Politics And Science At The LHC

In the days before Madison Avenue, public relations and spin doctors, Science was free to speak for itself. Like any other activity it was criticized and judged on its activites and results by media and the people. If the public had questions, the scientists answered them. Political games were for government and business. Now big science instituitions and labs with their own bewildering bureaucracies, have developed an interface to present an ideal world of science through their press offices and lobbyists. They sell science like GM sells cars. Somehow the media seems not to have noticed the difference, taking spin doctors' science press kits and sound bite analysis at face value.

Camera shy bumbling scientists with thick accents who were honest about what they were doing, if you could follow the science and what they said, have now been pushed behind closed doors while the media gurus have taken over. At CERN they go a step further and stage media science events, like the big ballyhoo September 10th to show off the Large Hadron Collider during a preliminary start-up test. A modest start-up showcase for an extremely powerful atom-smasher that smashes nothing that day is played out as a big success and a victory for LHC safety. No more doomsday. Doomsayers all wrong, CERN always right. Then three big things go wrong which are skillfully downplayed. While the little ball of protons zips around, the CMS computer system is being hacked by the Greek Team and that for 2 days at the home of the World Wide Web? A 30 tonne surface transformer blows 36 hours later during a thunderstorm. Then a massive failure occurs in the cryogenic cooling system which cripples an eighth of the 17 mile collider ring. Very little information released, but a lot of reassurances on "teething troubles" at the giant baby collider.

It can get worse. The latest surprise from CERN is a new paper published which finally comes to grips with part of the problem with the helium used in their massive near absolute zero cooling system. The CERN paper dismisses every safety concern with helium without considering all of them in "There is no explosion risk associated with superfluid Helium in the LHC cooling system", September 23, 2008, by Malcolm Fairbairn and Bob McElrath of the CERN theory group.

Its focus is helium-4 bosenovas at the LHC and cold fusion during these events.

The short answer is, "We conclude that that there is no physics whatsoever which suggests that Helium could undergo any kind of unforseen catastrophic explosion."

Sounds like these guys were in a hurry, but right behind the Eight Ball. "that that" is fast fast, potential there for a new type of doublespeak. Of course there was an explosive release of one to two tonnes of superfluid helium last time, but that was different. Not a real explosion, more like your radiator exploding, not your gas tank. But the paranormal mindbender winner is, as KFC at the physics arXiv blog said of CERN's conclusions, "That's comforting and impressive. Ruling out forseen catastrophies is certainly useful but the ability to rule out unforeseen ones is truly amazing."

It's a welcome response from CERN even if it is only partial. I first raised the issue myself in ScienticBlogging, July 2nd, 2008, in "Superfluids, BECs And Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment" reprinted here on The Science of Conundrums. When CERN didn't bother answering, I contacted their LSAG people via email twice, August 25th and 29th, but included other helium risks like the production of helium-3 via LHC energies ionizing helium-4, where helium-3 bosenovas obviously should also be considered. I received no reply and CERN's paper doesn't address helium-3 bosenovas either. I also wrote about nuclear events in helium, certainly a potential danger in helium-3 and even possible plasma and fusion reactions of helium-3 at the LHC. Again no answer from CERN. Only this sweeping rebuttal: "There is no physics whatsoever which suggests that Helium could undergo any kind of unforseen catastrophic explosion" Is this science or speculation and politics? Don't worry from CERN, but this time not from the CERN PR department, but their CERN theory group.

If this sounds a spectacular failure in addressing safety issues honestly, well what other explanation is there? All they had to say was Helium-4 Bosenovas are Bunk, and Cold Fusion of Helium-4 Stinks. Of course we hope other physicists will examine CERN's 6 page paper and let everyone know if CERN's arguments are sound. Even if they are on Helium-4, one mosquito does not a summer make. Though there have been plenty of light speed protons in another CERN public relations context, masquerading as mosquitos.

If the politics of safety can override safety concerns, like chicks sprawled on red sports cars, are there other similar sales jobs on safety approximating the scientific? Where is the CERN Model hiding out? Look no further than the pharmacuetical industry. When people die, safe products are recalled. Tons of safety reports and tankers on a magazine sunset, and then a giant oil tanker spills and kills birds and animals and fish by the thousands. With 6 months of downtime at the LHC thanks to accidents can happen, they've got plenty of time for gearing up for a new sales campaign, CERN TV commmercials. We're still waiting breathlessly for "Spin the Collider and Win" or "My Best Friend is a Collider / When he gets warm I get hot / Gimme gimme gimme more / My collider / Bang, bang, bang / Big Bang. Be there! Beat Doomsday! Make it happen. Geneva is to die for. Hunker in our bunker or dance the night away. Win a trip for two at participating Dunkin Donuts, your Collider Central. Free Collider Keychain in every limited time only Giant Collider Donut. Careful when you munch. Be safe, dunk first."

Nowadays politics is part of big science. Recently a Climate scientist at MIT, Richard S Lindzen wrote a paper, "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?" Although the author states that the focus of his paper is on climate science, "some of the problems pertain to science more generally."

Lindzen notes "the change in the scientific paradigm from a dialectic opposition between theory and observation to an emphasis on simulation and observational programs." The LHC Machine is certainly part of this change from earlier Einsteinian physics to let's see what happens when we simulate the Big Bang.

". . . an emphasis on large programs that never end." Fifty years of CERN and now on a budget of $1 billion a year with a $10 billion broken collider that might never work right.

". . . the hierarchical nature of formal scientific organizations whereby a small executive council can speak on behalf of thousands of scientists as well as govern the distribution of 'carrots and sticks' where by reputations are made and broken." CERN in a nutshell.

". . . the politically desired position becomes a goal rather than a consequence of scientific research." New Physics sought.

". . . scientists adjust both data and even theory to accommodate politically correct positions, and how opposition to these positions is disposed of." Safety or the appearance of safety? Critics are doomsayers who just don't understand.

Well this still works for CERN because it is an enormous organization that has a small powerful directorate and a Director General with Presidential Powers, 'carrots and sticks'. So big and influential in physics that those within and those outside are wary of demurring on anything. Even 20 EU governments that support CERN financially applaud rather than criticize, but then they're not scientists, or cost accountants, and just as misinformed as anyone else. If there are any diplomatic groans, it's probably because the big collider party this October 21st has been called off. In the interests of vitual safety, no doubt here a Virual Inauguration would be safer for Heads of State. Cheaper too, a few souvinir hardhats FedEx'd. Click for Bollinger and caviar now.

