In the mainstream media, and even on this boards, there were people foaming at the mouth of the arrogance at scientists for “taking a gamble” on the LHC forming a black hole and destroying the earth, even when it was explained that there was not nearly enough energy to form a black hole that wasn’t microscopic…
Now that the LHC is online and we are all still here and it is leaning towards a non-higgs boson model of the universe, did these people think we just got lucky, or did they move on and find something else to be needlessly terrified of?
I’m interested in any references from people who wrote negative articles about how dangerous the LHC was in retrospect.
I didn’t buy into all the hysteria, but I did wonder about some of the explanations given.
Quote: “…even when it was explained that there was not nearly enough energy to form a black hole that wasn’t microscopic…”
I saw that comment in some article somewhere too. I wondered: Does this mean they contemplated the possibility that they might create a microscopic black hole? And if so, how dangerous would that be? Would even a leetle teeny tiny black hole promptly start to suck up everything nearby? :eek: It wasn’t the explanation I wanted to read or hear.
I also wondered this: If the world DID get destroyed this way, how fast would it happen? Something on the order of some micro-fraction of a second? If so, what a quick and painless way to die. We’d never even know it.
That set me to wondering: If we would all have died that way so fast we’d never even have known it, does that imply we would never know if we didn’t die that way? Maybe it did happen. How would we ever know, one way or the other? :dubious:
ETA: See here for explanation of why micro-black-holes don’t suck.
Do you have cites for any “mainstream media” articles actually advocating this view? IIRC, the mainstream media reported on various expressions of concern about LHC “dangers” but didn’t positively concur with them.* The type of sources that were explicitly making the sort of attacks you describe tend to be the type who don’t bother with things like apologies and retractions, AFAICT.
*Mind you, I think that this sort of reportorial style in itself is a far-too-frequent abdication of duty on the part of news media. They report on “both sides” of a contested scientific question as though the two viewpoints were both about equally valid, even when the “contest” is between the views of most or all informed scientists on the one hand and those of a few rabid kooks on the other. They should definitely be called out on that kind of lazy and irresponsible promotion of ignorance under the guise of “balanced reporting”, but at least it’s not as bad as actually supporting the kooky views.
I am not a quantum physicist, but as I understand it, a microscopic black hole would also have a microscopic event horizon, and would not exist for more than a fraction of a second before dissipating due to Hawking radiation.
Perhaps we’re now like Schrödinger’s cat, either still alive or consumed by the black hole, and resolution will come only when Zaphod Beeblebrox on Betelgeuse points his telescope at us.
(Hmmm… Given the zaniness of recent political events, models that make us just some fictional fantasy do have a certain ring of truth… :dubious: )
I suspect that the people who raised these ‘concerns’ in the first place, while factually wrong, still consider themselves to have been morally right, because what if? Somebody has to reign in those crazy scientists fooling around with the very fabric of nature, haphazardly risking billions of lives in the exploration of arcane matters of importance only to their megalomaniacal pursuits, madly cackling over complicated switchboards with wildly blinking lights and twitching scales emitting sinister hums… Because the most important thing the ignorant are ignorant of is their own ignorance. This thread, in places, provides a splendid example.
it was not the mainstream media reporting that the LHC “might” create black holes that will devour earth; they were reporting that whackjob media/bloggers/end-of-the-world poster bearers believed that the LHC would destroy the world.
A number of stories get reported like this; rather than an authoritative source for a news item, the media will reference other “sources” which are just supposition about an event. CBS, AP, CNN, etc… won’t say that aliens are invading New Jersey; just that the World Weekly News reported that aliens have landed and Snookie has been abducted.
I’m not a quantum physicist either but my understand was that its event horizon would be so small that it could pass straight through a proton and miss all the quarks inside of it. (Then again if I remember right there’s no real theory of quantum gravity at the moment so that would make predicting what it would do at that level a bit more challenging.)
The media? Admit that they were wrong about something? HA!
