Talk:Safety of high-energy particle collision experiments/Archive 3

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Safety Counter Arguments

Professor Rossler's safety counter arguments including "Seven Reasons for Demanding an LHC Safety Conference" are detailed in his paper A Rational and Moral and Spiritual Dilemma. [1] I propose adding the reference after "his arguments" and also an updated reference to Dr. Rossler's meeting with Swiss President Pascal Couchepin[2]

Otto Rössler believes that micro black holes created in the LHC could grow exponentially and has asked for debate with CERN representatives to discuss his arguments[1][3] before the LHC start up.[4][5] He is also due to meet Swiss president Pascal Couchepin in mid August to discuss these concerns.[2] Hermann Nicolai, Director of the Albert-Einstein-Institut, in Germany, has examined Otto Rössler's research paper on the safety of the LHC[3] and concluded that "this text would not pass the referee process in a serious journal."[6][5]

Madness

This article is over 2,300 words and the main article on the LHC is only a thousand words longer. Somebody somewhere appears to have forgotten that the "LHC = end of world" meme is a fringe view and has virtually no mainstream academic credibility. Guy (Help!) 11:45, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Virtually? And I agree. Khukri 13:16, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
The few independent PHD level physicists that have publicly demonstrated a detailed understanding of the safety arguments related to micro black hole creation have tended to express some level of concern. Recently Dr. O'Neill, a British solar physicist who is "optimistic" about the LHC was interviewed for 2.5 hours with nuclear physicist Wagner L. Wagner. Dr. O'Neill said "Wagner is far from being a fantasist or “crank” (as I’ve seen unkindly written in some of the media)" and "we can never declare any physics experiment 100% safe, after all, we are probing beyond anything we have been able to experience in history. Using the LHC to recreate some of the conditions the moment after the Big Bang is based on robust physics theory. Micro black holes and strangelets are not. These are purely speculative particles. Even if a micro black hole could be produced, robust physics theory predicts they will fizz out of existence in an instant.". Dr. O'Neill may not be aware that Hawking Radiation theory is disputed in the main stream physics community and multiple peer reviewed papers conclude that the existence of Hawking Radiation is an open question or does not exist.123 The safety article specifically addresses the Hawking Radiation safety argument without indicating the theoretically unsettled nature of the probability of black hole radiation in the mainstream academic community. --Jtankers (talk) 15:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The safety article length is reasonable in my opinion. There is notable interest in the details of the safety arguments which are unsettled and in the process of peer review at the same time that high energy collisions are only weeks or months away and credible PHD level theoretical scientists are sounding safety concern alarms. --Jtankers (talk) 15:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Somebody somewhere appears to have forgotten that the "LHC = end of world" meme doesn't need to have mainstream academic credibility, nor does "Creationism". --Phenylalanine (talk) 20:26, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

The suitability of citing these perspectives in Wikipedia depends entirely on the degree to which they are considered fringe. (I notice they have already been almost entirely excised from the main article.) It is probably true that many of the counter-articles would not achieve peer-reviewed publication, not because they lack internal validity, but because of the way in which peer-review publication works. I used to work as publication editor for a peer-reviewed journal. In the process, I learned a great deal about the consensus illusion and groupthink.

Wrt Wikipedia's standards, publication status represents a real verifiability problem, yet there do exist a significant number of peer-reviewed published articles challenging (among other relevant points) the validity of Hawking radiation. Not to cite them undermines the documentable validity of alternate viewpoints, while to cite them here, in the context of this particular article, may well be seen as off-topic to the specific LHC issue. If we of Wikipedia are not careful, this can easily turn into a circular argument artificially undermining opposing perspectives.

I remind that NPOV specifically states that neutrality is not achieved simply by stating just the most popular published viewpoint. If rigorous articles challenging the validity of Hawking radiation cannot be submitted as evidence against this being a fringe viewpoint, then why are arguments such as (from the LSAG safety report summary) "The continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes", accepted with no mention of its appeal to probability logical fallacy? - Tenebris —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.26.11 (talk) 08:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not publish original thought. --Phenylalanine (talk) 21:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Tenebris. The article notably lacks reference to available peer reviewed papers challenging the theoretical basis for Hawking Radiation theory. --Jtankers (talk) 01:54, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Expert comments on speculations raised by Professor Otto Roessler

From CERN's web site (http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html):

--Phenylalanine (talk) 02:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Rossler addresses criticisms of his paper at achtphasen.net: Prof. Otto E. Rössler an Gerhard W. Bruhn

  • "the diverging conclusion"... "is therefore not disconfirmed. On the contrary. Which of the two interpretations of the same finding is correct remains open." --Jtankers (talk) 12:24, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
This interesting. From the link you have posted, it seems that Bruhn has also disagreed with Rossler and outlined why he believes Rossler is wrong. Has Rossler addressed Nicolai and Giulini yet? THMRK1 (talk) 15:23, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
Unknown. German astrophysicist Rainer Plaga produced a paper refuting [edit: some conclusions of G & M’s "excellent" paper] and proposing safety procedures On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders --Jtankers (talk) 04:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
He hasn't refuted the safety report at all. In fact, he says in his conclusion that he is not disagreeing with the conclusion of their "excellent paper". He's just outlining a different scenario, that mBH might equate to a nuclear explosion within the LHC or that Hawking radiation might be in some way, dangerous to the people within the LHC. Plaga has accepted Hawking radiation, so where can his report possibly stand in your estimation if you're championing that fact that Hawking radiation might not exist? - THMRK1 (talk) 08:58, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Read the paper more carefully, [Dr. Plaga] considers the paper "excellent" but does refute some conclusions "we are presently unable to reliably predict the behaviour of such mBHs 8 . This fact raises a fundamental doubt about G & M’s exclusion of “dangerous mBHs” by way of observing a certain class of white dwarfs. The exclusion depends on their careful and detailed demonstration in their section 5 that “dangerous” mBHs are stopped in white dwarfs after their production in collisions of cosmic rays. However, this demonstration is based on an assumed validity of the semiclassical approximation. mBHs deep in the “quantum gravity” regime (violating eq.(7)) might behave differently and escape white dwarfs, just as they could escape ordinary stars in the semiclassical approximation. Concluding, G & M have not demonstrated that white dwarfs stop cosmic-ray produced mBHs in general. Their exclusion of dangerous mBHs thus remains not definite." --Jtankers (talk) 11:28, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks to me like you've misunderstood the purpose of his paper. He presents a 3rd scenario in his paper, one in which it could be possible that Hawking radiation may be lethal. The section you have quoted refers to the possibility of how a mBH could be stable, yes, but when taken into context with the rest of his paper, he doesn't refute the safety report, but mentions a flaw in it. He doesn't provide anyway that this flaw could be resolved, or even offer an alternate calculation. He merely uses a point from it to help illustrate how his own 3rd scenario might result in loss of life or injury to those working at CERN or thereabouts.
To clarify, what you have quoted surely states that the safety report does not fully demonstrate the cosmic-ray argument, correct? But this entire paper is based on the assumption that Hawking radiation is valid. So how exactly does that work? Do you just pick and choose what bits suit your argument or something? So far you've shown that you take issue with the concept of Hawking radiation, so surely this means that you can't place much stock in this paper since all of his points rely on it? In fact, we can't have this discussion here so let's get this back to the point. I do not think this report should be added to the article. THMRK1 (talk) 12:05, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Rossler considers excellent/splendid Michael E. Peskin's August 18, 2008 paper The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider? published by the American Physical Society, except that the final conclusion fails to address Dr. Rossler's conclusions. On the Splendid Article by Michael E. Peskin" by Otto E. Rossler Dr. Rossler also notes "I consider it very plausible that the desinformation policy of CERN’s has shielded the author from his field of research for the last 18 months" --Jtankers (talk) 12:00, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Jtankers, feel free to add both papers to the article as they are on topic and reliable:
* On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders
* The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?
Good finds! --Phenylalanine (talk) 17:50, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
Added. --Jtankers (talk) 02:57, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Hey guys, you have done some excellent work on gathering sources on this topic. I wish I had known before about the efforts to create a reference lib, anyway I figured you might be interested in watching this (video), have a nice weekend and always remember the words of Jonathan R. Ellis


(hey, I admit I'm easy to amuse ; )) 3vil-Lyn (talk) 13:16, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I watched it. Dr. Ellis briefed CERN scientists on LSAG safety arguments, ignores papers refuting Hawking Radiation, belittles Dr. Rossler and other minority opinions, did not acknowledge Dr. Rossler's and Dr. Plaga's conclusion's rebutting cosmic ray safety arguments, addressed legal actions against CERN and efforts to petition the Swiss President not to meet with Dr. Rossler and argued that the best way to prove safety was to engage in high energy collisions in a few weeks. Interesting resource, thank you. --Jtankers (talk) 23:11, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Some quite strong accusations there James about petitioning, any verifiable sources, and does that mean we should be removing it from the article that he'll be meeting Couchpin, you seem to know more than us. Also I think you should re-watch the video, Ellis goes out of his way to say he does not "belittle" Rosslers work and got the involvement of Nicolai et al to say Rossler misunderstands the theory of general relativity. It addressed quite succinctly at the end what was thought of the legal action I thought as well, though has to be said not Ellis's thoughts though. For the Plaga paper we'll have to wait to see what that stirs up, this talk came up only 4 days after that paper was published and I'm sure this talk was planned along time in advance. Khukri 23:44, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
Of course he ignores papers refuting Hawking radiation, did you even watch the thing? He states quite clearly that Giddings et all also done calculations that would take into account the non-existence of Hawking radiation. Ergo, they did not need to look at the papers that refuted Hawking radiation, as they have also done a set of calculations that do not even bring it into the scenario, indeed as though it does not exist. You need to read their report again and re-watch the presentation. He does not belittle Rosslers work either. He brought the recent paper by Nicoli et al up and said that basically Rosslers paper is rubbish. I don't want to sound like I'm having a go at you here, JT, but you couldn't have watched the entire presentation, or at least paid correct attention to it as you would have noticed two things; 1) basically everything I have just said and 2) the date on which this presentation was given. It was given not long after Plagas report was published. It's quite clear that a lot of time was taken over compiling this talk, so I very much doubt it was created mere days before it was due to be given. You'll probably find that's why it is not addressed...
Edit: Also, as I was going to say before, Plagas paper did not rebut anything from the LSAG report. It merely brought up what he thought was an inconsistency, or something that was not addressed. There is a fleeting mention on it, not a reason or calculation why it is wrong, ergo not a rebuttal.THMRK1 (talk) 00:03, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Mid August meeting

As JT seems to believe there has been some petitioning on behalf of CERN (see above) with Couchpin does this mean this meeting never went ahead and should we remove this sentence, as it's past mid august now. Khukri 06:49, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

My understanding is that the meeting is expected September 1st. --Jtankers (talk) 23:57, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Hello, according to this source the meeting between Pascal Couchepin and Professor Rössler was canceled.
The reason given: Rössler and his comrade-in-arms would have misused the announcement for publicity efforts in their own cause.
This is a human translation and spot on. I have NO idea who the spokesman Jean-Marc Crevoisier refers to with comrade-in-arms ?
I'm probably as baffled as you are, since every scientific reason would have been better than a mere political answer. --3vil-Lyn (talk) 21:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Plagas Paper

After re-reading Dr. Plagas paper on the potential risk of black holes, I can't help but feel that perhaps the current statement in the article regarding it should be reworded slightly in order to highlight the specific danger that Plaga has outlined in his paper, as it differs from any other current argument or scenario that has been mentioned thus far.