No doubt CERN will spring for the real thing. These guys pay their bills. It's prestige that still counts. With participation in other nuclear labs in Europe and friendly relations with many others worldwide, CERN amounts to something like the Church of the Middle Ages. Not based in Geneva for nothing. In 1955 the Swiss Government gave CERN carte blanche to operate in Switzerland as part of the deal to locate its operations in Switzerland. The list of concessions and priviledges CERN enjoys gives it the power of a city state (currently 2,600 staff, plus some 7,931 scientists and engineers, in Wikipedia) or in modern terms, that accorded to a foreign government's embassy and its diplomats. When CERN expanded into France in 1973, the French government was more circumspect but awarded CERN similar if more limited powers. Neither country though has jurisdiction over CERN, its property, its personnel or its activities. Though the French have reserved some rights including the right to intervene if there is a threat to France. If CERN blows up Geneva, Switzerland will have to sue Fermilab. An obvious mistake to put an organization above the law, like we didn't know the gun was loaded. Anyone in Switzerland or CERN care to bet that the obvious mistakes are the most statistically significant?

Surely if there were doubts within CERN as to problems or even the advisability of the Large Hadron Collider in the first place, we would hear about it? Not much has slipped through the cracks in the CERN PR department except their tactics. One source is CERN archives. Some CERN people have found themselves embassassed in hindsight when their candid comments were recorded in CERN videos, transcripts and documents.

One insider has recently commented, not realizing there was some unwritten code of silence. A CERN physicist, Tommaso Dorigo who works at the LHC CMS experiment, wrote in his blog, A Quantum Diaries Survivor, "In fact CERN appears a bit up-tight about the latest events in sector 34 of the LHC tunnel. He goes on to say ". . . since my blog is targeted as a possible source of leaks. . . And if I play fair, maybe I am allowed to survive here, and maybe one day I will stop being threatened every other day, in the name of protecting internal information of the experiments I am a part of."

Dorigo concludes, "Of course, I still assert my complete disagreement at a way to conduct scientific experiments paid with your tax money which resembles the management of the Pentagon rather than an agorà of education, research and scientific communication."

--Alan Gillis


References

Fairbairn, Malcolm and McElrath, Bob. "There is no explosion risk associated with superfluid Helium in the LHC cooling system", September 23, 2008, arxiv,
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.4004v1.pdf

KFC. "Forget black holes, could the LHC trigger a "Bose supernova"?, September 29, 2008, the physics arxiv blog, http://arxivblog.com/?p=645

Gillis, Alan. "Superfluids, BECs And Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment At The LHC", July 12, 2008, The Science of Conundrums, http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/07/superfluids-becs-and-bosenovas-ultimate.html

Gillis, Alan. "The Almost Thermonuclear LHC", March 17, 2008, The Science of Conundrums, http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/03/almost-thermonuclear-lhc.html

Lindzen, Richard S. "Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?", September 27, 2008, arxiv, http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf

Dorigo, Tommaso. "An agorà of education and scientific communication", September 23, 2008, A Quantum Diaries Survivor, http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2008/09/23/an-agora-of-education-and-scientific-communication/

CERN / Switzerland. "Agreement between the Swiss Federal Council and the European Organization for Nuclear Research . . .", June 11, 1955, CERN Legal Services, http://documents.cern.ch/archive/electronic/other/legal/articles/LSL00000012.pdf

CERN / France. "Agreement between the Government of the French Republic and the European Organization for Nuclear Research . . .", August 30, 1973, CERN Legal Services, http://documents.cern.ch/archive/electronic/other/legal/articles/LSL00000010.pdf

The Black Hand Of Dr Cern

Not a 50's B movie, but the latest Press Release from the biggest black hole on the planet, sucking up an astronomical $10 billion and ready for more, (gulp) dollars. What an appetite! Even now it's going after spare change. $10 million a month from the U.S. alone. When will it end? Is any sofa safe from the Black Hand of Dr Cern?

Of course it says it doesn't want your money. This monster Collider has some self-respect. It sends out Press Releases, like this one, all nice and cosy from September 5th, "CERN reinterates safety on eve of first beam" like on a snowy winter's eve with a baby first beam, http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR07.08E.html

"A report published today . . ." it says " . . . provides comprehensive evidence that safety fears about the Large Hadron Collider are unfounded."

Comprehensive, no. Stuff not considered, lots.
Evidence, no. Theories, yes.
And which report?

Well the one the news stories based on this Press Release are trumpeting as though this was a new safety study just released. An assumption made by journalists too busy to read the CERN Press Release under a microscope. Here is what they mistakenly wrote about shortly after seeing the new CERN Press Release:

"A new report . . ." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080904220342.htm

"A new report . . ." http://www.universetoday.com/2008/09/05/new-report-lhc-switch-on-fears-are-completely-unfounded/

"A new report . . ." http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/iop-lsf090408.php

"A new report . . ." http://www.physorg.com/news139810863.html

"A new report . . ." http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/544021/?sc=rssn

"A new report . . ." http://www.newkerala.com/fs/b/ai-1621.htm

"a new report . . ." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml

Burried at the bottom is the old LHC Safety Assesment Group (LSAG) report from June, though still not identified as the subject of this Press Release. CERN's PR Machine is so good it could publish the Geneva phonebook as a safety report and it would still make headlines, No One Dead Yet, Claims CERN in a New Geneva Safety Report.

One safety study flows into another without being named and instead of four CERN physicists and one Russian who wrote the June LSAG report, it's "The report (still un-named) was prepared by a group of scientists at CERN, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences." There is no one from the University of California, Santa Barbara that contributed, no groups except the CERN group and one Russian. Yes there is a scientist from UCSB, but he contributed to a different paper, "Astronomical Implications of Hypothetical Stable TeV-Scale Black Holes" and that report was done by a group of two, the UCSB guy and a CERN scientist.

The other safety reports are not exactly numerous, only one other LSAG report from 2003, CERN's first on the subject, based on the earlier RHIC safety report for a small low power U.S. collider in reply to Dr Walter Wagner's concern that micro black holes might be produced at the Relatavistic Heavy Ion Collider in Long Island, the 2003 LSAG report now the basis of the June 2008 update, the last update, the presumed subject of the CERN Press Release.

