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.