Currently, almost all the sources in the article either speak of or address the concern of micro black holes, in effect, devouring the Earth. Plagas paper is slightly different in that, his paper outlines a scenario where by Hawking Radiation, or any radiation, emitting from a micro black hole, might be in someway harmful to CERN or to the Earth. Indeed, mythologically different from the conclusion drawn in the LSAG report rather than scientifically different. Plaga basically states that the radiation emitted may be like a thermonuclear explosion occurring either within the LHC, or in its vicinity.

I propose that the current statement be reworded to the following:


I urge all editors to amend this if they feel it would not be necessary. I do, however, feel that it should be discussed as Plagas paper and the scenario contained therein is different to anything previously mentioned and that this should be clarified in the article. - THMRK1 (talk) 15:36, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Well worded. Thank you. I will will make the changes in the article. --Phenylalanine (talk) 22:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
That is an important aspect of Dr. Plagas report, but more important in my opinion is the following: "Concluding, G & M have not demonstrated that white dwarfs stop cosmic-ray produced mBHs in general. Their exclusion of dangerous mBHs thus remains not definite." This refutes the final conclusion of both the 2008 LSAG Safety Report and Dr. Peskin Paper: The end of the world at the Large Hadron Collider?, http://physics.aps.org/articles/v1/14 - Michael E. Peskin Paper, 8/18/2008. I propose adding the following:


The paper refutes cosmic ray safety arguments. I'll add the quote unless another editor proposes different wording. --Jtankers (talk) 00:13, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
How about this:
On August 10, 2008, Rainer Plaga, working in the Department for New Technologies and Scientific Foundations of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), in Bonn, Germany, published a paper concluding that current safety reports have not demonstrated that white dwarfs stop cosmic-ray produced mBHs in general. Accoding to Plaga, exclusion of dangerous mBHs thus remains not definite. His paper also draws a methodologically different scenario than any that have been discussed so far. Plaga is concerned that, if a micro black hole is created at the LHC, the Hawking radiation emitted from the decaying body may be dangerous to either CERN and its surroundings or the Earth it's self, possibly setting off a disastrous chain reaction that "would appear like a major nuclear explosion in the immediate vicinity of the collider." He proposes measures for risk mitigation for the start up phase of the LHC.[7]
--Phenylalanine (talk) 00:27, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Added. --Jtankers (talk) 00:32, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Now, I'm not entirely sure if that should be added. Plaga makes a fleeting mention of a possible/plausible problem with the LSAG report, but does not address it or offer an alternate solution or even a reason to why it is wrong. It's as if the stipulation is merely an after thought, while the alternative scenario he has outlined is drawn out, with calculations and a conclusion. Plaga also goes some way to saying that he, basically, does not disagree with the LSAG but is simply offering an alternative, something that has not been addressed by any paper currently available or published on the subject.
It's probably easier to liken it to Rosslers report. Rossler has a disagreement with the current risk assessment, and as a result he has written his own thoughts on the subject, calculations and theories et al. Now, wither Rosslers understanding is flawed or not isn't relevant here, my point is that he has seen what he thinks is an oversight and expanded on it. In regards to the cosmic-ray argument (which I personally think is self evident anyway, given that the solar wind hits the moon with at least 4 times the force of anything the LHC can produce, and the moon is still there, but that's a different discussion entirely), Plaga has not. He's just brought it up briefly, failed to expand on it, and continued to focus on what his paper is actually about. There is not really any other mention of the thought anywhere else in the report.
If he were to publish a paper that expanded on that thought, I would be all for it being added to the article. But right now, the article is running pretty thin on anything that is, for lack of a better term, anti-LHC and is bordering dangerously thin on opinion in regard to that. I just don't think that a couple lines from a report that focuses on something else warrants a real mention. It just seems to me that it comes across more as a thought, one to highlight that the exclusion is not definite (which, given the nature of quantum physics, nothing can ever be), rather than a proper rebuttal of a point in the LSAG report.
While I understand, JT, that you feel that this single line in his entire paper is important, it doesn't actually relate entirely to the issue his paper is talking about and until there is some kind of publication or paper on this thought, it's merely opinion in my eyes. Even more so given that he says at the start that it is not his intention to disagree with the LSAG findings, but to offer an a third scenario in addition to the two explored by G&M...
I also feel that it should be mentioned that in his conclusion Plaga also says that the "astrophysical arguments by G & M do not apply in this scenario". So, I don't think he's refuting anything here. Just saying that what the LSAG report is not relevant to his findings.
I'd also like to say something else too. While this is something of a small point, Plaga postulates a local disaster in his paper, not a global one. A small, and certainly not insignificant point, but something that I think must be mentioned especially given the current lawsuit. - THMRK1 (talk) 08:33, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Please read the paper more carefully. Dr. Plaga argues that neither local nor global concequences have been excluded including the statement "the exclusion of mBHs that threaten to accrete Earth by G & M cannot be considered definite". (Dr. Plaga references "White Dwarf" 13 times in the paper.) --Jtankers (talk) 10:36, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I've read it, and re-read it. There is no calculation or opinion on why. As I said, he states quite clearly at the end that "astrophysical arguments by G & M do not apply in this scenario", which leads me to assume that he doesn't fully disagree with what is said in the LSAG report. If he did, I'm sure he would provide a paper with a rebuttal and some math on the thing.
There are other flaws I could point out with the paper, but it is not for us to debate the paper and it's merits or lack thereof. I could also question his publication history. But I'm sure he will be rebutted soon enough on his paper. For now, I just do not think we should allow his simple opinion to infringe on making this article unbias. As I said, I'd be happy to add in a paper he has that give an articulate and clear conclusion on why the cosmic-ray argument put forth in the LSAG paper, but until that day, I think we should omit that part as I feel the current statement highlights both the opinion in his paper as well as the actual, slightly different, conclusion he has drawn. A conclusion why doesn't even use the cosmic-ray argument to reach it's conclusion...
Also, I'd like to highlight the following from the conclusion "thereby emitting Hawking radiation that might be dangerous to as a whole and/or the inhabitants of CERN and its surroundings." As you can see, he clearly points to the local consequences, not a global one. Also JT, please note, any mBH would have to accrete Earth in order to evaporate and thereby emit the Hawking Radiation, I believe (I may be wrong here) otherwise, logically, where else would it accrete matter? - THMRK1 (talk) 11:19, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
If you wish to address Dr. Plaga's notable, credible, and relevant conclusions related to local and global consequences please have a notable and credible rebuttal published as CERN requested be done to refute Dr. Rossler work as noted by Dr. Ellis in his August 14, 2008 talk. --Jtankers (talk) 12:33, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
Have to agree with JT on this. We are not here to discuss the arguments within the paper just whether the paper meets Wikipedia's guidelines on reliably sourced and all that jazz that has been mentioned on these pages quite a number of times. Plaga has published his paper and meets all the criteria for inclusion though in my personal opinion we could be giving undue weight to certain aspects. But I believe, as for disproving it's content that is not our job and I'm sure we will see either re-buttal or clarification of the finer points in the not too distant future. Khukri 13:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
I do not want to discuss the finer points of his paper. I think you misunderstand. I think there is undue weight being given to certain aspects. What I said previously was just my own thinking behind why I believe that is so. He's made a claim and he's yet to show me the money. I know we cannot disprove or prove content here and frankly, I really do not want to. Which is why I said it is not for us to debate the merits or lack there of in his paper. My intention was to highlight exactly why I think there is undue weight being given to certain aspects. THMRK1 (talk) 13:35, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

European Lawsuit filed August 26, 2008

Proposed statement or similar:

On August 26, 2008, suit was filed against CERN in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg alleging the Large Hadron Collider poses grave risks for the safety of the 20 member states of the European Union and their citizens.[1][2]
[1] European Complaint in Germain - Adrian Hollaender, Professor International Law (8/26/2008)
[2] Suit Alleges CERN in Violation of Human - Allan Gillis, Science Journalist (8/27/2008)

--Jtankers (talk) 05:31, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Khukri 06:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
Think we should add who the suit has been filed by, inc the eminent Rossler. Khukri 06:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

And it's been thrown out [1] Khukri 14:57, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Jtankers must be getting tired of all these conspiracies to hide the truth. --Closedmouth (talk) 15:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
The court is still to decide on allegations that the experiment with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) violates the right to life. --Jtankers (talk) 15:29, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
So we should modify it to read something like;
On August 26, 2008, suit was filed against CERN in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg alleging the Large Hadron Collider poses grave risks for the safety of the 20 member states of the European Union and their citizens.[1][2] Parts of the suit were summarily rejected on the 29th, leaving the case that it violates the right to life still pending. [3]
[3] Swissinfo - Court rejects protest against big bang machine.
Khukri 16:06, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks good. --Jtankers (talk) 17:10, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Dates

I converted the dates to the international format rather than US format because CERN is in Switzerland. Hope that's okay, feel free to revert if you think it's a bad change. --Closedmouth (talk) 13:23, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

CERN strikes back!