A few words later, "The papers comprising the report . . ." What report? What papers? Why not list all these papers and reports and provide hot links? Isn't this relevant in a Press Release? Or is CERN planning to send journalists Ask CERN Virtual Crystal Balls?

The only 2008 safety report was a single 15 page document undated, with one addendum of 11 pages, the total LSAG report. There was another much thicker report by two scientists on mBH, one from CERN, that was used to buttress the mBH section of the 2008 LSAG report. Those are all the papers, all the reports on safety this year from CERN. No doubt the whole kit and caboodle was presented to the CERN Scientific Policy Committee (SPC) of 20 unnamed scientists who CERN says are independent of CERN. If they pay for parking that settles it. Five out of 20 studied in depth "the 2008 report" meaning what report exactly? OK, say it was all they had, "and endorsed the authors' approach of basing their arguments on irrefutable observational evidence . . ." in the 2 documents submitted, the LSAG 2008 report, 15 plus 11 pages, and the GM Black Holes 2008 paper of 97 pages, finally clear from a read of the 5 page "SPC Report On LSAG Documents".

All this Press Release blather about 2 documents, previously published in June, previously reviewed in an undated SPC Report, the arcane subject of an September Press Release.

Go back a bit to the 5 page SPC Report. If the Press Release is a labyrinth, who claims the straight and narrow "irrefutable observational evidence"? What "irrefutable observational evidence to conclude that new particles produced at the LHC will pose no danger." These new particles have never been observed by CERN or anyone else. There is no evidence, only theories. But the SPC Report makes it clear that they weren't observing "new particles", but "irrefutable observational data on cosmic rays and on astronomical bodies". For journalists who aren't physicists what are they supposed to think? Don't worry about "new particles", we have observational evidence? We have observed these "new particles"? We saw them yesterday?

"The full SPC unanamously agreed with their findings." But why didn't the other 15 of the full SPC 20 study "in detail" the so-called report? Are they that busy, that the safety of CERN itself and their people and Geneva, isn't worth the full particpation of even one CERN hosted committee? But they all unanimously agreed with the select five and each other, perhaps on the very fate of the planet. 20 men decide for us all. The Black Hand Of Dr Cern won't let go of this Collider. It's mine mine mine! hisses Dr Cern, but we never see his face, only the blasted black hand groping for change.

On To September 10th And The Other LHC Machine: The CERN PR Department

The First Beam injection is an important test of LHC engineering. A single low power proton beam is going to circulate through the main 17 mile ring. It's not dangerous like some critics in the media are suggesting, with over-the-top headlines, The BBC calling it "Big Bang Day" for their live radio coverage on BBC FOUR.

Ordinarily CERN would be cringing at misinformed media hype. But it also plays 2 ways. A successful first test cancels fears that the collider is dangerous. Reacting to the media hype some other media outlets are making fun of the dangers, especially in Europe, a nice PR bonus for the machine.

CERN is turning this easy September 10th test into a bigtop LHC media circus, the perfectly safe collider. Hundreds of journalists will be on site for the thrilling 1/15 of normal operating energies single beam, 1/30 of eventual combined energies. The big CERN Dome will be the real hot spot, with all the collider action in up and down and side to side near-collisions of piled high plates from the giant free all day all you can eat buffet, if CERN doesn't forget to call the caterer. Warning, journalists are a grumpy hungry lot. Don't tell them to eat at the cafeteria. They could destroy it! If all goes well at the buffet, a bonanza of headlines the next day, Surprise, It's Not the End of the World. Not even close. Take your cue from Fermilab's own same day LHC Pajama Party, http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/64412.html?wlc=1220824563

CERN's direct competion is Fermilab's Tevatron collider, steady since the start of Run II at 0.90 TeV per beam or half the LHC First Beam attempt at 0.45 TeV. Still those small numbers are in Trillion electron Volts, enough to burn down the CERN Dome, easy, its only low-tech wood, but it is the media center for the day, so watch where you point that thing.

Still in the hunt for the Higgs, the Tevatron's in a last ditch attempt to beat the LHC. Due to run through to 2010 before being scrapped thanks to a recent financial bailout, $5 million from an anonymous donor and more cash this year from the U.S. Government's deep pockets or at least some loose change behind cushions in Washington, the venerable Tevatron has an extra year or two of life.

Way back when CERN's LEP collider was looking for the Higgs in its last days of 1999-2000, before 40,000 tonnes of it was hoisted away to make way for the LHC, CERN optimized and then pushed the LEP beyond its design energies. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=higgs-wont-fly

There was even a call to wait on demolition and press ahead with the LEP due to some tantalizing last minute results. They weren't heeded and for 8 years CERN has been in a vacuum doing no physics since then. Physicists at CERN have been understandably restless for years and now more so with the Tevatron still blazing. Another (unexpected) 'doubly strange' particle discovered a few days ago with energies higher this year and data optimized to the max, http://www.physorg.com/news139673506.html

Taking its cue from the old LEP do-or-die experiment, current Tevatron energy is 0.98022 TeV per beam, http://www-bd.fnal.gov/notifyservlet/www?project=outside the Higgs maybe a few more GeV down the road. Let's hope the old collider can take it. http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=fermilab-says-hey-wait-were-in-the-2008-08-08

With the Higgs in Fermilab's pocket, the LHC, ostensibly built to find the mother of all particles, might be a $10 billion irony, just another lonely financial black hole. CERN would definitely disagree. I'll make it easy for them here, since they don't bother responding to my blog articles or to my letters to the LSAG about potential hazards not analyzed by LSAG reports, like bosenova implosion/explosion from quantum state helium-4, or helium-3 produced by LHC ionization of helium-4, first proposed by me in a ScientificBlogging article, http://www.scientificblogging.com/big_science_gambles/superfluids_becs_and_bosenovas_the_ultimate_experiment
and now a part of the European Court of Human Rights suit on LHC safety; or thermonuclear fusion of this helium-3 also first proposed by me in The Science of Conundrums, http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/03/almost-thermonuclear-lhc.html

CERN absolutely disagrees with everybody out there who hasn't got a CERN badge. Of course critical internal CERN Intranet emails are taken seriously before they are bounced into the not fully tested LHC thousand tonne beam dumps, where they've been known to smoke some graphite into methane, but don't tell anyone. It's top secret!