Correction: Actually they sometimes do admit when they are factually wrong, but they do it in a manner that draws the least possible attention to their mistake. Like a single line on page 4 in the tiniest font available. “Correction: The LHC did not destroy the Earth.”
The kinds of energies the LHC are dealing with are about 1000 times the mass of the proton. So the largest black hole they could conceivably have produced would be about 1000 times the mass of a proton. Which would exert the same gravitational force on an object at a given distance as any other object 1000 times the mass of a proton. Are you afraid of getting sucked in by a smallish starch molecule?
But really, the best refutation of the worries is this: Events at higher energy than this happen all the time, from cosmic rays striking the Earth. If there were any way at all that such events could destroy the Earth, it would have already happened, long ago. The highest-energy cosmic ray ever observed had an energy hundreds of times higher than the LHC, and that’s just in the few decades since we’ve been observing, over very small regions of the Earth: There are a lot more like that that we miss. So while we couldn’t be sure whether the LHC would produce black holes (it would have been really great if it did, since we’d learn a heck of a lot from that), we could be sure that even if it did produce black holes, they’d be safe.
Some thought the LHC would end the world when it was turned on. Some, with a little more knowledge, took the position that the LHC is capable of creating black holes, and eventually one of those black holes would be catastrophically dangerous. So, those people would be unconvinced by the safe running of the LHC and are not going to apologize for their “mistake”.
Their point of view is that we are playing Russian Roulette, with the the gun pointed at the Earth. The fact that the first few trigger pulls have been on a empty chamber mean nothing.
Now, this is their analysis… IANAPP. Didn’t someone point out that cosmic rays create similar black holes in the upper atmosphere all the time? ETA - what Chronos said.
This isn’t quite sufficient, though. In the LHC, the collisions occur in the center of momentum frame, so the resultant byproducts could have a small enough velocity to remain with the Earth. For the case of cosmic rays, the center of momentum is much larger, and any unanticipated dangerous particles would still have a large enough momentum to escape the Earth’s gravity. You’d need to extend the argument to show that the particle sticks around often enough (multiple interactions after its creation, maybe?) to be sure that that has already occurred.
For the OP: I’ve got three dice. Rolling three sixes means the Earth gets destroyed, but otherwise I get $1000. Someone says “Are you nuts, don’t roll those, you might destroy the Earth!” But I roll them anyway, get 2,5,3, and collect my $1000. Does the person who said not to roll them owe me an apology?
Personally, I’d rather these issues be raised, so that arguments like Chronos’s can be found to show that we’re not going to destroy ourselves, even if it’s probably silly.
Nobody apologises because nobody actually makes the big prediction. All the “predictions” by the nutters are hedged about with weasel words like “could” and “might”, and the standard abuses of the precautionary principle. No-one except religious crazies is actually foolish enough to say “the Earth will end on October 12”.
The media, whose bottom-feeding end’s interest is in selling controversy and sensation, puff up the nutters’ claims with scare questions - “Could the LHC end everything we know and love? A Very Special episode of (insert favourite GenericNewsRubbish here) that Every Parent Needs to See.” No actual allegation, yet it sounds very much like it, and raises the temperature of the nuttiness.
But when, as always, nothing happens, all will be found to have covered their asses against a need to apologise.
The occasional pants-wetting headline that is utterly without substance is the price we pay for a free press. You see enough of them, you get to realise maybe you shouldn’t cash in everything you own for hookers and blow.
Here’s a link to a blog posted yesterday, discussing this. I’ll post a few choice quotes:
Maybe we should have a poll: How low of a chance of destroying the Earth is acceptable for the LHC…
ETA: Those quotes make the blog sound alarmist. I’d recommend reading the whole thing, rather than just what I quoted. I’d also recommend reading an earlier blog posting, linked to from the first.
Now define “catastrophe”. A .02% chance of starting a fire that destroys the CERN facility, for instance, would qualify for that description. The complete loss of CERN would certainly be a catastrophe, but it’s a far, far cry from the complete loss of the planet.