"Comments on claimed risk from metastable black holes", by Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo L. Mangano (Comment on Plaga's paper).

Excellent. Good find. Notice how they also mentioned Plagas usage of Unruh and Schutzhold's work, one which is also cited my various anti-LHC factions, and how Plaga failed to mention Unruhs latest work, which more or less supports Hawking radiation, but is ignore both by Plaga and the anti-LHC crowd.
How should this be added to the article? THMRK1 (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! I am in the process of writing up a sentence. --Phenylalanine (talk) 20:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

LSAG Report Published

Hello. I was just reading through Digg science and found this bit of rather sad and un-nerving news piece: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml

It's shocking to think that people would do that. In any event, I'm actually posting the article to draw attention to the fact that the LSAG report has now been published in the Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics. Should this be added to the article? I ask because there have been claims made that the LSAG report is not peer reviewed. Well, now it appears that it has been. THMRK1 (talk) 08:35, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Only those who don't want to read the truth and are sitting there with their fingers in their ears, think the LSAG report hasn't been independently reviewed. Good article. Two notable quotes in the article one in relation to the Martin Rees 1 in 50,000 "My book has been misquoted in one or two places," Lord Rees said yesterday. "I would refer you to the up-to-date safety study." and even better ..said Prof Brian Cox of Manchester University, adding: "Anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a twat."
But yes you are correct, it has been independently reviewed and now seems gone through the PRD process as well. Khukri 09:08, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Now, the LSAG report has been reviewed twice, once by CERN’s Scientific Policy Committee and now by the journal reviewers. --Phenylalanine (talk) 11:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm not with you, that's what I put no? Subtle difference though as I understand it between the committee review the PRD procedure. Khukri 11:06, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry about that, I misread your response. --Phenylalanine (talk) 13:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Structure

I've just reordered the article as it seems that the risks and concerns should go first; then the reviews which address these and then finally the legal challenges. We might then hope to have a section on the results, assuming that we are still here to observe them :). But there still seems to be a lot of duplication and over-referencing in the article which gives it an untidy appearance. Some pruning is indicated. I've left some dangling refs but a bot should be along soon to fix those. And so to bed... Colonel Warden (talk) 00:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The specific safety concerns shouldn't be separated from the safety arguments. I merged both sections into one paragraph. But I agree with your other suggestions. Thanks. --Phenylalanine (talk) 03:33, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Death threats

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?MLC=/earth/science/article&view=DETAILS&xml=/earth/2008/09/05/scilhc105.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

Without going into what this tells us about the importance of "Public Understanding of Science" and its implications on the funding / support of research by the public sector, this article should now mention that death threats are beign received by CERN as reported in the Telegraph. Also what if any has been the response of CERN site security and are French / Swiss police involved. With disdain and foreboding I am reminded of the crazy religious terrorists who sabotaged Jodie Foster's big experiment in the Contact (film). What has CERN's reaction been or has it been too discreet to be reportable? --81.105.242.11 (talk) 03:28, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

We don't use the exact words "death threats" in the article, but the citation and the general idea of "protests" is rendered in the "Safety concerns" section. Thanks for weighing in. --Phenylalanine (talk) 03:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

CERN meeting

Was the Otto Rossler meeting at CERN dropped? I was under the impression from what I heard and this article that he met with Rolf Landua and said he would get someone to look into Rossler's ideas. CERN passed his ideas on to an expert who really knew the subject that's when it finished with Nicolai coming out with his statement about fundamental misunderstanding etc. Khukri 16:21, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct, my mistake [2] :
"Rössler not enough. On July 4, he flew from Stuttgart to Geneva, the "cathedral of physics" to visit, as the poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger once called the LHC. In the afternoon, receiving him at the Cern physicist Rolf Landua, Rössler the interior of the particle. With sandals on the feet and a helmet on his head Rössler runs in the elevator down, deep into the earth to look for about a minute in the Atlas detector to arrive, a giant colossus height of 25 metres and 44 metres in length. There, the actual experiments. There clash the protons collide."
"Then Landua and Rössler sit in the cafeteria, with a view of Mont Blanc, and discuss Rösslers World Downfall scenario. "Normally, one would like his theories into the trash and throw it as a spinner dismissed lightly," says Landua back. "But he is firmly convinced that he is right."
"Landua took time to discuss about an hour and a half with the Tübingen chaos researchers. Then he asked another expert, Rösslers theses results: Hermann Nicolai, director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam. His verdict was damning. Rösslers considerations based on fundamental misunderstandings of Einstein's theory of relativity. Recently also submitted nor the particle physicists from 26 German universities with a joint statement: "The earth will not be devoured by black holes," was the headline."
--Phenylalanine (talk) 16:49, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Fixed. --Phenylalanine (talk) 17:52, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus in the scientific community?

I'm not sure the following sentence is totally accurate: "The consensus in the scientific community is that experiments at the LHC present no danger and that there is no reason for concern." Rainer Plaga is also a scientist, so is Rossler. Maybe Walter L. Wagner is one too. My understanding of consensus is that all the parties must agree. Maybe we should reword this like "The overwhelming majority of scientists agree that experiments at the LHC present no danger and that there is no reason for concern." Thoughts? --Phenylalanine (talk) 20:09, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Rainer Plaga is about the only physicist who's said anything negative about it, and even at that, he basically admits himself that he agrees with the LSAG report on the safety of the LHC. Maybe scientific community is a bit of a misleading term. Since the project is worked on by physicists (some 8000 all together, I'm lead to believe) and really, they're the only ones who could truly considered qualified enough to give learned opinion on the matter. I think saying that maybe there is a consensus amongst the physics community about the safety of the LHC, would be a better way to word it. However, I think if that is added in, it might be worth mentioning that those who are not physicists have all had their arguements rebutted by physicists.
CERN leadership requested that CERN scientists not discuss safety probability with the media, concern among CERN scientists is unknown. August 14, 2008 CERN's Dr. Ellis presented basic safety arguments to CERN scientists. The only scientists who have tended to demonstrate a detailed understanding of safety arguments are those who created safety reports or rebuttals, and the safety opposition alleges that rebuttals may not be unbiased as they were personally requested as favors by CERN. There is no consensus among authors of recent safety reports and rebuttals. --75.100.86.225 (talk) 08:50, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
And that is a classic hand waving propaganda argument we're seeing from certain quarters, CERN have not requested scientists not to discuss the safety probabilities with the media, in fact there was an hour program about it on bbc4 where they gave probabilities on black holes and all that stuff, including Ellis himself. Also one only has to read all of the news articles coming out about the LHC in the last couple of weeks to see this is a blatantly false, with comments from every scientist under the sun trying to get their name in print. There is concensus, the authors of recent reports with the exception of one, are not authorities on the subject, infact have been shown to have basic misunderstandings of physics, read the article. So we have a few tens of thousands of physicists against one, that I would suggest is pretty good indication of concensus. Khukri 09:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
Plaga and Rossler have been rebutted. Maybe you didn't see that already? Wither or not they were "favours by CERN" is completely irrelevant. The fact of the matter is, Rossler and Plagas papers are riddled with inconsistencies. Anyone in the community can see that and those that have, CERN employees or not, have done something that they, and I think it's important to clarify this point, didn't even have to do and reviewed their work and published a rebuttal. What more can you ask for? THMRK1 (talk) 09:25, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
However, the definition of the word "consensus" is basically "a general agreement among the members of a given group or community". Here we have a small group of individuals, two or three of which are actual scientists, coming up against what is effectively the entire physics community on the issue of safety. I think consensus is the correct word to use here, just that maybe "scientific community" is not the best way to put it. THMRK1 (talk) 20:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
I refer the honorable gentleman to my response on the LHC article, lead section ;) Khukri 20:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
I think the statement in the LHC articles lead section would be suitable. THMRK1 (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Not sure what you're saying THMRK1... --Phenylalanine (talk) 20:59, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
I apologise. My comment was unfocused. I originally thought that saying there was a consensus amongst physicists would be a good way to go. But after read the lead in the main LHC article, I believe that the statement that Khukri proposed in there would suffice in this article. THMRK1 (talk) 21:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

"end of the 'world'"?

 Done by Phenylalanine. Khukri 11:08, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

There is a line in the article that states, "...are fearful that the world will be destroyed...".

The use of the word "world" makes one imagine science fiction or "The sky is falling" and is therefore not NPOV.

I suggest using the correct term, "Earth".

-JeremyG —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.229.8.37 (talk) 01:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

  • I'm not understanding the point being made here - how is world significantly different from Earth in this context? Anyway, the cited source uses the phrase "destroy the world" more than once in the relevant section. If there is a difference, we are now misrepresenting the source and that is not proper per WP:V. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:03, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Order of magnitude

The section on Strangelets includes the phrase "on the order of 14 TeV". This seems stylistically bad, "on the order of" should not be used with precise figures. Either of "approximately 14 TeV" or "on the order of tens of TeV" would be better IMO. | 89.50.253.107 (talk) @ 17:53, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Hawkings Thoughts

A cool interview with Stephen Hawking is on the BBC website right now: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7598000/7598686.stm

Worthy of inclusion? THMRK1 (talk) 14:27, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

this entire article seems like it was written from a very pro-LHC stance; i am not informed enough to make any major edits, but i did change the labeling of Rossler and others with safety concerns from 'antagonists' to 'opponents.'