CERN has said there is other new physics out there as do collider happy physicists everywhere, maybe extra String theory dimensions and then oops micro black holes that oops might merge into a bigger mBH that might start accreting mass at 17,000 tonnes a year that might radiate some nuclear energy that might destroy Switzerland and might go on destroying the planet until it is destroyed, or so says a physicist, Dr Rainer Plaga, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v1.pdf whom CERN has dismissed with an admirably quick but short 2 page argument printed on 4 pages, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.4087v1.pdf Plaga's paper on metastable quantum black holes is only theoretical, but can we relax when CERN's counter-arguments, all its safety studies are also all based on theories?

In the final analysis, the only practical analysis, CERN's implied LHC safety rests on one point rattling around somewhere behind their theories: So far no major threats have been found in the operation of tiny colliders using low energies.

For now it's theories versus theories, smoke and mirrors, from both sides of the question: Is The LHC Safe? Later this October with a big do-or-die totally unnecessary quantum jump in energy to the first LHC 5 TeV beam, way way more powerful than any collider's on the planet, that might all change.

Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of CERN says: "In any case, they will only send the hadrons in one direction this week. The collisions start in October. Until then, at least, we're not all doomed." Or last chance to visit Geneva or buy a Rolex. Quote from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-large-hadron-collider-end-of-the-world-or-gods-own-particle-921540.html

No, not the end September 10th, of the end of the world debate, maybe equipment failure, collider damage or something more surprising. Like basic nuclear physics they don't know about or maybe dismissed at the water cooler because everyone had another meeting on parking lot passes, the next big ski-weekend or New Dimensions in String Theory. (For the demonstration, please bring your own string and sharp scissors are recommended.)

If the LHC survives, then the first 10 TeV proton collisions later this year will be something to watch on the BBC's New and Improved Big Bang Day broadcast. Add a Rock Concert from the CERN Dome, for backgound music and intercutting into the boring bits. Hey Dr Brian Cox, Rock your Collider!

Let's have this one live on TV worldwide, or maybe Google Earth can get their just launched satellite cameras callibrated in time. About 500 miles up, Google Eye should be safe. Hope the DVD Live At The Collider makes it outta there. Might be the collector's item.


For News on the current LHC prep steps leading up to September 10th, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4692222.ece

The Media Circus Program September 10th,
http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam/practical.html#techinfo

Fear And Loathing At The LHC,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml

In Desperation CERN physicists are taking comedy improv classes at CERN. (see above link) Listen in on NPR's "Can Physicists Be Funny?"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94357426&ft=1&f=1007

Dr Brian Cox, your host on BBC FOUR Radio's Big Bang Day September 10th 08:30BST, time travels from the LHC, we knew it all along, back to the days of D:ream,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/its-sex-and-drugs-and-particle-physics-as-dream-star-recreates-the-big-bang-917196.html

Stop CERN Euro Court Action Slips And Slides Forward

LHC Kritiks in Switzerland, Germany and Austria survived the first ruling on their case by the European Court for Human Rights, August 29th. So did CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which will go ahead while the court action continues. A stunningly quick decision by the ECHR only 3 days after the complaint was filed against CERN and its 20 member countries from the EC, denies any Interim Measures that would have forced CERN to suspend operations of the LHC.

Soon to be the world's most powerful atom smasher and the biggest and most costly science experiment ever, the $10 billion LHC straddles the borders of Switzerland and France, near Geneva. CERN the giant European nuclear physics lab has completed the 17 mile underground construction of the ring accelerator and is now in the first stages of start-up. It's goal is to unlock the secrets of the early Universe, through unparalled high energy collisions of hadrons, protons at first and then heavy lead ions. Critics believe that the LHC could pose enormous dangers to the planet.

Markus Goritschnig, a spokesman for LHC Kritiks said, "This quick decision of the court to dismiss the claim for Interim Measures is not a negative sign as such. The Court is studying the whole appeal in detail now. Only the claim for Interim Measures was rejected, not the appeal itself." The Court gave no reasons for dismissing the preliminary injuction to stop LHC operations.

"The case before the European Court of Human Rights," said Dr James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN, commenting on the Court case in the Telegraph, "contains the same arguments that we have seen before and we have answered these in extensive safety reports."

Bosenovas haven't been addressed by CERN. All 12 points in the LHC Kritiks arguments are being considered by the ECHR, including Bosenovas. A new risk of a Bosenova produced during collider operations that might destroy the LHC, was first raised in the on-line science magazine ScientificBlogging in an article July 2nd, by Alan Gillis. Other well-known safety hazards have been studied in the latest CERN LHC Safety Assessment Group report, theoretical objects and dangers that might be produced at the LHC, like micro black holes destroying the planet. MBH is the main focus in the Court suit. CERN concludes there is no risk.

LHC Kritiks strongly disagree on the level of risk and CERN's claim that they have addressed it. "In the complaint", said Markus Goritschnig, "we took all the safety arguments into consideration that were given by CERN in their standard reactions to the global risk. They will have to produce a better LSAG report."

One of CERN's chief critics on mBH is the eminent scientist, Dr Otto E Rössler. He has been linked to the Court challenge, though he is not directly behind it. There are three principal signatories to the suit, one each from Switzerland, Germany and Austria. In the suit Dr. Rössler's theories on mBH figure prominently. In answer to Dr James Gillies, he told me that CERN still has not disproved his general relativistic theory on mBH or proved that neutron stars are immune to mBH because mBH don't exist. Dr Rössler said these, the most dense stars, are not attacked by mBH because they are protected by their own superfluidity, so mBH pass through them as there is no friction. MBH can exist in space, he insists. CERN has no proof one way or the other. Dr Rössler said, "This unproven argument does not impart any security onto earth as CERN alleges."

