapter 2, "Lab Coats and Lipstick", by L.
Jowett.)

But Freeman Dyson suggests truth may be every bit as strange as fiction. The physicist, who worked on weapons projects as well as the Project Orion atomic spaceship in the 1950s, thinks there’s more than a grain of truth in the Strangelove stereotype. "The mad scientist is not just a figure of speech," says Dyson, "there really are such people, and they love to play around with crazy schemes. Some of them may even be dangerous, so one is not altogether wrong in being scared of such people."

Recently, I was powerfully reminded of Dyson’s comment while reviewing the reissue of Dan O’Neill’s classic nuclear history The Firecracker Boys (1994). In 1958, physicist Edward Teller, the self-styled father of the H-bomb, turned up in Juneau, Alaska, and held an impromptu news conference. He was there to unveil Project Chariot, a plan to create a deep-water harbour at Cape Thompson in northwest Alaska using thermonuclear bombs. Seventy million cubic yards of earth would be shifted instantly using nuclear explosions equivalent to 2.4 million tons of TNT. That’s 40% of all the explosive energy expended in World War II. Some firecracker.

Locals said they didn’t need a harbour. They also raised understandable concerns about radioactivity. After all, the year before, Nevil Shute had published On the Beach, one of the best-selling of all nuclear fictions (four million copies by 1980), in which the world dies a lingering death caused by fallout from a nuclear war fought with cobalt bombs. Teller was unfazed by the criticisms. That year he had defended atmospheric nuclear tests, claiming such fallout was no more dangerous than “being an ounce overweight”. He tried to reassure the Alaskans: “We have learned to use these powers with safety”. He even promised them a harbour in the shape of a polar bear.

Teller and his fellow scientists at the Livermore Laboratory in California were on a mission to redeem the nuclear bomb. They wanted to overcome the public’s irrational “phobic” reactions to nuclear weapons. “Geographical engineering” was the answer, said Teller: “We will change the earth’s surface to suit us.” The Faustian hubris of the man appeared to know no bounds. Dubbed in the press “Mr H-Bomb”, Teller even admitted to a “temptation to shoot at the moon” with nukes. You need a new Suez Canal? Blast it out with my thermonuclear bombs. Or how about turning the Mediterranean into a freshwater lake to irrigate the Sahara? All you need to do
is to close the Straits of Gibraltar by detonating a few H-bombs (clean ones, of course, absolutely guaranteed). No problem. We can do it – trust me, I’m a physicist.

Dan O’Neill interviewed Teller. Or at least he tried to. As soon as he started asking questions, Teller “cursed loudly and with great facility” and tore up the release form he had just signed to allow O’Neill to use the interview. Despite Teller’s hissy fit, O’Neill’s remarkable book shows how government agencies lied to local people, attempted to bribe scientists with promises of research funding, and manipulated the Alaskan media, which demonstrated “more sycophancy than scrutiny”. But a grass-roots movement of local Alaskans – Eskimo whale hunters, bush pilots, church ladies, and log-cabin conservationists – joined forces with a few principled scientists to successfully oppose America’s nuclear establishment, and in so doing sowed the seeds of modern environmentalism.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Teller devotes a mere page to this episode in his 2001 Memoirs. Les Viereck, a “soft-spoken and shy” biologist, whose research helped expose the real cost of Teller’s plans, lost his university position because of his opposition to Project Chariot. In a letter, he told his employer: “A scientist’s allegiance is first to truth and personal integrity and only secondarily to an organized group such as a university, a company, or a government.” Now there’s a scientist you could be proud of. HG Wells would have turned him into a heroic character, the kind of scientist who might really save the world.

But perhaps that’s where the problem lies. As the Marquise von O tells the Russian Count at the end of Kleist’s great novella, “she would not have seen a devil in him then if she had not seen an angel in him at their first meeting”. We burden scientists with such impossibly high expectations: they’re going to discover a source of unlimited energy, invent a weapon that will make war impossible, and along the way find a cure for cancer. But when the philosopher’s stone turns into a Pandora’s box, we turn our saviours into Strangeloves. Despite their miraculous discoveries, scientists are only human. We shouldn’t forget that.

O’Neill is rightly scathing about Teller’s role in Project Chariot: it seems Teller and his colleagues were more interested in improving the public image of nuclear weapons than in the lives of Alaskans. A Los Alamos colleague of Teller accused the brilliant scientist of becoming corrupted by his "obsession for power". According to Emilio Segrè, Teller was "dominated by irresistible passions" that threatened his "rational intellect". Another colleague said simply, "Teller has a messianic complex".

Thankfully, for every Teller there is a Les Viereck. If you don’t believe me, then read Mind, Life, and Universe (2007), a wonderfully inspiring collection of interviews with scientists about their lives and work, edited by Lynn Margulis and Eduardo Punset.

But despite this, sometimes a dark suspicion creeps up on me, a nagging fear that somewhere out there a Dr Hoenikker is hard at work, intoxicated by his own genius and the desire for ultimate knowledge. Like Teller, this phantom Strangelove has forgotten Joseph Rotblat’s wise words: “a scientist is a human being first, and a scientist second”. All I can do at such moments is console myself by reciting the well-known Bokononist Calypso:

“Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end,
And our God will take things back that He to us did lend.
And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God,
Why go right ahead and scold Him. He’ll just smile and nod.”

--Copyright (c) 2008 PD Smith /All Rights Reserved