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

Safety At The LHC

The Science of Conundrums: The Almost Thermonuclear LHC

A discussion on safety at the LHC. Stefan Scherer in Frankfurt, a physicist, science writer and co-author of the physics blog Backreaction, comments: ". . . If something goes wrong, that may wreck the billion euro installation in the tunnel - worse enough - but it would not result in a a 007 like explosion of Dr Blofelds underground lab. . ." See p 13 at this LINK for the full dialog.

The Almost Thermonuclear LHC

What could go wrong with 2 x 27 km of beam pipes? The engineering and theoretical worries have been addressed from many angles. CERN has constructed a remarkable machine with many key safety features built in. Speculations on what might happen when the LHC is switched on are all in the realms of theory and lessons learned and extrapolated from much less powerful colliders. No real guarantees on what to expect from a unique experiment. Beyond the public discussions, from my overview, there's one big thing that hasn't surfaced in seminars and published papers or the media.

At the LHC you've got all the ingredients for a two stage thermonuclear proton fusion and trigger for a helium fusion bomb. The protons are hydrogen stripped of electrons in the beam pipes and the helium is the coolant for all the superconducting magnets in the main ring and in the giant detectors like ATLAS.

The helium is an enormous amount of gas chilled and compressed down to 60 metric tonnes of superfluid helium. Protons are in abundant supply, circulating in the ring at 99.99% of light speed in opposite directions, in nearly 3,000 bunches of about a 100 billion per bunch per beam line or 6,000 x 100,000,000,000 or 600 trillion protons in the system.

These aren't ordinary protons. Because they've been accelerated to near light speed, each proton has 7 TeV of energy, or 7,000 times more energy than a proton at rest. Recall what Einstein said about bodies accelerated to speeds approaching light. They gain mass! And recall the Lorentz contraction. At these phenomenal speeds, bodies are foreshortened, appearing smaller than when at rest.

Has something so basic in physics been overlooked? A great number of very heavy protons, enormously compressed, at least 1200 million colliding every 25 nanoseconds, travelling at 11,245 laps around the ring in one second, so all 600 trillion would mingle within say ATLAS in less than a second. Of course not, but then what if there were more collisions and pileups, so that
the anticipated small fireball burned all the protons, expanding and overwhelming the detector, rupturing a helium line? At expected temperatures of the proton fireball, more than 100,000 times the core temperature of the sun, wouldn't that be enough to fuse the captured helium present?

Rather an unfortunate choice to use fusible helium as the coolant, like the location of the LHC near a big city, Geneva and much of the UN apparatus there.

Even if CERN did achieve a small fireball, a small helium leak would fuel the fusion reaction and you would have, not an LHC, but a nuclear fusion reactor. The enormous magnetic fields might contain the plasma for a while, but with the detectors not designed to be reactors and many combustibles present in the calorimeters, like silicon chips and fiber optics, any detector could burn from the inside out. To shut off the supply of helium would be difficult, depending where the valves are. It would be a runaway situation with helium flooding the test cavern in short order. Working at the world's largest cryogenic LNG plant in the 1980's, I have first hand experience of what can go wrong even when you have the best engineering and operations people. Since the plant was on a stretch of sandy beach, if something big went wrong, then we would have only blown up about $2 billion dollars and a beautiful high tech machine. Not Geneva or the UN or a lot of fine Swiss watches and a major banking center and who knows how many people.

This type of proton-helium nuclear explosion is certainly possible. Hydrogen bombs work in a similar way. An initial small nuclear explosion fusing a supply of low molecular weight gas. Thermonuclear bombs are currently the most powerful by far.

In order for the LHC to blow up, the question is whether or not there is enough proton mass present to produce a big enough fireball to rupture these tiny refrigerator freezer type channels in the detectors containing helium. In a worst case scenario would we have an explosion, a fireball, a nuclear explosion or plasma erupting? How would a helium fusion bomb compare with a hydrogen bomb? Just how massive could it be given a 60 tonne contained supply of helium. Could it all fuse and be far more catastrophic?