Dr Rössler added that there is further confirmation of his theory that mBH do not evaporate, contrary to what Professor Stephen Hawking states, through his Hawking radiation theory. "I just learned about an earlier proof of non-evaporation given by Vladimir Belinski, Institute des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques at Bures-sur-Yvette, France, in Physics Letters A. (Vol 209, p 13)

The authors of the Euro suit have included a new study on the mBH question, not considered in the LSAG report as both are recent documents. The paper by Dr Rainer Plaga, a German physicist, that supports Dr Rössler on possible mBH production and dangers, uses quantum physics arguments as CERN does. Markus Goritschnig thinks that Dr Plaga's work is a compelling contribution to the argument for dangerous mBH. "Plaga says the first consequence of producing black holes in lower dimensions would be a disastrous explosion. Then the semi-stable black hole would intensively radiate, consuming 17,000T of material each year. It would be unremovable, undestroyable, and surely endanger the planet as a whole."

Dr Rössler is due to meet with the Swiss President, Pascal Couchepin, this fall on LHC safety issues. According to a spokeswoman for the ECHR, "The proceedings before the Strasbourg Court are expected to take several years."

(This article was originally published in the Alan Gillis Column, ScientificBlogging, http://www.scientificblogging.com/big_science_gambles/stop_cern_euro_court_action_slips_and_slides_forward)


References

Chown, Markus. New Scientist, "Trouble on the horizon for evaporating black holes", Feb 10, 1996, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14920163.000-trouble-on-the-horizon-for-evaporating-black-holes.html

Dambeck, Holger. SpiegalOnline, "Gericht weist Eilantrag gegen Superbeschleuniger ab", August 29, 2008, http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,575275,00.html

Ellis, Jonathan et al. CERN LSAG, "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions", Undated (from 2008), http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf

Ellis, Jonathan et al. CERN LSAG, "Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions Addendum on strangelets", June 20, 2008, http://lsag.web.cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report_add.pdf

Gillis, Alan. ScientificBlogging, "Superfluids, BECs And Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment", July 2, 2008, http://www.scientificblogging.com/big_science_gambles/superfluids_becs_and_bosenovas_the_ultimate_experiment

Gray, Richard. Telegraph, "Legal bid to stop CERN atom smasher from 'destroying the world'", Aug 31, 2008 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/2650665/Legal-bid-to-stop-CERN-atom-smasher-from-destroying-the-world.html

LHC Kritik, ECHR Court Documents, http://lhc-concern.info/

Plaga, Rainer. ArXiv, "On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders", preprint submitted to Elsevier, Aug 10, 2008, http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v1.pdf

Suit Alleges CERN In Violation Of Human Rights

Yesterday, a group of LHC critics filed a suit against CERN in the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg . The authors of the suit are physicists, professors and students largely from Germany and Austria, who feel that the operation of the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, poses grave risks for the safety and well-being of the 27 member states of the European Union and their citizens. The Rule of Law, the suit states, is also threatened. The legal arguments that define the legitimacy of the suit appear clear-cut, and have been crafted in German by a well known Professor of International Law, Adrian Hollaender.

The arguments for several major risks that might develop into wholesale disasters are based on papers from various physicists and a risk assessment analyst, whose conclusions will be examined by the court as well as counter-arguments by CERN. It's a question of theories versus theories. The outcome is anyone's guess, but a cogent risk analysis could be the deciding factor. The suit highlights the possible production of Micro Black Holes, which could be a pollution hazard or combine and destroy the LHC. In the worst case, mBH could start consuming the planet, producing dangerous radiation.

MBH are admitted as theoretically possible by CERN. Indeed CERN anticipated large scale production of mBH, but lately has refuted the possibility and denied that they could be produced at the LHC, unless there were extra dimensions as postulated in String Theory. In that case CERN says mBH would be harmless, evaporating quickly due to a theoretical Hawking radiation, though this radiation has not been detected from black holes in space.

Bosenovas are a new risk theory in the suit, besides the better known Strangelets and Lowered Vacuum State theories. Unlike the others there is some experimental evidence for a Bosenova, but this phenomenon of implosion/explosion has only been produced in small groups of atoms of Rubidium-85 in an ultracold state, a Bose-Einstein Condensate.

What might occur at the LHC, is a new type of Bosenova from what amounts to a BEC used there as a coolant, an ultracold Superfluid Helium II, of about 60 metric tonnes in the LHC ring, and a further 60 tonnes of somewhat warmer Superfluid Helium I in refrigeration plants on the surface connected to the subterranean main ring. Whether possible or not is unknown, no experiments having been done by CERN to rule out the possibility, nor any theoretical model studies. The Bosenova risk was first raised in an article by Alan Gillis in the on-line science magazine, ScientificBlogging, July 2, 2008, "Superfluids, BECs and Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment".

The first full proton beam injection into the LHC is due September 10th. As further studies and experiments required to assess risks are a long way off, and even a decision on risks as presented by the plaintiffs could take the European Court some time to evaluate, the authors of the suit are asking the court for a speedy granting of Interim Measures. The LHC should be shut-down pending the Court's ruling. The argument that the LHC be limited to no more than 2 TeV energy overall, similar to Fermilab's Tevatron collider design energies, they exclude from the Court's consideration.

A similar suit is before the US court in Hawaii, launched by Dr Walter Wagner and Dr Luis Sancho, against CERN and Fermilab, court in session September 2nd.

LHC Start-up To Shut-down 2008

After the Olympics, the next big thing is the international Large Hadron Collider. There's a lot of excitement at CERN. The first injections, and without a hitch, of low energy protons shot through an eighth of the 27 km LHC ring. Back to back for this weekend they're doing it again at 0.45 TeV with the anticlockwise beam. It's an important preliminary test, kicking the protons from the pre-accelerator loops, into the unknown. At this point CERN is confident there is nothing to worry about. The energy is only half of the currently most powerful collider, Fermilab's Tevatron, in Batavia, Ill. So, CERN's probably right, this time. Higher energies will be the real test.

Now for the news, major media aren't covering, from the current Strings 2008, a CERN conference, and not only on String theory. It's another window on CERN that is fascinating.

Even at 1% of design energies, as Lyn Evans, Project Director, said August 18th in his talk, on LHC Machine Status, we'll be in new territory. He also confirmed that the first beam right around the main ring is still set for September 10th, as announced last week.

There's one problem Evans said quickly, a turbine needs replacing in Sector 6-7, but it won't delay operations. Once another test is done for the other beam later in September, CERN plans to go ahead with 5 TeV runs before the standard winter shutdown. A Russian scientist, Alexander Vodopyanov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Dubna), said recently in RIA Novosti World, that he's heard that the LHC will be inaugurated October 21st, which supposes that the collider, will by that time have had one test run at least. Though beam collisions at 10 TeV, probably will start later. CERN is in a hurry though, having cancelled earlier plans for a gradual ramping up of beam energies. Going from a known quantity, suddenly into the unknown is a risk, and totally unnecessary. The big rush is due to three years of delays, construction and equipment problems.