-Alex —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.85.6.194 (talk) 21:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Hawking says "If the collisions in the LHC produced a micro black hole, and this is unlikely, it would just evaporate away again, producing a characteristic pattern of particles. Collisions at these and greater energies occur millions of times a day in the Earth's atmosphere, and nothing terrible happens.". Can any one tell me on what basis has he said the black hole created will be evaporated?BalanceΩrestored Talk 10:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Has any one so far witnessed the creation of black holes in the earth's atmosphere? I am sure no one. So, I do not know on what basis comments like "Black holes will evaporate" etc are made?BalanceΩrestored Talk 10:45, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The article is commenting on what Hawking has said not whether it is correct or not. This isn't the place to answer individual questions, you could ask someone who edits the black hole page on their talk page to answer your personal questions, they maybe able to help. Khukri 10:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you, I request that a small piece of content be then added, that states the actual data of presence of black holes in the earth's atmosphere. From the statements of Hawkings, it looks very obvious that scientists have recorded the same, looks obvious from the scientist's statement. I think that's needed and is missing.BalanceΩrestored Talk 11:08, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't see where it states the actual presence of black holes in the atmosphere or he states they have been seen, which of course they haven't, black holes themselves are a theoretical object. Also it's not advisable to analyse one newspaper article in too much depth when the basis for his opinions are covered by some 3000 scientific studies which can be found on the Arxiv. Khukri 11:38, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The center-of-mass energy for LHC collisions will be of 14 TeV. The center-of-mass energy for collisions between the highest energy cosmic rays and the atomic nuclei in the atmosphere is of the order of 1000 TeV; and there are plenty of cosmic rays with lower energies that will match the LHC. Nothing ever happened in the atmosphere, or in the moon / other planets / stars (those are all bombarded by the same cosmic ray spectrum as the Earth). Therefore, if black holes are created in CR collisions, they do no harm. BH from the LHC would be MUCH less massive, and therefore would last even less than those from CRs, and would do even less harm. Pmbarros (talk) 16:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I see, so I think there's lot of unnecessary noise for Black Holes those are never evidently found so far.BalanceΩrestored Talk 12:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

False vacuum

Why is there no concern about false vacuum, while there was such concern with RHIC? --78.1.130.17 (talk) 16:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Not an expert, but isn't it a case of, if it was shown to be OK for RHIC, then must hold true for LHC, as the higher level energy isn't a factor? Khukri 16:45, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

although analogies with cosmic rays have been questioned...

I agree with Stevenj's removal of "although the analogy with the safety of natural cosmic phenomona when applied to Earth conditions at the LHC, and the reliance on conclusions based on theoretical but as yet unobserved predictions of particle behaviour, has been questioned". This brings too much detail in the lead. If we include Wagner's specific criticism, we must also include Plaga's and Rossler's criticism, as well as the rebuttals, which would add too much detail and length in the lead per WP:LEAD. Also, the 2008 report specifically addresses these concerns, so the statement is misplaced. I like the lead the way it looks now, thanks largely to MickMacNee. It's just the right length, with the safety reviews and safety concerns respectively covered in paragraphs of equal length, and doesn't go into to much detail. --Phenylalanine (talk) 01:47, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I have changed my mind. I believe the lead should predominantly expose the safety reviews and arguments per WP:NPOV, since the concerns are tiny-minority views. --Phenylalanine (talk) 07:17, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I think the article looks pretty good now. Good work! THMRK1 (talk) 07:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks THMRK1, I gotta get some sleep now. I hope someone will be able to keep an eye on the article in the next few hours. --Phenylalanine (talk) 07:40, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Use of expertise in CERN-commissioned reports

I propose adding the following section "Use of expertise in CERN-commissioned reports" under the section "CERN-commissioned reports", and add to the next section "Other published reviews"

Although most of the 20 countries comprising the consortium responsible for CERN and hence the LHC are members of the European Union, the way expertise is used in the LSAG report does not follow European Union guidelines for the use of expertise[8], guidelines which can be seen as current best practice.

This is especially pointed when it is considered that what triggered the creation of the guidelines were events in which people died partly because of inapprpriaite use of scientific expertise. [9]


The guidelines [8] state that one of the three determinants of quality of advice is pluralism.

“Wherever possible, a diversity of viewpoints should be assembled. This diversity may result from differences in scientific approach, different types of expertise, different institutional affiliations, or contrasting opinions over the fundamental assumptions underlying the issue. Is it appropriate to mobilise experts beyond the scientific community? These may include, for example, lawyers, ethicists...”

How then does the CERN process used for the present 2008 CERN-commissioned reports compare with the EC guidelines on plurality of expertise?

The LSAG report itself [10] was conducted by five particle physicists. The associated report “Astronomical Implications of Hypothetical Stable TeV-Scale Black Holes" [11] was conducted by two particle physicists, one of whom was also in the LSAG report team. It was reviewed by the 20-member CERN Council Scientific Policy Committee, also composed only of particle physicists.[12]

So all these 26 were particle physicists. Despite this large number, none were “experts beyond the scientific community… for example, lawyers, ethicists..”, despite that being recommended by the European Commission[x1] .

This particle physicists-only advice was then put to CERN Council for consideration and advice to the governments. CERN Council represents the 20 governments funding the LHC and consists of 14 particle physicists and 14 civil servants.[13] Half of the Council is therefore the interest group concerned – particle physicists. And the other half is also not immune from possible vested interest. This is because the Council as a whole has approved the prior funding of and building of the LHC. As such, CERN Council is far from arms-length from the project, and may feel a bias to justify its prior decisions of support. Given this possibility of bias in the decision-making within and about the LSAG report, thoughtful people are uneasy because of reference to a basic sense of fairness. This is embodied in one of the rules of natural justice or procedural fairness: the rule against bias (nemo debet esse judex in propria sua cause – "no one to be a judge in their own cause") So, even though the EC guidelines on the use of expertise arose precisely out of an event in which people died partly because of narrowly-based scientific advice, CERN, also assessing the possibility of events in which people may die has used none of the EC guidelines, indeed gives no inkling that it is aware they exist, and has produced exquisitely narrowly-based advice. The lessons learnt by society from the recent BSE and other crises may never have been learnt as far as CERN is concerned. The lack of cognisance of best practice is eloquently attested to as follows. The main freshly commissioned paper underlying the LSAG report is the paper by Giddings and Mangano 2008[11] (G & M). It is a study of the (i) safety of a (ii) physics phenomenon. However, while G & M call extensively upon the physics body of knowledge to the extent of citing 119 references, to the safety body of knowledge there are no references at all. Or, indeed, as mentioned, to the body of knowledge on the use of expertise. Other published reviews On 22 July 2008, three particle physicists Benjamin Koch, Marcus Bleicher and Horst Stöcker published a research paper titled "Exclusion of black hole disaster scenarios at the LHC" in which they summarize the proofs which they argue rule out any possible black hole disaster at the LHC. Their framework explicitly allows for any number of additional spatial dimensions. [24] On 10 August 2008, Rainer Plaga, an astrophysicist working at the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), in Bonn, Germany, posted on the arXiv Web archive a paper concluding that current safety reports have not demonstrated that white dwarfs stop cosmic-ray produced mBHs in general.[10] According to Plaga, exclusion of mBHs that would be dangerous at the planetary scale thus remains not definite. His paper also draws a methodologically different scenario than any that have been discussed so far. Plaga indicates that, if a micro black hole is created at the LHC, the Hawking radiation emitted from the decaying black body may be dangerous to either CERN and its surroundings or to the Earth itself. He argues that the effects of cosmic-ray produced mBHs radiating at the Eddington limit might not be detected in heavier astronomical bodies, such as white dwarfs, but depending on the parameter values, might still cause significant damage to smaller bodies such as the Earth. Plaga states that a micro black hole produced at the LHC could set off a chain reaction that "would appear like a major nuclear explosion in the immediate vicinity of the collider." He proposes measures for risk mitigation for the start up phase of the LHC.[10] In a follow-up paper posted on the arXiv Web archive on 29 August 2008, Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo L. Mangano, the authors of a 2008 study on the safety of the LHC collisions,[7] respond to Rainer Plaga's safety concerns.[11] They argue that Plaga's scenario is inconsistent and that their own conclusions on the safety of the collider,[7] as referred to in the LHC safety assessment (LSAG) report,[5] remain robust.[11] On 18 August 2008, the particle physicist Michael E. Peskin published an article which affirms the Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo L. Mangano 2008 paper that excludes the risk of dangerous micro black holes.[9] Following the publication of the CERN-commissioned LSAG report, the Executive Board of the Division of Particles and Fields (comprised of particle physicists [14] of the American Physical Society (APS) released a statement on the safety of collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, indicating that "there is nothing to fear from particles created at the LHC".[25][26] A paper including a physicist among its authors – but also authors with qualifications in philosophy (including ethics) and mathematics, so providing the plurality of expertise recommended by the European Commission [15] "has analysed the LHC risk. The paper observes that when an expert provides a calculation of the probability of an outcome, they are really providing the probability of the outcome occurring, given that their argument is watertight. However, their argument may fail for a number of reasons such as a flaw in the underlying theory, a flaw in their modelling of the problem, or a mistake in their calculations. If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect." The paper multiplied the probabilities that the theory, model, and/or calculations on which the operation of the LHC rests are wrong. This dramatically increased the probability estimates that switching it on will destroy the world, to greater than 1 in a million. With those at risk equalling the population of the Earth (6 billion), the paper concluded the value of the risk was 6,000 lives, and therefore that the LHC should not be turned on until further independent research into the risk was conducted.

Transcept (talk) 05:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Erm, CERN or it's reports in general doesn't have to follow such a thing as "European Union guidelines for the use of expertise[1], guidelines which can be seen as current best practice", by it's very nature as it is partly in Switzerland which isn't tied to these conventions. CERN is governed by a number of accords set up between the member states which aren't all EU, which range from safety, employment, to the very report you mentioned. So after that is irrelevant, sorry. Anyway most of what you have written constitutes original research, stringing the facts together, and Wikipedia is not the place for that. Khukri 06:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Khukri has the right idea here. What is said past that sentence is basically original research and it also shows a huge lack of understand about LHC, and what actually happens within. I seriously doubt 10,000 scientists have gotten their calculations wrong, but maybe that's just me...THMRK1 (talk) 07:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
A similar argument is published in the UK Telegraph yesterday We must be wary of scientific research By Gerald Warner
"International law needs to wake up to the scientific challenges of the 21st century. Scientists are now dealing with forces so potentially destructive they cannot be allowed to exercise their discretion. Decisions to proceed with certain types of research should not be taken within the magic circle of "the academy", where the presumption is always in favour of enhancing knowledge rather than taking precautions. We need an international authority, dominated by laymen but with access to expert technical opinion. The precautionary principle should prevail."
--Jtankers (talk) 12:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment Khukri. Would the part of CERN and the LHC which is in France be tied to the EU conventions, given that France is in the EU? Transcept (talk) 05:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
No CERN is seen in it's entirety, not one set of rules for one half and another for another half. Khukri 07:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Khukri - Re your last - why would Swiss law pertain then - why not French?

