If OJ made one thing perfectly clear, it's that the word "reason," at the root of "reasonable doubt" has lost all meaning in the US court system. So what do you think will be the outcome of a new lawsuit claiming that CERN's Large Hadron Collider is a Doomsday machine? The suit filed in Hawaii's US District Court by Luis Sancho and a former nuclear safety officer by the name of Walter Wagner, seeks to put the already delayed LHC launch on hold pending a new safety review. It's worth noting that the same doomsday scenarios of micro black holes and strangelets (think: the Midas Touch of death) have been raised by Wagner previously with the launch of other accelerators -- they've also been summarily dismissed by the scientific community as "beyond reasonable." It's also worth noting that the 27km-long LHC crisscrosses the border between France and Switzerland, not the US. An initial conference on the lawsuit is scheduled for June 16th, a few months before the first collisions are scheduled to begin and well before LHC is capable of its 4 trillion electron-volts maximum power. Peter Higgs, we feel your pain.
[Thanks Aaron,
Original Image courtesy of Ute Kraus]
posted March 28th 2008 7:20AM
The date is a lie!!! I have been studying CERN and their agenda for about 7 years now.
This is the count down from the CERN website.
http://aliceinfo.cern.ch//opencms/system/galleries/pics/AlicePublic/countdown.swf
US federal court jurisdiction is based on the fact that the US Department of Energy and National Science Foundation contribute funding to LHC. Both are named as defendants. Federal courts have jurisdiction over claims against the federal government. There is probably no personal jurisdiction over CERN. I have no idea what the claims against Fermilab might be.
It isn't true that anyone can sue anyone in a US court. The court must have jurisdiction. The case must be justiciable (i.e., plaintiffs must have standing, case must not be moot, issue must not be a political question). The complaint must state a claim on which relief could be granted. Plaintiffs here almost certainly lack standing. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992). The suit will go away very soon. It was just filed. Let's give the defendants a few weeks to write up their motion to dismiss, which will likely be brief, well-supported, and successful.
~Q
When the US set off the first Hydrogen bomb. The scientists where not sure if it was going to burn all of the oxygen in the atmosphere... They did it anyway.
When the US set off the first hydrogen bomb...
Its the US, half of their research involves not knowing what happens and doing it anyways. Also that was back in the day where science was on a backburner due to the cold war and all.
There are ALWAYS extremely catastrophic but extremely improbable risks with every scientific experiment. Its all about common sense and safety procedures whether we proceed.
@ Neil:
It is currently in the final stages of construction, and commissioning, with some sections already being cooled down to its final operating temperature of ~4 K (−269 °C). The first beams are due for injection mid June 2008 with the first collisions planned to take place 2 months later.
Perhaps they start a pp Collision at one of the older colliders...
Nuclear safety officer ... "Homer J. Simpson"
media attention? none really. the first day there were 14 related stories... a week later and only 35 on google news.
Steven Turner
I don’t know where to start, but I need to start somewhere, thus would you take the time to read this? My name is Steven Turner, and I am a physicist in my own right. I started writing about psychology when I was thirteen years old and continued until I was twenty-two. I had not had a teacher of this, so I did all my examinations alone. When I was about twenty-three, my mind began changing focus towards the way our universe works. Again having no teacher, I had to figure it out alone. I wanted to determine how our atom works. I began testing personal theories about simple mathematical codes that the universe could use. Instead of trying to actually see what was going on in an atom, I tried to establish the only possible code that an atom could operate with. This seemed easier for I had no access to a collider, which I had no idea even existed at the time. I spent roughly three years figuring out a code that worked easily, simply, and well. Once I got this done, I signed up for a few classes at a college in order to slightly test my theories. I took a simple algebra class and a psychology class. I tried to show the math teacher some of my work, but not only did he seem to look at me as lesser than him, but he also seemed completely uninterested with my years of work. I suppose I really cant expect more from a teacher that’s just wants to teach his class, and pass no judgment, but I attained multitudes of universal information during attendance of the class. During my psychology class, it was as if I were at home, seeing things I had never noticed before. Within a few classes I noticed that the makeup of the mind was tightly comparable to the composure of the atom. I began connecting the known knowledge of psychology, with my theories of what I now call atomics, or universal mathematics. Soon I had begun creating something I would like to introduce to the world of science, as ((Psychological Atomics)). I believe I can explain how our minds follow the exact nature of atomic signatures, signals, transfers, disturbances, equations, and much more. I may not be a professional in the eyes of acknowledged world scientists, but I do have a great deal of heart for this. I believe that the universe is so simple that it may be easy to decipher its mechanisms by comparing everything we see around us. Mathematics is universal and associates with every natural world existence. Instead of just breaking the atom down I went straight for what I like to call the ((Bottom)). After briefly reading into some reports, I found that many call the bottom, the ((God particle)). I am trying to crack the atom code in a mobile home, within a small town of Arizona. I CAN DO IT!! All I need is a little time with professionals that I don’t know how to get in touch with. I have put atomics into algebraic and geometric formats and although I don’t have this code complete, I think I am closer than I should be. I can easily explain why light travels faster than sound, and why we don’t age while traveling at the speed of light. Time measurement is easy to define and calculate with this theory. I can make it complex enough to evade many, or easy enough for a grade school student to understand. I have over five hundred pages of journalism and diagrams to share with the scientific world, and whether or not it can ever be taken seriously, I would like to share it with someone. I am also timid to share it, in possibility that it will be stolen, but we all deserve and share the same knowledge together do we not? It doesn’t matter who figures these things out, it only matters that we do. I believe that I have a good idea of what happened seven steps before the Big Bang. This is all I am comfortable sharing at this point.
