I'm yet again sorry to drag up a topic that have been laid to rest, but I just want your opinions on something that i found on: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/bbs/reply.php?messageid=1032517&page=2"e=16512780 (and yes, I am aware that this doesn't pass as a credible source)
[quote:B-Flat]
Forum LHC Facts
March 17 2010
Dear Ministers of Science and staff,
Dear members of the CERN Council!
We regard it as our duty to inform you about the current state of the scientific
discussion - including very recent developments you may not be aware of -
concerning the risks and dangers of the LHC particle collider.
Please consider the studies we describe below. Due to the global risks beingconsidered, due to the fact that there has been no neutral and multidisciplinary evaluation of the risks and due to the fact that there is no international
standardized procedure or agency to evaluate these risks, critics of the planned experiments urgently recommend that they not be conducted at unprecedented energies until these deficiencies are remedied.
There are at least four possible types of existential risks associated with the LHC: microscopic black holes, strangelets, magnetic monopoles, and expanding vacuum bubbles. We respectfully request you to speak for a re-evaluation of these risks at the CERN Council meeting this week and to ensure that they are responsibly managed in best practice, which is - under a number of
perspectives - presently not the case. Frequently the LHC collisions are compared to natural events in the
atmosphere. But this comparison, known as the “cosmic ray argument”, contains many fundamental weaknesses and uncertainties.
To start with only the most basic problems in it: The nature, mass, velocity and origin of highly energetic cosmic rays are presently unknown. Only their energy is measured indirectly. Within 10 years of operation, the LHC experiments would produce asmany high-energy collisions as occur over the whole Earth in roughly 100,000
years. This also assumes that the comparison of natural and artificially-created collisions, as argued for example in the LSAG safety report, is possible, which is questionable. Far from copying nature, the LHC focuses on rare and
extreme events in a physical setup which has never occurred before in the history of the planet. Nature does not set up LHC experiments.
Significantly, after a recent communication to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, the Commission responded: "we appreciate the importance of the issues at stake" and pointed to domestic administrations for
consideration.
This approach to you is consistent with this recommendation.
Risk assessment expert and ethicist Dr. Mark Leggett concludes in a recent study that the CERN (LSAG) safety report is “out of date”, “has a conflict of
interest”, and satisfies less than a fifth of the criteria for an adequate risk assessment. Chaos theory pioneer Professor Otto E. Rössler estimates the risk
of a black hole disaster at 15% if the experiment continues as planned.
Astrophysicist Dr. Rainer Plaga warns that a collider-created black hole accreting at the Eddington limit would emit energy at the rate of a 12 megaton bomb every second. Well-known physicist Dr. Tony Rothman calls for the
creation of a permanent mechanism to deal with new scientific and technological concerns. Leading risk researcher Professor Wolfgang Kromp supports a special environmental impact assessment of the LHC. The famous
“thinker of speed”, philosopher Professor Paul Virilio strongly criticizes the experiment. Philosopher Dr. Toby Ord, philosopher and physicist Professor Rafaela Hillerbrand and risk researcher Dr. Anders Sandberg of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute note that the extremely low risk estimates offered by collider advocates ignore the statistical probability that the assumptions on
which the safety arguments given by CERN are based could fail and they conclude that the LSAG safety report cannot be the last word in the issue.
Professor Eric Johnson reports in a study recently published in the “Tennessee Law Review” and summarized in the ”New Scientist” that whether the LHC is safe or not is an open scientific question and that most arguments in favour of its safety lack robustness:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527485.700-cern-on-trial-could-a-lawsuit-shut-the-lhcdown.html
Until now, no court has taken any relevant action to improve safety in this complex matter. However, the need for an open and inclusive approach to this issue was highlighted by American federal Judge Helen Gillmor who
emphasized: “This extremely complex debate is of concern to more than just the physicists.”
In addition, the unexpected results of the first LHC runs last December have raised a host of new questions that should be answered. Results indicate an
excess of strange-kaons beyond what models have predicted, suggesting an increased risk of strangelet production. These questions should be resolved before increasing energies by a factor of three.
Dr. Mark Leggett: “Review of the risk assessment process used for the 2008
LHC safety study”
http://lhc-concern.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/leggett_review_of_lsag_process_sept_1__09.pdf
Dr. Toby Ord, Prof. Rafaela Hillerbrand and Dr. Anders Sandberg: “ Probing the
Improbable: Methodological Challenges for Risks with Low Probabilities and
High Stakes” http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0810/0810.5515.pdf
Professor Eric Johnson: "The Black Hole Case: The Injunction Against the End
of the World" http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0912/0912.5480.pdf
Dr. Rainer Plaga: “On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantumblack
holes produced at particle colliders” http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v3.pdf
[/quote]
I am also aware that this was a post in progress, without any author, but I have seen this "letter of concern" elsewhere to. I saw the LSAG's reply the the paper published by R. Plaga and must say that they seem willing to gamble with high stakes. What if, no matter how far-fetched it may be, R.Plaga is right and LSAG wrong? Of course we would cease to exist in a second, so we wouldn't live to regret listening to a group of fame-crased scientists.
I'm sorry, but I will have to agree with who ever the author of this post may be, the analogy of cosmic rays isn't valid. THESE kind's of collision doesn't happen on a regular basis in nature, and certainly not to that extent it will when LHC runs at full speed.
Also, if you could take a look at this page and give me your opinion on the "facts" that are presented there I would be grateful.
Finally, why does CERN constantly dismiss all of these claims (that actually are based on som fairlly well-known scientists opinions) without making some revisions in their own (LSAG's) reports. I mean, Rössler is a well-known chaos theorist, Plaga an equally well-known astrophysicist and so on… Would you still say that there is absolutelly no cause for concerns regarding this project?
I sure as hell want to believe that we do not face extinction because of this project, but there's just so many sources claiming otherwise.
Lynn (guest) 10 May 2010 01:58