Further, of the 20 states with members on CERN council, 18 are EU member states and two, Norway and Switzerland are not.

1. Are you suggesting that only if all CERN member states were also EU member states, would EU guidelines be legally relevant?

2. Why wouldn’t it be the case that the 18 EU member states on CERN Council should have asked for LSAG, when it was set up, to be set up by the EU guidelines applicable to those states?

Finally, surely good practice is to seek and follow best practice, whether it is legally mandated or not. To take the Giddings and Mangano paper – it has 119 references to the physics body of knowledge, but no references at all to the bodies of knowledge of how to set up a robust research team, or to how to do a safety study. Transcept (talk) 05:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Who said it followed Swiss law, I said there are accords between all the member states. Sorry, you are trying to string some points together that have nothing to do with the article or it's improvement. The talk page is for discussing changes to the article itself, not trying to work through issues with CERN, the LHC or the LSAG report or areas in which they might have defaulted etc. I suggest you go directly to CERN and ask these questions, on how they work, and the different accords that were setup etc. Cheers Khukri 06:01, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Lead section

I decided to do improve the lead yesterday, because, well it didn't have one. My initial attempt was this [3]. It was probably too detailed, so it was contracted to this [4], to which, last night I re-added some of that context that was removed [5]. Reaching it this morning, subsequent edits to the lead have given me concerns.

First, I am concerned about style - per the lead section guideline, I moved all references to the main body - all lead statements should merely describe the main body text, not become sourced facts themselves - this merely encourages disputes over precise wording of the lead, and causes the main body's factual accuracy to become neglected.

"The lead must conform to verifiability and other policies. The verifiability policy advises that material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and quotations, should be cited. Because the lead will usually repeat information also in the body, editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material. Leads are usually written at a greater level of generality than the body, and information in the lead section of non-controversial subjects is less likely to be challenged and less likely to require a source; there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none." (WP:LEADCITE)

Secondly, specific dscriptions of the concerns I added to the lead (which is after all the premise of the article), NPOV and especially UNDUE notwithstanding, have in my view been overly summarized, however the assertions of safety have become more detailed and specific. It debunks the doomsday scenario fears, without even explaining what the scenario is, doomsday event has been delinked, and destruction of the Earth has been moved. Without these, reading the lead it would be hard to determine why this topic is even notable.

I agree with Stevenj's removal of "although the analogy with the safety of natural cosmic phenomona when applied to Earth conditions at the LHC, and the reliance on conclusions based on theoretical but as yet unobserved predictions of particle behaviour, has been questioned". This brings too much detail in the lead. If we include Wagner's specific criticism, we must also include Plaga's and Rossler's criticism, as well as the rebuttals, which would add too much detail and length in the lead per WP:LEAD. Also, the 2008 report specifically addresses these concerns, so the statement is misplaced. I believe the lead should predominantly expose the safety reviews and arguments per WP:NPOV, since the concerns are tiny-minority views. Also, one general statement in the lead was technically incorrect and weaselly (e.g. "and was itself reviewed and corroborated by other scientific bodies and journals"), so it was necessary to specify it to correct the problem. I mentioned the doomsday scenarios in the lead to clarify per your suggestion. However, I don't think it's appropriate to add the emotive phrase "the destruction of the Earth" in the lead. Thanks. --Phenylalanine (talk) 11:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Finally, I think a crucial element has also been removed from the lead - the date of the first planned collisions. Already, the media are erroniously claiming that the LHC is safe based on the fact today's first test didn't go bang. That was not a surprising outcome because today they didn't even collide anything - this is the exact type of factual misconception an encyclopoedia should be seeking to correct. MickMacNee (talk) 10:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I added that also. I hope this addresses your concerns. Regards. --Phenylalanine (talk) 12:19, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest there is still a little work on the tone lead to achieve a balanced view - "Concerns have been raised in the media and through the law courts "- concerns are no longer just being raised through the media or court cases, there are now a growing number of blogs and special-interest sites growing around the LHC with varying viewpoints. Also, in the next section the content attributes a primary source of concern - "Much of the concern over the LHC has arisen due to...", but the cited reference is not the only source and I do not think it is possible, without empirical survey which is probably impossible, of where the emphasis of concern is now primarily stemming from. That is, it gives too much emphasis up-front to a source that then reverses itself, implying that the primary source of concern no longer exists. Regards, Miles Gillham (talk) 02:48, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure, if you provide citations for that, you could add, "and on the Internet". And I fixed the Rees issue. --Phenylalanine (talk) 02:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I found a cite, I'll mention that the concerns are also raised on the Internet in the lead. --Phenylalanine (talk) 03:06, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! Miles Gillham (talk) 07:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Now that the thing's been turned on...

What's going to happen to this article? Zazaban (talk) 19:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea but I'm wondering why the article has made no mention of the issue that the machine might create a massive black hole that will swallow the planet. Why is it boring the reader with babble about "strangelets" and "micro black holes"? Right now people are panicking. They think the world is going to end and this article should be reassuring them that it's not. --Jupiter Optimus Maximus (talk) 19:36, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
If they insist on thinking that and not educating themselves on the absurdity of the whole scenario, that's not exactly anyone elses fault, is it? And just you watch - they'll be the first folk to defend their right to use any technology created as a result of this endeavour. Fuck, I hate people sometimes. 124.148.65.65 (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but if people are panicking that the world is going to end, it's entirely their own fault. Such roumers have been circulated by some complete and utter idiots on the net, and worse, the media (in places) has grabbed onto this, and worse still, certain people have chosen to ignore all reason and believe them. All that need be mentioned has been mentioned. TalkIslander 20:13, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
When's the machine going to be turned off? --Jupiter Optimus Maximus (talk) 21:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
It's already been turned off. The test worked. It'll be turned on and off several times for further testing until it's fully operational and the real tests begin. The "massive black hole that will swallow the planet" is not going to happen, and never could have happened. If people are panicking due to cranks and misreporting that isn't wp fault, and by not repeating those unsupported and unsupportable claims here were not inciting any panic. Verbal chat 21:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
...alternativley, if you mean finally turned off, then probably in around 15-20 years time, by which time, suprise suprise, we still won't have been sucked into a black hole... TalkIslander 21:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
You know, I really hope you're right. --Jupiter Optimus Maximus (talk) 22:00, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
You know, I (along with millions of other scientists, and all sane people) am right. Now, forget the scare-mongering, take a re-read of WP:TALK, and let this conversation (and, wishfully-thinking, all similar conversations) die... TalkIslander 22:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Scientists prove theories. THEORIES. so.. if we already know what's going to happen, why did they waste billions of dollars to build the dang thing? because we don't know what's going to happen. therefore you aren't "right" any more than the crackpots out there claiming this thing will destroy humanity. I will say this, you are more likely correct than they are. however a true scientist would know better than to claim that they are 100% certain of the result of an untested hypothesis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.166.255.42 (talk) 22:33, 10 September 2008

When you compare the likelihood of the "OMG big black hole's gonna destroy us all" theory being true against that of the the "Black hole killing us all is a load of rubbish" theory being true, it's neglidgable, in fact much less than neglidgable. Near-completely ignorable. Thus I have no qualms whatsoever about telling anyone who believes the world will end that it won't (at least not 'cause of that ;P). Anyway, let's try again... WP:TALK, people... TalkIslander 22:42, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

you do admit though that you cannot be 100% certain that the world won't end due to the unexpected results of the impact of these particles right? i mean.. 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% maybe... but not 100%  ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.166.255.42 (talk) 22:49, 10 September 2008

I agree with your above statement, yes. I still stick to mine, though. TalkIslander 22:51, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
You also cannot be 100% sure that, when I make my tea this morning, I will not accidentally cause an interaction between hot water and tea leaves that is not known to modern physics and suddenly cause the world to end. You can be 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999% sure it's not going to happen, but not 100%. This is because you cannot 100% prove an impossibility, it's just not how proof works. I will, however, have my tea tomorrow morning (despite the dire threat to the earth that I am posing) for the same reason that their safety argument is valid--because "not even remotely possible given our current understanding of the universe" is close enough to 100% for me. Alantin (talk) 23:01, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

NOTE: Although the thing has been turned on, it has not done any of the things which are most realistically believed to be dangerous. Once it has been in use for several years, this article will still have a historical purpose.

Any further general discussion about the LHC will be deleted per WP:FORUM. The talk page is for discussing specific improvements to the article only. --Phenylalanine (talk) 22:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

This article has high relevancy until 21 October 2008 and then for an indefinitely (long) period of time while safety concerns persist (that is, some concerns predict future problems). The crystalisation of the fears is not generally linked to power-up as an accelerator, it is as a collider that the fears are being expressed (verifiable statement I believe) and the ongoing perceived impacts of artefacts stemming from the use of the LHC. Jupiter Optimus Maximus makes an excellent point that signs of panic are showing up (suicide certainly counts). But as long as this article is at least factual and neutral (if not empathetic) then it serves a useful purpose. Particularly if it averts further suicides or any of the other anti-social behaviours that arise around disaster or doomsday fears. I must also say a number of the above comments above are pure opinion or non-constructive argument, and impolite ones at that. "I hate people" and "crackpots" really lacks empathy for the people out there who are truly, mortally terrified for their lives. Let's not add to the problems. Miles Gillham (talk) 03:13, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Really very well said Milesgillham. It is now the 11th of September 2008 and I am very pleased to announce that we are all still alive. --Jupiter Optimus Maximus (talk) 18:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to be clear; all that they've done so far is circulate a single proton beam in one direction. They haven't yet loaded the second anti-proton beam and they haven't caused the beams to collide yet. Those events are still a long way off (several weeks at least). By the way, I happen to be an ex-CERN particle physicist who lives only a few miles away from the LHC. I started out pooh-poohing the doomsayers as do many above. Then I read the official CERN rebuttal of the claims... Frankly, they amounted to refuting one speculative hypothesis with another speculative hypothesis, but with more references. I'm still not scared though, honest :-) --Oscar Bravo (talk) 08:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Just to be clearer, the beam has been circulated in both directions, and it will be proton proton collisions, not anti-proton. Khukri 10:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Whoops! Thanks Khukri - I'd completely forgotten that the LHC has two proton beams and doesn't use the old particle-anti-particle trick to get counter-rotating beams (of course; that's how they can also do heavy ions :-). I stand corrected. The point I was emphasising is that collisions of any sort are still quite a way off, never mind collisions at 7 Tev. But you should read the official rebuttal to Plaga's paper; it basically says, "You used the wrong unproven theory to calculate the mBH power. If you use the correct unproven theory, there's no danger". --Oscar Bravo (talk) 14:15, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Missing Topics

I'm not sure how to add this, but there should be some discussion of the threshold of proof needed to warrant concern or action. In one section, a scientist argues that it is safe "beyond a reasonable doubt". To my way of thinking, something which at least a few respected scientists have said could potentially destroy all humankind, the threshold of proof should in fact be proof far (far far) beyond reasonable or even theoretical doubt.