Thank you,
Your fellow physicist
@Steve
The problem with this is that without any physics background, you may just be rediscovering things and if you are not sharing the information to be checked, it could be at fault. It is thought by professors that if you havent learned the basics, how can you get more advanced? If you truly think you have something, get a physics degree and continue your work. It will also give you insight and a few head slapping, "How did i miss that?" moments. Dont give up, but if you expect anyone to take you seriously, sadly, you will need to get a degree.
The problem with this is that everything in the Universe coincides together, thus even our mentalities and the way we process information is comparable. If we all follow the same structure of knowledge, we will have a harder time seeing the missed particles. The mind will be so focused on what has been determined as common knowledge, that it will have a harder time seeing what isn’t directly in front of the face. I only want to discuss this with someone who doesn’t pre-judge. So I ask, what if I were to do the slapping?
Whats the date this thing is turned on and we might all die?
So, quite possibly this could create a black hole under France which, upon evaporating, creates an enormous explosion that wipes the country off the face of the planet? Cool!
Where can I donate money to CERN ?!? :-)
If the lawsuit is heard, and jurisdiction is established, the US court can bar the supply of materials to CERN, which would delay the project until CERN finds non-US suppliers. Nothing more. They still have power over their own companies.
If you ask me, it's not what the US needs while facing (or in) a recession. But then again, no one asked.
hmmm...death by nuclearr holocaust, global warming, armagedon, or doomsday machine? I pick doomsday. Much more romantic.
CERNs web site states that we have not been destroyed by effects of cosmic rays and micro black holes will evaporate.
However, cosmic rays hit our stationary atmosphere and travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, while collider particles smash head on and can be captured by Earths gravity. Einsteins relativity theory predicts that micro black holes will not decay but instead only grow, and Hawking Radiation is an unproven and disputed theory that contradicts relativity.
There is currently no reasonable proof of LHC safety, LSAG (LHC Safety Assessment Group) has been trying for months to prove safety without success. However science may still be a few years away from being able to prove safety or not.
Professor Dr. Otto E. Roessler, Theorist Dr. Raj Baldev and others are warning of a very real possible danger to the planet from the Large Hadron Collider.
If this experiment is so safe, why arent CERN scientists allowed to express any personal fears they might have about this Collider?
Alleged in the legal action: Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Engelen passed an internal memorandum to workers at CERN, asking them, regardless of personal opinion, to affirm in all interviews that there were no risks involved in the experiments, changing the previous assertion of minimal risk. (Statisticians generally consider minimal risk as 1-10%).
Which would more wise, conduct a full and independent adversarial safety study first, or just turn it on now and see what happens?
JTankers
LHCConcerns.com
I just heard about this little blackhole tie affair in philosophy class, this experiment set to go down between the most exclusive members of the scientific community. I am not a physicist, mathematician or any other serious student of Western scientific intellectualism so my knowledge or understanding of how this all works is null and void. I couldn't understand if I tried. Its the difference between art nouveau and art deco. Fluid or straight. That may make any comment I give equally invalid. Drawing lines in the sand is such an old and childish game we like to play. It is a lot harder to step back and look at the bigger picture. Deep down, this doesn't seem to be an epistemological argument between science and religion, which one is reasonable and which one is barbaric. If it is represented as such, then it is weak. They are both systems of belief that contribute to our human experience.
I am studying anthropology. What an area that is. Hard to grasp. You've got your basics, you know, man's evolution and all that crap that doesn't really matter. Then you've got your in depth cultural studies. The processes of culture, the psychology, the realization that your reality is much like a figment of the imagination during a terrible fever. Its crafted, created and so tightly bound to the body like skin; to believe it were not real would conflict with anyone's logic. That is, if you believed it were there. If you were to look at all of this from the scientific perspective, as many seem to be, the common approach is to stare straight ahead and above as if all of time, and all of man, were on some great ascent from the primordial ooze toward the mind of God or some great ultimate enlightenment. That is the aim of science. But that is also, only in the case of our epistemological heritage. It seems to me, like a few insightful people have previously pointed out, that this may be an issue of power. Reality has nothing to do with being smart or reaching the finish line on some evolutionary trajectory. Just because science has had the stamp of approval, so to speak, from our culture, over other beliefs, does not make it acceptable or necessary for everyone. We have zealously built our on ideals that embrace curiosity and wonder, but at terrible costs. So, could this be one of those moments? What are the real benefits to all of man, in his many guises, of these kinds of powerful and expensive experiments? Is this all just to write more hegemonic hogwash in the hierarchically oriented pages of our history books? Not like that would matter perhaps it seems ha haaaa haa! I trust you all enjoy The Kinks? Isn't is great how Ray Davies just wants to live in a cocoanut tree or feels ashamed for being a stuffed-shirted member of modern man? If you haven't heard him, go take a listen, he may have something there too without spending billions of dollars. Well, back to Kant, he's not as interesting as Davies.
Look what happened when we delved into nuclear science. Perhaps the people trying to stop this thing from being tested are those who do not wish to see more wars erupting over whatever new weapons we happen to develop out of this thing. I know that's not what this thing is meant for, but it sounds like i has a lot of power, and could yield more possibilities for scientists in the future, and new sciences often mean more weapons. If it happens to be that this machine is tested and ends up destroying our planet, yet the scientists are able to learn the truth about everything in the short time they have before the end, I would have trouble suppressing a chuckle before I vanish into light or darkness or whatever. Man finally would find out answers to all the big questions just as we voluntarily wipe ourselves from the universe. Once they knew, would they find it worth it?