These are serious and important questions, not posed by the media or CERN, at least not publicly. We need an answer soon before the LHC starts up this summer. A lot of people's lives could be at risk. If there is or isn't a danger, we should have the facts and the math from CERN. Any physicists care to comment?

The Logic Of Science

On the left, the ultimate portable atomic clock, the size of a grain of rice from NIST and DARPA, 2004. Works using a tiny laser. Accurate for 300 years. A bit of overkill. Do we really need these in cell phones to come? Whether we want these gizmos or not is irrelevant. Some corporation will decide to manufacture them and soon they'll be everywhere. It's the logic of the age we live in. It's also the logic of Science. Actually a simple definition of Science, apart from the Latin root To Know, from the earlier verb To Cut, is the application of logic to all phenomena. That's how Science started in the mists of time when people perceived an orderly pattern to things that had a logic to it. That's also Science's Central Dogma, that the Universe is logical. On this one assumption everything rests. If Science ever hits a brick wall, it will be the discovery of something beyond logic. But Scientists are confident that will never happen, although there are many baffling gaps in their knowledge, the manufacturing of logical theories to cover them is almost as good as having the knowledge they lack, a working hypothesis.

It's these theories that scientists keep on testing, whether it's smashing atoms or toying with genetics. This is Big Science, the biggest game of all time. Of course, Science's parameters are those of the known physical Universe. What they expect to find and measure has to be physical, since after all they use physical instruments. But what if there are Non-physical Universes informing this one or even shaping it? Then they'll never be able to find out for certain if the Universe is logical or not.

Somewhere in the early 20th century Science split off entirely from Art. Now it's all theory and experiment, without a thought for consequences. It's aim like Art's was a certain amount of pleasure and usefulness, like the compass rose above. Now it's an endless stream of data that even overwhelms its specialist fields, and specialists can't keep up, where now a chemist and a physicist haven't got much in common and can't understand each other's work. It's becoming all rather dehumanizing. But we go on.

The latest big thing in Physics, another theory is theoretically we have Dark Matter and Dark Energy, surmised but not yet detected. Well, there are deficiencies in the Big Bang theory. To satisfy them, the known Universe of matter and energy now accounts for only 4% of the total Universe, the rest or 96%, is this unknown dark matter and dark energy we haven't detected. And Antimatter might exist as stars and galaxies where there is no ordinary matter, which would annilate it. Antiparticles have been found, but no Antimatter, though CERN and later Fermilab with CERN's assistance actually created a few atoms of antihydrogen. It's superhot and with no way to contain it, it's readily annihilated in 10 seconds, releasing 100% of its energy and ordinary hydrogen's in contact with it. 100% energy efficient whereas a hydrogen bomb is only 7%. More dreams of an endless supply of energy, except it's way too expensive, at least $25 million a gram.

Anyway, we're in an age of endless speculation and experimentation. The effect on civilization is destabilizing. Some of this Science trickles down to us and now we're living with machines instead of friends and family. With cars instead of horses, with bulbs instead of candles. Are we better off?

Yet we're still trying to get to the bottom of this Universe. It's one thing to daydream. We all do it even those who are PhD deficient. Another to test any and all theories endlessly. But the real worry is Science's destructive experiments and applications of destructive research which eventually affect us all. From one bomb at Los Alamos to a giant nuclear arsenal and a thousand nuclear reactors and no way to safely dispose of them. While we've got our hands full of problems dumped on us by Science that Science is not addressing, a new era of Big Science is dawning. Genetic manipulation and Nuclear Fusion and Super Colliders like CERN's LHC, due to start up in 2008. What's really going to happen when lead nuclei are smashed together in the LHC at super colossal energies never before attempted? Collisions at nearly twice the speed of light? This isn't atom smashing anymore, this is a new type of Fusion Reaction. Even some physicists are demurring. It could be the end of the world.