Secondly, the reliability of new complex systems has not been discussed. Even without any evidence of likely failure, any new system of this complexity is guaranteed to have some glitches. The majority of these are no big deal. However, the same can be said (and has been said by the most optimistic of proponents) of the experiments and results of the experiments.

How is it that in one breath, lead proponents of this system will say that they think they will find the Higgs boson, but they really aren't sure. Further, they say that they may see nothing, or they may see many new and unexpected things. Yet, in the next breath they assure us that black holes will either not form or will certainly evaporate. And that all of those unknown things that they may find, although as yet unknown, are all completely safe.

The disconnect in this logic must be challenged. And it seems that this is a good place to challenge it.HumanJHawkins (talk) 22:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I'll try to address those seperately. In formal logic, you cannot prove an impossibility, you can only demonstrate that something is not reasonable to be possible given everything that is currently known. That is the simple reason why "beyond a reasonable doubt" is enough--because that's all there is, there is no stronger logical statement.
As to the second part, there is a fundamental difference between what the two things you are talking about--they are not trying to determine if the Higgs boson will destroy the earth, only if it is there. According to what they're reporting, they can be reasonably sure that they won't cause a black hole that destroys the earth because they are not creating conditions that do not naturally occur (and the earth hasn't been destroyed by those conditions so far), however they cannot be sure about the existance of a particle because they haven't had the proper apparatus to find it yet--but they know that, if it does exist, it can't end the world for the same reason they know that they won't cause a black hole that ends the world. Alantin (talk) 23:10, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify, I was not trying to imply that there is anything dangerous about the higgs boson. I was pointing out the inconsistancy between "We don't know what is going to happen, and expect new and interesting things." and "We know that this is safe." Either you know what is going to happen and can identify whether it is safe or not, or you don't know what is going to happen and can not.
In most cases, this is not so important. However, all parties admit that they are working with very powerful unknowns that at least have the potential to create black holes, anti-matter, and/or new particles with unknown properties. Any statement in this context that claims both unknown results AND safety, is clearly illogical. HumanJHawkins (talk) 23:28, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I might have been unclear, so I apologize and I'll try to explain more clearly. There is no contradiction within their statements, which is why there isn't a section of the article for discussion of any such contradiction. The fact that you did not try to imply, and in fact nobody has tried to imply, that the Higgs boson has any chance of being dangerous is highly relevant to the point I was making--that there is a big difference between "we don't know if X exists" and "we don't know if X is dangerous". The fact that the first is a big unknown has no bearing whatsoever on the latter; it is perfectly reasonable to know that you can't be sure what you'll find while still knowing that you're not doing something dangerous by looking.
Their explanation of the lack of danger is that they are scrutinizing a process that has occurred countless times in nature, and thus know there won't be massively negative results due to that precedent, but they still don't know exactly what the scrutiny will produce. Basically, they say they're peering into a black box whose output is known to be benign but whose inner workings is unknown.
In short, their argument is that we do not need to know exactly what is going to happen to know that it is not going to be dangerous, as the danger has already been disproven in nature. Alantin (talk) 00:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Forgot to add... In addition to the threshold of proof and failure of logic mentioned here, no one has satisfactorily explained how a relatively isolated collision of a high energy cosmic particle in our upper atmosphere, compares to repeated collisions in a small contained space at a very high and uniform frequency.

If for example, micro black holes are formed. Yes, if Hawking is correct, they may evaporate. However, what if the rate of evaporation is a little off. And what if the rate of creation of these black holes is greater than the rate of decay. If dozens, or even thousands, are formed over the course of a 10 hour experiment, is there a point where they may merge to form a sufficient sized micro black hole that would be self-sustaining... Digesting more matter than it depletes through that evaporation.HumanJHawkins (talk) 22:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

That's an interesting idea, but it sounds like original research, therefore we are not going to be able to include it in the article - unless you can cite a reliable source putting forward that theory. SHEFFIELDSTEELTALK 00:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry wikipedia is not the place to challenge it or put forward hypothesis, that is the job of the physics publications and the PRD, which is what makes it not original research, verifiable and possibly notable. Khukri 07:43, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough. However this article states that the LHC is not designed to do anything which does not occur in nature. However, properly cited statements exist in the article (and the LHC article) that clearly indicate this statement is false. The LHC is designed to produce 600 collisions per second over 10 to 24 hour experiments in the same physical space. At a minimum, the false statement(s) about the LHC only doing what occurs in nature should be corrected. HumanJHawkins (talk) 23:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

So to summarise this thread, if I'm correct, we have boiled down to two issues:

  • Whether the experiment constitutes what happens in nature, or a subset, thereof, which directly supports the fait accompli that we are in existence so will continue to be so. Thus, the LHC experiment is safe. CERN doesn't appear to have deviated from this stance, only to explore various auxilliary supporting scenarios that all result in no concern of danger.

vs

  • Whether the experiment differs in any significant manner from purely natural circumstances to create a condition that is of concern sufficent to assert that there is reasonable doubt of safety. Here is where "we" appear to be stuck - there are a number of scenarios being put forward that culiminate in life-threatening circumstances, but because they are all based upon another theory or conjecture again, and not empirical data, there is always a counter-argument or theory to cast doubt upon the concerns.

Both of these views are supported by a considerable number of published arguments from both directions, I believe. The way forward appears very much that the LHC experiement will thus continue until such time as a concrete observation of one of the dangerous circumstances reaches fruition. At which point, according to a number of concerns, it will be too late. Quite the conundrum of logic, eh what? Some of the mitigations that Plaga propose are along the slowly-slowly approach - "suck it and see", but just a little at the time. But even that does not address other concerns raised because it's "all or nothing" if such an event as a voracious, stable black hole is formed that accretes the Earth. Miles Gillham (talk) 05:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, just to add relevance to the article, there doesn't appear to be anything in this particular thread that would add anything new to the main article content. The challenge for those raising concerns will clearly be to directly sway, by some acceptable argument, CERN or a sufficient quorum of concerned scientists who could influence CERN. That hasn't yet happened . Regards, Miles Gillham (talk) 05:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Typo...

...that it would be really simple for a helpful editor such as myself to put right in a few seconds if only the article wasn't protected, but since it is, I have to put it here and hope that some sysop will (1) read this, and (2) act on it

In the second paragraph of the subsection headed "Micro black holes", the phrase "on the order" should read "of the order". - 88.109.98.70 (talk) 19:31, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it should read 'in the order'. Also, note that the article is only semi-protected - registered users can edit. TalkIslander 20:16, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Why magnetic monopoles?

Other claimed potential risks include the creation of theoretical particles called strangelets, magnetic monopoles and vacuum bubbles. [ref name=CosmicLog-August19,2008]

Why are magnetic monopoles a risk? Strangelets are understandable, because they may turn everything they touch into strange matter given the right conditions, as is the fear of bursting the vacuum bubble once one reads the article on False Vacuums. But why magnetic monopoles?

These seem to be nothing but good. They would allow for everything that has a magnet in it, from compasses to maglev trains, to be more efficient. Why, then, is their creation a risk?

The article needs to explain this, possibly in the "Specific concerns and safety arguments" section. And while at it, a summary of why the vacuum bubble is a risk could be added to it so people don't have to go through the False Vacuum article unless they really need more information.

--190.74.96.74 (talk) 01:57, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Useful external link?

hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com? Tim Vickers (talk) 04:12, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Funny, but no. Khukri 07:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

AFD?

The LHC has been turned on and tested and the world is still here. Obviously the claims that it is dangerous have been proven to be BS. Therefore, I propose that this article should be reduced to a subsection in the main article. Jtrainor (talk) 10:43, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

The "dangerous" experiments have yet to be performed, however they are less dangerous than putting your socks on (you'd be surprised by how many people get injured that way) Verbal chat 10:58, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
No, when the LHC is deactivated in 15-20 years, it will still serve to describe historically notable events, as evidenced by the current wide-spread media coverage of the LHC safety reports and safety concerns, and, by the way, the collisions will begin after October 21. --Phenylalanine (talk) 11:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, this article could maybe do with focusing more on the media-panic (even if it was meant to be humorous), and less on the cranks. It might take a bit of time for more sources criticising the media reaction to spring up, as with the MMR media hoax. Verbal chat 11:23, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

This was exactly the sort of misconception that needs to be corrected in the lead section, as you would expect from an encyclopoedia. MickMacNee (talk) 11:36, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

You're talking about the date when the collisions will begin? I added it to the lead yesterday. --Phenylalanine (talk) 11:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Girl suicide 'over Big Bang fear'

Can this be added http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7609631.stmBalanceΩrestored Talk 12:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Just realised that it's already mentioned at the bottom of this article. Have added this BBC reference, though. TalkIslander 12:23, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Worth adding this Hawking quote?