Seems they would even have skipped 5 TeV and gone straight to 7 TeV beams this fall, as Evans said the collider wasn't ready for the design energies, as some magnets had been lying around for two years, and were found to require retraining for higher energies, though they were previously trained, this batch from some other supplier. Those will be retrained during the winter shutdown, so they can all go skiing. Mount Blanc is only a proton away. That's not official though. Ski report widgets and desktop ski weather icons and live webcam links to the best ski resorts are all over CERN desktops and laptops. Ski weekend emails fly like alarm routines.

Magnets have to sit up, bark and rollover, as they say at Fermilab. Twelve hundred 15 meter ones at about a million dollars a pop, thousands of smaller ones. But Evans added they were proceeding with care, with some magnets not fully trained, not pushing them beyond 5 TeV, as there are always some protons lost from the beams, and that can cause magnet quenches. As we know from the Tevatron, quenches can crash down the entire collider. Sometimes beams are lost, potentially a dangerous situation.

So September 10th, 21 days to go, is not the BBC's "Big Bang Day", as they're calling it, on their live Radio Four broadcast, starting at 0:8:30 BST. No need to panic yet. Try again later this October. For all you fans of micro black holes, you'll have to wait for them too. CERN's not convinced they'll show up during proton collisions. If they do, Dr O. Buchmüller, speaking on The Search for New Physics at the LHC, said at Strings 2008, after the Evans presentation, that if they show up they would be within SUSY parameters, and their signature would be clearly obvious. Keep your fingers crossed so they aren't too obvious.

Make a date to watch the September 10th LHC Sparks and Quarks, starting 0:8:30 BST, firing of the First Beam an hour later, like on BBC Radio Four, either on Eurovision, if you have a feed or can buy an Internet pass for this one. Or if you're broke after blowing $10 billion on the LHC, watch it for free on CERN's tiny TV Live Webcast, better in Flash if you have internet lite, but a fast machine.

The just-ended Strings 2008, the best in arcane viewing, even if you're a physics fanatic, was a live webcast on the same CERN url daily this week. Earlier talks from Strings 2008, you might have missed, including the must see Evans and Buchmüller talks, should be available as videos a few days late on this same CERN url, see below.


References

CERN Strings 2008, conference program, http://ph-dep-th.web.cern.ch/ph-dep-th/content2/workshops/strings2008/?site=content/talks.html

CERN Webcasts, live or pre-recorded video, for Strings 2008, First Beam September 10th, or other CERN events, http://webcast.cern.ch/

CERN First Beam, news on LHC start-up, countdown to September 10th, http://lhc-first-beam.web.cern.ch/lhc-first-beam/Welcome.html

CERN Press Release, CERN announces start-up date for LHC, August 7, 2008, http://info.web.cern.ch/Press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR06.08E.html

RIA Novosti World, "Large Hadron Collider to be launched October 21 -- Russian Scientist", August 5, 2008, http://en.rian.ru/world/20080805/115771418.html

Gillis, Alan, The Science of Conundrums, "Daily Battles At The Tevatron", http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/04/daily-battles-at-tevatron.html

Gillis, Alan, The Science of Conundrums, "Major Failures At The Tevatron", http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/04/major-failures-at-tevatron.html

Gillis, Alan, The Science of Conundrums, "It's All About Energy At The LHC", http://bigsciencenews.blogspot.com/2008/04/its-all-about-energy-at-lhc.html




From First Test To First Beam To First Collisions

CERN's image (above) of last weekend's first proton bunch injection, raises some questions for those who aren't particle physicists. If you read the CERN descriptions of the particle beam and bunches of protons, they look nothing like this.

Ordinarily at design energies, CERN states there will be 3,000 bunches of protons in the beam, and numbering overall anywhere from 100 billion to the trillions of protons, depending on how much luminosity the physicists at the LHC would like for each experiment. The pictured bunch according to SciAM is 5 million protons, a far smaller number than would be usual, which would be at least 100 million protons per bunch. And CERN always describes their beams as less than the thickness of a human hair, and each bunch about 5 cm long. What we're seeing with this first bunch is a hot ball of protons, with a big halo and tail, at about 7.5 mm on the Y-axis, and with the halo included, about 11 mm overall, more like the width of your baby finger.

There's nothing wrong here, as this is typically what you get from the low energy 0.45 TeV SPS pre-accelerator that feeds the LHC. Further focusing of the beam will occur later, to produce needle-like bunches, through collimators throughout the main ring. But the halo is worth looking at. It's well understood this is mostly an electron cloud, generated through interactions of these accelerated protons and extremely high magnetic fields from the superconducting di-pole magnets.

But in the LHC the initial halos, that are cleansed later and focused, show some foreign matter in the beam cryostats which is burning, and this in the best vacuum that CERN can produce for the beam lines, a greater vacuum than is found on the Moon.

Recently, Katherine McAlpine, a science writer working for CERN, put it this way. ". . . with that first beam, they're going to be getting so much more data coming out from those protons running into things that are in the beam pipe than they're getting from cosmic rays coming in from outer space right now that the detector people will have a lot more information to work with calibrating."

Of late she's become well known as AlpineKat through her rap video, "Large Hadron Rap", with CERN back-up.

Besides some collider debris, electron cloud production at the Proton Synchrotron and the Super Proton Synchrotron has been an unresolved problem, especially the proton scattering which comes with an unfocused beam. Other pre-accelerators have the same problem.

Looking back to what Lyn Evans said at Strings 2008, there's an interesting effect that might be seen on September 10th, during the First Beam right around the collider ring.

As some magnets are not properly trained, they won't be ideal superconductors like the other magnets, that will be at 8.33 Teslas. Their magnetic fields will be somewhat weaker and so the First Beam of protons will pass through various field strengths around the collider. This also affects the Superfluid Heliums that circulate through the magnets and cool them and the cryostats. As Superfluid Helium is considered to be a Bose-Einstein Condensate, it has been demonstrated in another BEC that an abrupt change in magnetic fields starts the Bosenova implosion/explosion.

