First up folks, my apologies for the ridiculous amount of downtime over the weekend, and this immediately after I close my Facebook account and direct people here.  Murphy’s law and all that.  Needless to say I’m irritated at my hosting provider, and while I’m only paying for the lowest package available, I could probably get more reliable uptime out of hosting on my own computer at home (if I weren’t so concerned about power usage, given that NS Power just jumped power costs another 9.4%).

Secondly, my last post,while it only peripherally involved mention of the Large Hadron Collider, somehow managed to attract one of those concern trolls that frequent internet forums and Wikipedia articles doomsaying about the LHC and pointing to mostly-discredited articles as their proof.  It got caught in the Akismet spam filter, but I’m rescuing it just for posterity.  I post it in its entirety below:

JTankers | [email protected] | shrillinternetklaxon.org | IP: <redacted>

Your prophecy is fullfilled.

Good blog jthibeault, you argue logically, but your Large Hadron Collider analogy relies on disputed “facts” from partisans.

You are correct that popular consensus among scientists with a similar level of understanding as your’s is to believe CERN’s and CERN’s friends’ arguments that danger is not possible.

But CERN did something similar to what the believers you reference do, start with the answer (in this case safety) and promise to prove their conclusion. Any talk of danger was heresy. According to news accounts, CERN even directed their employees not to represent risk as other than zero to the media, regardless of any concerns they might have.

Enough with the supposition. What do the experts who independently of CERN conclude in their respected papers?

Scientists predict possible creation of micro black holes possibly at a rate of 1 per second.[1]

Steven Hawking estimates a 1% chance[2] and evaporation is disputed by multiple papers[3][4]. (Dr. Hawking’s scientific credibility was also recently disputed by Professor Higgs[5]).

Cosmic ray safety arguments are disputed by multiple papers by PHD’ed theoretical scientists[6][7].

Senior German Astrophysicist PHD Dr. Rainer Plaga politely attempted to correct CERN’s apparent possible theoretical flaws in the field of astrophysics which CERN was delving into, but he was ignored apparently.[6]

Inventor of Chaos Theory’s Rössler Attractor and founder of Endophysics Professor Dr. Otto Rössler also theorizes that micro black hole creation would likely be catastrophic, he calculates exponential growth of micro black holes in years, decades or centuries.[7]

If micro black holes are created by Head-On particle colliders some will travel too slowly to escape Earth’s gravity.
CERN’s LHC Safety Assessment Group believed in March of 2008 that micro black holes created by cosmic rays would all travel through Earth at nearly the speed of light[8].

Large Hadron Collider safety is currently under challenge and review in American and European courts.[9][10]. CERN is also alleged to censor information on risks involved.[11]

[1] cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29199 The case for mini black holes, CERN Courier (2004)

[2] http://www.photonics.com/content/news/2008/September/9/93181.aspx Threats Won’t Stop Collider, photonics.com Sep 9, 2008

[3] xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0304042 Do black holes radiate?. Dr. Adam Helfer (2003)

[4] arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0607137, On the existence of black hole evaporationyet again, Prof. VA Belinski (2006)

[5] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4727894.ece Peter Higgs launches attack against Nobel rival Stephen Hawking, TimesOnLine, Sep 11, 2008

[6] arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1415v1.pdf On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders – Rainer Plaga Rebuttal (2008)

[7] http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/OTTOROESSLERMINIBLACKHOLE.pdf Abraham-Solution to Schwarzschild Metric Implies That CERN Miniblack Holes Pose a Planetary Risk, Prof. Dr. Otto Rossler (2008)

[8] http://www.lhcconcerns.com/LHCConcerns/Forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10 LHC Safety Assessment Group, 16 Mar 2008

[9] http://www.lhcdefense.org/lhc_legal.php US Federal Lawsuit Filings – Walter L. Wagner (2008)

[10] lhc-concern.info/?page_id=28 European Legal Action (2008)

[11] http://www.lhcdefense.org/pdf/Sancho%20v%20Doe%20-%20Affidavit%20of%20Luis%20Sancho.pdf AFFIDAVIT OF LUIS SANCHO IN UPPORT OF TRO AND PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

I will need time to prepare an adequate rebuttal to this, and while I understand his legitimate concerns (I mean, it would really really suck if the world were destroyed, because, you know, that’s where I keep all my stuff too!), I don’t think there’s any cause for fearmongering at all here, because as Professor Brian Cox so eloquently stated, “anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat.”  There are people who think the turning on of the LHC will also mark year zero for time travellers but there’s nothing that says that every wild-eyed crazy needs to get equal airtime.  This blog does not act as anything remotely resembling Fox News (or at least what they claim to be — “fair and balanced”) — I do not report both the sane and insane sides of the story as though they have equal weight.  Go sell crazy someplace else.

I don’t have a lot of time today, as I just found out my counterpart at a nearby centre has walked out of the job (yes, the one who was just hired), so I’m right back in Shoulders-of-Atlas mode.  For now, enjoy this fantastic talk by Brian Cox.