No CERN experimental studies or theoretical analysis has ever been produced on this safety issue by CERN. The recent LSAG safety report by CERN ignores this possible risk that might destroy the collider.

There should be some news this weekend on another test. The counter-rotating beam, like last weekend's test will be injected this weekend, probably with similar success. The next thing to watch is the September 10th First Beam, where there is more risk of failures in engineering and equipment. Look for a follow-up article here on what CERN might discover, when it's too late.

Katherine McAlpine also said, in line with earlier reports from CERN, " . . . on September 10th they're really only going to have one beam going around, so they're not going to have collisions until they project about two months later after startup."

So around November 10th for the first particle collisions at 10 TeV.

CERN Confirms Big Bash

If there's no big crash, CERN says the Collider Inauguration will be October 21st, as Vodopyanov said. 10 TeV Collisions are scheduled before winter shutdown, CERN says again, confirming what McAlpine said. And I was right about the second kicker magnet test. No problems. There was a bit more action from one of the smaller forward detectors, the VELO, part of the giant LHCb detector. The protons knocked through part of the VELO array, and CERN captured the first particle tracks in a series of images, showing at least that this bit works. A relief, these card modules are supercomplex. See the preliminary data and beam schedule on this CERN summary page.

(This article originally appeared in the Alan Gillis Column, Big Science Gambles, ScientificBlogging, in two parts, August 19 and 22, 2008, Big Bash update August 26, 2008, http://www.scientificblogging.com/big_science_gambles/lhc_start_up)


References

Gillis, Alan. ScientificBlogging, "Superfluids, BECs and Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment", July 2, 2008, http://www.scientificblogging.com/big_science_gambles/superfluids_becs_and_bosenovas_the_ultimate_experiment

McAlpine, Katherine (AlpineKat). Youtube, "Large Hadron Rap", July 28, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

Turner, James. O'Reilly News, "Rapping the Higgs Boson: Katherine McAlpine . . .", August 19, 2008, http://news.oreilly.com/2008/08/rapping-the-higgs-boson-kather.html

Superfluids, BECs And Bosenovas: The Ultimate Experiment At The LHC

The first BEC, a rubidium-87, at 3 temperatures, 400nK, 200nK and 50nK, each pile of atoms 1 mm wide, activity greater nearer absolute zero, NIST 1995

In a familiar world of solids, liquids and gases, we find the fourth state of matter, the plasmas of lightning to the aurora borealis and fluorescent tubes at the office. Further out, minor phenomena becomes the big event in space, our shining stars are plasma being fused producing light. Not until 1924 was a fifth state of matter considered possible. Intrigued by quantum statistics, invented by the Bengali physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose from observations of light, Einstein applied Bose’s work to matter. The Bose-Einstein Condensate(BEC) was born. Was there any truth to the theory, Einstein himself wondered, that matter that could condense at ultracold temperatures into something new?

Einstein’s theory was left hanging, as a mathematical artifact, until 1938. Fritz London, a German theoretical chemist and physicist, working on helium at the same time as the Russian Pyotr Kapitsa who discovered its superfluid state at just under 2.2 K, found it behaved like Einstein’s theoretical BEC. Subsequent research confirmed London’s insight. Both stable isotopes, ordinary helium-4, and the rare helium-3 at much lower temperatures, are quantum superfluids, behaving like matter-waves or superatoms, undifferentiated matter with vastly different properties from their gas state or their ordinary bottled fluid state. Now scientists had a way of studying laboratory tabletop quantum physics. These, the only two superfluids known with zero viscosity, have sparked intense interest, helium-4 a bosonic superfluid and helium-3, a fermionic superfluid. Bosons are force carriers like photons of light and fermions are the matter we can touch. A gateway opened which eventually led to the laboratory production of other BECs when finally ultracold states could be induced, starting in 1995.

Viewing superfluid helium in action, demonstrates the baffling counter-intuitive nature of quantum fluids and other BECs. Some of the stunning properties of superfluid helium were observed if not understood back in 1908 when the Dutch physicist, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, cooled helium-4 to -269 Celsius. Not only was there no resistance to flow, the superfluid could climb the walls of the vessel, like a film, always 30 nanometers thick, defying gravity, or pour through the smallest hole or fissure, or leak through some apparently non-porous matter.

Further studies showed that this superfluid, now called Helium II, behaved as a two-fluid model, partly in a low energy ground state, and partly in an excited state. With a little added heat and manipulation of the superfluid, an interaction of the two states was enhanced, producing a fountain effect, as though 2 fluids existed.

In our own Sun and countless other stars, hydrogen fusion produces helium, the second most abundant element, and is in turn eventually fused by steps into carbon-12. On Earth there isn’t much, a trace atmospheric gas but found in quantity up to 7 percent in some natural gas. It’s produced by nuclear decay, as from radium and polonium, dangerous alpha radiation releasing, in fact bare nuclei of helium that eventually pick up electrons and form stable helium isotopes.

Given an electric charge, helium can fluoresce like neon. Even rarer molecules of helium-3 have been produced in helium-4 during ionization. Superfluid helium is also a superconductor, 30 times more efficient than copper as well as a thermal conductor 300 times that of copper. And both helium-3 and helium-4 have been cooled to near absolute zero, helium-4 retaining its superfluidity, helium-3 crystallizing, yet still capable of movement like other BECs. Adding enormous pressure of 25 atmospheres and more, forces even helium-4 to act like other BEC ‘solids’.

If superfluid helium can tell us a lot about other ultracold BECs now being studied and produced by over 200 research teams worldwide, then BECs that also appear to be superfluids and have two coexisting states like the two fluid state of superfluids, could show us how superfluids behave. It’s more than satisfying the curiosity of pure research. BECs have been turned into atom lasers and BECs have produced bosenovas, an inexplicable phenomenon where BECs explode, releasing more than the energy present in the system and where about half of the BEC sample literally vanishes without a trace. Fascinating and worrisome in any lab working with small amounts of BECs, but superfluid Helium II BEC is being used in great quantities as a coolant in certain nuclear reactors and particle accelerators.

The possibilities of a giant BEC bosenova produced in superfluid Helium II haven’t been investigated. The matter is urgent as 120 T of superfluid Helium II are being used at the Large Hadron Collider at Geneva, whose energies far surpass any other collider’s, not only beam energies, but RF applied, extreme Tesla Fields by superconducting magnets, and electrical energies equivalent to the consumption of Geneva, powering the 27 km ring system. Startup of the LHC at 5 TeV per proton beam has been delayed to this September but for other technical reasons.

The problem too, is that BECs are new and strange. It wasn’t until 1995 that an ultracold BEC was produced by new methods of supercooling, in this case applied to a gas of Rubidium-87 to bring it near absolute zero. For physics it was a sudden explosion in the quantum world. A new field of study, Condensed Matter Physics, a new state of matter positively confirmed, but far from understood. Matter acting as one giant atom with the properties of a superfluid. Shared Nobel Prizes awarded in 2001went to the team leaders at JILA, the joint NIST project with CU-Boulder, Carl E. Weiman and Eric A. Cornell. A third share in the Nobel for a sodium-25 BEC developed independently went to Wolfgang Ketterle now at MIT. Research at MIT is on a massive scale with several big BEC labs, working in part on BEC atom lasers. Don’t worry, Ketterle has said, atom lasers only work in a vacuum and would only travel a meter without one. Nevertheless matter-wave lasers are bound to be improved. There’s always military interest and funding.

A bosenova explosion of rubidium-85, from a new burstmovie by NIST, 2008

What astonished some physicists was another BEC event in 2001, well beyond anything anticipated. The BEC discovery team at JILA produced a new rubidium-85 BEC. While an electromagnetic field was applied to cause a stronger attraction among the BEC atoms, the BEC started to shrink and then exploded like a supernova. The result was a release of particles in various streams, leaving behind a much smaller BEC remnant. The thermal energy released was greater than the energy in the BEC and about half of all the thousands of atoms of the rubidium-85 disappeared. The effect was at first nicknamed the bosenova, and still a total puzzle to this day. After 7 years of study, the latest research on whatever goes on in a bosenova, now referred to as a BEC loss, needs a “new microscopic BEC physics” to explain it, says N.R. Claussen et al of a joint BEC team at the U of Colorado at Boulder, in a paper published in February this year. A second team at UC-Boulder led by Elizabeth A. Donley published the following month, also could not account for the bosenova phenomenon nor the apparent loss of atoms.

Though the bosenova effect is staggering in its repercussions for the Standard Model, none of the more than 200 teams experimenting with BECs appear interested. The only study groups working seriously on bosenovas are those at JILA. Other research teams are looking for new BECs and a few are looking for applications of BECs to create things like better atomic clocks, interferometers or even studying light by teasing BECs with lasers to slow light down or stop it! In the future, quantum computing might use BECs and lasers. BECs could be big business.

What happens next at the LHC will be the next big experiment in a superfluid Helium II BEC. It’s not part of the design parameters, as physicists assume that the helium will be stable based on its use in the much smaller, much less powerful, up to 250 GeV per beam, RHIC collider in Long Island, NY. CERN’s interests lie in producing the Higgs boson at the LHC, perhaps micro black holes and quark-gluon plasma. Even in the much awaited CERN safety study released last month, there’s absolutely nothing on a possible bosenova implosion/explosion. Of course to test the safety of the enormous LHC to handle foreseen and unforeseen events you’d need another disposable one. But at least it is possible to subject Helium II to some of these high energies and hadron beams as a test. Not at the low energies of the RHIC, but at Fermilab’s Tevatron, currently the most energetic collider with 0.9 TeV per beam, though still far short of the power of the monster LHC at ordinary operating conditions of 7 TeV and ultimately 1,150 TeV collisions of lead ions at nearly twice light speed. Helium II could simply be used as a target by Tevatron beams to see what would happen, besides being exposed to high and fluctuating Tesla fields, ionized by electrical currents, subjected to some of the extreme conditions anticipated at the LHC.

The LSAG safety review at CERN, even their new report, is still a 4/5 majority internal assessment, and with an independent SPC Report/review of that review that’s still a CERN committee of 5 physicists, though the mainstream media is content with the CERN press releases, ‘No Danger That The LHC Will Destroy The Earth’, about everywhere. Though now black holes are now unlikely, but previously predicted to occur rapidly by CERN in the ‘LHC black hole factory’, but initially ignored, until a physicist wrote about the possibility in a letter to Scientific American that sparked the initial 2003 CERN safety assessment. There’s hard science and there’s French farce. Which one are we getting? Pushing the LHC big button as a test is a risky way to go. CERN has always insisted that small amounts of hadrons can’t do very much, but there’s an enormous amount of energy in the LHC and 120 T of BEC superfluid. There’s still a suit in the Hawaii courts to delay LHC startup because of safety concerns like black hole and strangelet production. Lately and since I first considered the possible dangers of superfluid helium in my article of March 7, 2008, ‘The Almost Thermonuclear LHC’, the plaintiffs, Dr Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho have announced they will seek an addendum to their suit to include bosenova risks at the LHC.

Seven years after the rubidium-85 BEC produced the first bosenova, we still don’t know what happened to half of the Rubidium-85 atoms that disappeared.

(This article originally appeared in the Alan Gillis Column, Big Science Gambles, published in ScientificBlogging.)


Baum, Michael. From Supernova to Smoke Ring: Recent Experiments Underscore Weirdness of the Bose-Einstein Condensate, NIST 2001
Boyle, Alan. Doomsday Under Debate, Cosmic Log, MSNBC 2008
Braun-Munzinger, Peter, et al. SPC Report On LSAG Documents, CERN SPC 2008
Claussen, N.R. et al. Microscopic Dynamics in a Strongly Interacting Bose-Einstein Condensate, JILA 2008
Donley, Elizabeth A. et al. Dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensates, JILA 2008
Ellis, John, et al. Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions, CERN LSAG 2008
Gillis, Alan. The Almost Thermonuclear LHC, The Science of Conundrums, 2008
Ketterle, Wolfgang. Ch 9, Bose-Einstein Condensation: Identity Crisis for Indistinguishable Particles, in “Quantum Mechanics at the Crossroads”, Springer Berlin, 2006
Schewe, Phil et al. Supersolid, Quantum Crystal, A Bose-Einstein Condensate in Solid, Physics News Update, The AIP Bulletin of Physics News, 2004

SuperfluidUploaded by reelgood0008 BBC Video