In this interview, Stephen Hawking says (from about 2:48, my transcription): "The LHC is absolutely safe. If the collisions in the LHC produced a micro black hole—and this is unlikely—it would just evaporate away again, producing a characteristic pattern of particles. Collisions at these [this?] and greater energies occur millions of times a day in the Earth's atmosphere, and nothing terrible happens. The world will not come to an end when the LHC turns on." Considering that Hawking is respected among non-physicists at practically the level of Einstein, is it worth adding this somewhere to assuage people's fears? -- BenRG (talk) 17:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Definitely. Thanks for that. If I had any fears over the experiment, they've been assuaged. --Jupiter Optimus Maximus (talk) 18:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Please be clear that Hawking is one of the advocates for the LHC. I have no problem with that, but please take his quote as just that. It is not proof, just the viewpoint of a brilliant scientist, and his theory has not been proved. Many of the counter-arguments coming out are targetted specifically at Hawking's statements raising concern that there is more to consider. That is, there are two sides to that coin and both should be lined up at some point. And please, please let's distinguish between turning on the LHC as an accelerator (as has happened) and when it turns on to become the collider, and then at varying energy levels over time. Some of the concern triggers at the point of collisions, and other concerns come to bear once the engery of the collisions reaches a particular magnitude (that is, high enough to generate potentially unsafe artefacts). Regards, Miles Gillham (talk) 03:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
However, just to keep this coin in perspective, there are some 3000 reports in the arxiv that reference and/or have come to similar conclusions as hawking, there are less than a handful that draw a different conclusion. I think it deserves a little bit more credibility than calling it a viewpoint. Khukri 11:44, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

"On the Stability of Black Holes at the LHC"

New research paper examines black hole stability at the LHC. Abstract Full text. I'm not sure what to make of this paper. Do the authors' conclusions imply that the LHC is not safe? I did a google search with the title of the work and found no media coverage of the paper, just a bunch of links to various Web archives. Thanks! --Phenylalanine (talk) 23:26, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they're indicating that if certain conditions hold true that the black holes created by the LHC would be stable. And this is the only fundamental concern that I see remaining over safety. If black holes are created as an artefact of the LHC, and if the black holes are unstable, as Hawking and others claim, then every other concern can be waived under the general banner "these types of collisions happen all the time in nature, therefore it's all fine". And Hawking will probably get a Nobel Prize for his theory on Hawking Radiation which has otherwise been undetectable (as yet). However, if just one of the black holes created are stable, and does not possess escape velocity from the Earth, then it/they will fall to the centre and after some time begin to irrevocably accrete the Earth. At which point it's just an argument over how long it takes.

So, ignoring emotive arguments ("it's the end of the world, help, help!"), and false comparisons (no, this isn't anything like Y2K), and outright slanging matches between oppositive views (there's a fair bit of prickly back and forth going on) then I see that we have two camps:

  • CERN, Hawking and others who cite that safety is paramount and proven far inside acceptable parameters (that is, performing this experiment does not appreciably increase chances of extinction on Earth beyond the threats we face every day). They argue that present science and theory provides a robust framework (that is, mathematically acceptable to an appropriately knowledgeable peer group) demonstrating safety of the experiment. The philosophy in this camp appears to be predominantly towards "science marches forward boldly but prudently".
  • Various other parties who are concerned that something new and unexpected (or expected by some theories) may happen. Their argument seems to fundamentally be that we don't know for sure that some of the extreme conditions might apply either through new territory or unconsidered circumstances beyond present science. And should a worst-case scenario arise it will be a total extinction event. Thus, game theory tells us it's a "bad bet" to wager a bet for unknown magnitude of reward but extremely high negative consequences. The philosophy in this camp appears to be towards "let the onus of proof be upon those conducting the experiment, not upon those concerned about it, because the negative affects are not localised to just the experimenters but rather affect the lot of us".

I'm happy to provide citations to support this if you like, there's plenty of material but it's getting harder to sift through due to the sheer mass of commentary appearing. Also, would anyone like to comment objectively on my statements? We might be able to work up a decent dichotomy of what the key issues are and what each side is essentially saying. That may help in clarifying the perceived problem allowing either a way forward to resolve, or provide some comfort to those who are otherwise concerned. I don't mind either way as long as things are balanced, neutral, factual, and helpful. Regards, Miles Gillham (talk) 03:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

When you say "yes, they're indicating that if certain conditions hold true that the black holes created by the LHC would be stable", are you basing that on an understanding of the paper or on isolated phrases like "it is possible that in a higher dimensional bulk D > 5, the behavior of the black holes is stable"? I don't understand most of the paper, but as far as I can tell their whole analysis is classical, and black holes are of course classically stable. So if there's anything surprising here it's that some of their solutions are not stable. I'm also far from convinced that their use of "stable" here has anything to do with stability against Hawking evaporation, given that they don't bring up quantum mechanics at all. Nor can I make sense of their claim of "black holes whose horizon grows indefinitely with r2". What does it mean for a horizon to grow with r? Since the Schwarzschild solution applies to any spherically symmetric gravitating body, not just black holes, wouldn't the crazy behavior of their solution apply also to ordinary matter, making the whole model patently unrealistic? Aside from the inexplicable mention of the LHC I can't see anything here that resembles real-world physics. -- BenRG (talk) 12:42, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Guys, you seem to be missing one of the main points of the Mangano-Giddings paper and of the LSAG report. They show that EVEN IF the mBH were stable, they still would not pose a threat to the earth, otherwise mBH produced in cosmic ray collisions would have already destroyed denser bodies such as neutron stars. Thus, even if a paper pops out claiming that in some obscure extra-dimensional scenario the mBH might be stable, there is no "fundamental concern over safety". Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Date formatting issues

I have to say that I don't like the way the dates are laid out. "...on 21 October 2008" sounds weird. Is this grammatically correct? I would like to change all the dates back to the form "...on October 21, 2008, the...". Thoughts? --Phenylalanine (talk) 00:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Tricky - we're down to locale preferences. I believe USA tends towards month-day-year order, whereas a number of other regions go for day-month-year. I don't think there is an easy answer, so given you're doing a great job and most of the work I think it's up to you. :-) Miles Gillham (talk) 03:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

You may find meta:Help:Date_formatting_and_linking helpful. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to localize dates without using date links- Template:Date and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) are also relevant. John Nevard (talk) 03:43, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

European, day month year. Think I'll duck now and watch the usual MOS arguments kick off ;) Khukri 06:03, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
  • The current format is fine. See WP:DATE: In June 2005, the Arbitration Committee ruled that when either of two styles such as 14 February or February 14 is acceptable, it is inappropriate for an editor to change an article from one style to another unless there is a substantial reason to do so. Colonel Warden (talk) 06:21, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Well that's quite definitive, definately meets WP:V, WP:RS for me etc. ;) Khukri 06:48, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Safety of the Large Hadron Collider/Archive 3#Dates. Nobody seemed to care. --Closedmouth (talk) 06:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Bold title

Shortcut

The article's subject should be mentioned at the earliest natural point in the prose in the first sentence, and normally appears in boldface. Do not link words in the bold text. The name of the subject is often identical to the page title, although it may appear in a slightly different form from that used as the title, and it may include variations. For example, in the article "United Kingdom":

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain, is a sovereign island country located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe.

If the topic of an article has no commonly accepted name, and the title is simply descriptive—Effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, or List of schools in Marlborough, New Zealand for example—the title does not usually appear verbatim in the main text. If it does, it should not be in boldface. For example, Electrical characteristics of dynamic loudspeakers begins with:

A dynamic loudspeaker driver's chief electrical characteristic is its electrical impedance versus its frequency.

--Phenylalanine (talk) 01:52, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

External link to CERN's page of LHC safety concerns

A couple of days ago I created an External links section with a link to CERN's page about the safety of the LHC. It has since been removed, but I don't see why.

When I added it, I knew CERN’s page was already linked to via inline references, but to me the explicit external link enhanced the article by allowing people to find it easily should they wish, instead of having to hunt for it.

What do others think?--85.158.139.99 (talk) 11:07, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I think having an external links section for this issue seems a reasonable idea, if only because CERN are not necessarily the best people at putting their arguments in lay-person terms. See for instance [16] Pallandozi (talk) 10:51, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Any relevant external links should be integrated in the article, and, if they are already cited in the article, then they don't belong in the external links section.
Place here [External links section] any relevant websites that have not been used as sources and that you recommend for readers of the article. Unlike wikilinks, which are often used within the article's text, external links are normally limited to the "External links" section. Links to external websites used as sources should be listed in the "References" or "Notes" section. External links may be listed in the section "Further reading", instead of having a separate section specifically for external links. (WP:LAYOUT)
--Phenylalanine (talk) 13:52, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

deadlink

the reference "Adrian Hollaender legal filings (German, 8/26/2008). "European Legal Filing"" contains an external link which now does not seem to load. NerdyNSK (talk) 09:50, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

What about that?

"The AGN protons, identified last November by Pierre Auger as being the ultra-high-energy cosmic rays of 10^21 eV and higher, are just barely above the COM energy of the LHC [if that]. Assume an incoming proton of energy of 2X10^21 eV striking a stationary proton in earth's atmosphere. The COM energy of the two combined would be about [using the rest-mass of the proton at 1 GeV, not the .94 GeV it's actually closer to] 10^15 eV, or about 1,000 TeV [about what I've read the Lead-Lead collisions will do?]

Now, the point is, that COM energy is much lower that the energy as measured in earth's reference frame for the incoming particle, because the COM is also relativistic relative to earth; i.e. it is moving at 99.99+% the speed of light [slower than the incoming particle of some 99.999999+% c, but still relativistic]. At that speed, any microblackhole would appear invisible to earth, and pass harmlessly through, "like a neutrino" in the words of the LHC Safety Assessemnt Group.

Conversely, the LHC is projected to make microblackholes at slow speed relative to earth, with some slow enough to be captured gravitationally, allowing them to endlessly orbit through earth at slow speed, slowly growing larger [and increasing their cross-section for interaction with increasing mass], IF they don't evaporate.

Essentially, it's a gamble whether or not they evaporate by "Hawking Radiation", a gamble many people don't believe is worth taking."

? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cesarz (talk • contribs) 22:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for your input, but unfortunately this falls square into original research as unreferenced material, but if you can find published or recognised reliably sourced version of it and it's relevance to the safety issues of the LHC, then we can certainly include it. Khukri 22:33, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
Quick google finds that this quote is by Mr. Wagner himself and is posted as a comment on a blog. If you delve into the Pierre Auger research, you'll find that cosmic rays are many orders of magnitude higher than anything the LHC can do. In fact, all you need to do is hit up the wiki on Cosmic rays and you'll find this info in the lead.
Anyway, back to the point. As I said, the quote is basically a post Mr. Wagner made on blog back in May, indeed pre-dating the LSAG report. I agree with Khukri though. If you can find a source it can be added. THMRK1 (talk) 00:02, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
The point of the Giddings-Mangano paper (and of the LSAG report) is that - even if the hypothetical stable mBH created by cosmic ray collisions were too energetic to be captured by earth - they would still be captured by much denser objects such as white dwarfs and neutron stars. The fact that we still see white dwarfs and neutron stars means that those stable mBH - if they exist at all - are not dangerous for the earth either. The objection quoted by Cesarz has already been debunked, and I see no reason to add that quote. Besides, that discussion is already reported in the "Micro Black holes" section of the article (which by the way should REALLY be reordered). Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Apparent Contradiction with Strangelet Article

This section of the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_the_Large_Hadron_Collider#Strangelets seems to disagree on the same subject in this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangelet#Accelerator_production --LaughingMan42 (talk) 02:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You're right, looks like the strangelet article should be corrected (it says that the probability of producing strangelets increases with the energy of the collision). Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Wait, on a closer reading it actually says: It is believed that the higher energy of the lead-lead collisions of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), compared to the RHIC, will produce more strange quarks in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) than are produced at RHIC's QGP. This higher production of strange quarks might allow for production of a strangelet at the LHC, and searches are planned for such upon commencement of collisions at the LHC ALICE detector. So the higher energy of the LHC does indeed lead to the production of more strange quarks, this is absolutely plausible. But this does not imply that the probability of producing strangelets is bigger at the LHC than at the RHIC. I agree anyway that the sentence is somewhat misleading and could be improved. Ptrslv72 (talk) 22:09, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I posted a message on the Talk page of the Strangelet article, let's see if anybody takes action on that. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 18:26, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
The strangelet article has been updated by a regular contributor, case closed. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:18, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Safety of the Large Hadron Collider/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

I am closing this nomination as a quick-fail because no images are in the article.I have not checked any other area, which means there may be other areas of concern. Any editor can request that this article be reassessed by another reviewer or relist this article once this issue has been taken care of Geoff Plourde (talk) 05:44, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Think it's rather unhelpful to close the GA out of hand due to lack of images, when a review is to give it's impression of the article in it's entirety. The review is there to suggest improvements in general to the article, not hit one stumbling block and stop the review process, and adding a relevant image to the article is one of the smallest issues to cover. Disappointed with this response really. Khukri 09:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I closed the GA because it met the quick fail criteria. Once the rationale is addressed, renominate and let me know and I will happily review the whole article. Geoff Plourde (talk) 15:35, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
It would have been appropriate of the referee to say which images he thought were necessary, but - as he readily admits - he did not even bother to read the article, so how could he do it? I'd say, let's ask for another referee who's willing to do his job. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 11:51, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
The full note says; The presence of images is not, in itself, a requirement for Good articles. However, if images (including other media) with acceptable copyright status are appropriate and readily available, then some such images should be provided. If an article does not even come close to meeting one of the criteria, it can be quick failed, which is a simple note that it was rejected. Geoff Plourde (talk) 15:35, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Good article criteria, "the presence of images is not, in itself, a requirement for Good articles." --Phenylalanine (talk) 12:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions for images

Does anyone have an idea of image(s) that could appropriately be included in the article? Thanks. --Phenylalanine (talk) 11:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Well the big thing about providing images is that straight text is unusable by visual learners. When I look at this article it confuses me because I don't see an image I can connect to. I would suggest adding pictures of the Large Hadron Collider and diagrams if available of why there were safety concerns. Geoff Plourde (talk) 15:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm really not sure what you mean, perhaps something like this? ;-) Seriously, I cannot think of appropriate images for black holes or strangelets eating the world or for the LSAG convincing us that this is not gonna happen. But perhaps I'm just short on imagination, and any suggestion will be welcome. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 15:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
The diagram is good, are there pictures/diagrams available of black holes and strangelets? I don't mean pictures of stuff eating the world, just whether or not diagrams of what it does that is dangerous are available. Geoff Plourde (talk) 15:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm having a hard time thinking of pictures that would be appropriate for this article even in principle, let alone pictures with acceptable copyright status that are readily available. This is an article about lawsuits and media hype. It mentions some physics, but the physics isn't the subject of this article, it's the subject of articles like LHC and black hole and strangelet. Pictures of the LHC or black holes or strangelets (to the extent that such pictures can even be said to exist) would not help in understanding this article, as far as I can see. I'm ready to change my mind if someone does find a helpful image, but I don't think images should be added just for the sake of meeting a generic GA criterion. -- BenRG (talk) 16:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Well there should be a picture or diagram of the device showing what the cause of concern was. Also it refers to black holes, so a picture of a black hole should be added to the relevant section. Geoff Plourde (talk) 16:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry now I really start thinking that you are making fun of us. A picture of a black hole??? Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I can't think of any way to indicate on a diagram of the device what the cause of concern is. And there's really no such thing as a picture of a black hole, and none of the illustrations currently in the black hole article would be the slightest help in understanding the black hole doomsday scenario. I mean, the black hole doomsday scenario is:
  1. Proton collisions in the LHC produce tiny black holes.
  2. The black holes ultimately absorb all matter in the Earth, turning it into a black hole on a time scale of 10something years.
There's nothing useful you can convey in an illustration of either of these. The first one would end up being an insultingly simple diagram with a few colored spheres labeled "proton" or "black hole". It wouldn't be worth a thousand words, it would be worth roughly nine. I don't see how to illustrate the second one except with some Hollywood special-effects nonsense that would have no scientific content at all. The net effect would be to cheapen the article. The pictures wouldn't convey knowledge, they would substitute for knowledge. You can't illustrate "Some extensions of the Standard Model posit the existence of extra spatial dimensions, in which it would be possible to create micro black holes at the LHC at a rate on the order of one per second" any more than you can illustrate "On 26 August 2008, Otto Rössler filed a suit against CERN in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg." -- BenRG (talk) 17:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, of course there would be this. But hey, I think it might be a fake! ;-) Ptrslv72 (talk) 23:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
It's not fake I saw it happen, but we fell through a wormhole created by strangelets caused by colliding wotsits that were posited by the esteemed Doctor Dangleberry and we and went back in time. But anyway as we've already ascertained it's highly unlikely to gain an informative image relating to this article, and as it's not a requirement for GA's I say let the review continue. Khukri 00:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Though copyrighted, this image of one of the first collimator collisions near CMS is quite cool Khukri 00:18, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Can you at least show a diagram of how the protons collide? Geoff Plourde (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
But that's not relevant to this article. Also, what do you mean how do they collide - two protons travelling in opposite directions smash into one another. Hardly needs a diagram. TalkIslander 19:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Ooh, that is perfect. We can't use the picture, but we should be able to use a similar plot of the same data, citing either Peskin or Giddings & Mangano. -- BenRG (talk) 00:49, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
That would be awesome! --Phenylalanine (talk) 01:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree it is a great image idea, and generating a similar one with the same concept would be great. I do think the caption needs to explain the meaning and the logic behind it (maybe referencing a fuller explanation in the text), or else it will be meaningless to the average reader. Wwheaton (talk) 14:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there anyone here that would be able to create a version of this image that we could use in the article? --Phenylalanine (talk) 03:24, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Some relevant images:[6][7][8][9][10] --Phenylalanine (talk) 01:09, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Delays and Accidents

The BBC reports an accident Friday (19 Sep 2008) forced halt of operations, CERN's fire brigade responded to a one tonne leak of liquid helium, no injuries reported. Sky News reports operations will be stopped at least two months for repair. --Jtankers (talk) 13:55, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, since it's not currently known exactly when particle collisions will begin (November, December...?), I mentioned in the article that the full energy collisions will begin in Spring 2009. --Phenylalanine (talk) 15:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
During commissioning (without beam) of the final LHC sector (sector 34) at high current for operation at 5 TeV, an incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 September resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel. Preliminary investigations indicate that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure. CERN’s strict safety regulations ensured that at no time was there any risk to people.
A full investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time for the LHC operation. For the same fault, not uncommon in a normally conducting machine, the repair time would be a matter of days. release to staff from Robert Aymar. Though think this is more suited to the LHC article itself than this article. Khukri 15:46, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree, this belongs in the LHC article itself. But as I commented above, it is true that the title of this article could be made more specific. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:28, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

What about the fact that the day after inauguration there was a problem which was not reported for one week, until the Associated Press questioned CERN about it, after some rumours reached AP? Shouldn't this be mentioned in the article since it reflects the transparency and trustworthiness of CERN? http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jb-KYaSJaMqYK4MtY2C2FmcmOl2QD939CCSG0 --LF1975 (talk) 11:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense. A transformer broke down in the late evening of Friday 12 and was replaced over the weekend. Should there be a press release every time the operations are stopped for a couple of days? Besides, the information is public if you know where to look for it, it is just not so interesting (it was anyway reported by the media, e.g. here). When an accident occurred that could significantly alter the timeline of the operations, such as the magnet quench, it was promptly announced. But if you prefer to believe in conspiracy theories there is not much hope to change your mind... Ptrslv72 (talk) 16:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

quantitative

The main argument used to allay public concern is that such collisions already occur frequently in the atmosphere. Could someone quantify this, or say exactly how much bigger a new "super-LHC" upgrade would need to be in order to invalidate that argument (e.g., to have a chance of producing new situations that haven't previously happened in the history of our civilisation)? Cesiumfrog (talk) 06:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Not sure "we" can do that, anything like that would need to come from a verifiable third party source, but if you can find it, it maybe worth adding to show the levels of energy required etc. Khukri 11:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
From our own excellent article on cosmic rays, we can see that cosmics with energies around that of the LHC (~10Tev or 1013ev) have a rate of about 1 per m2 per year. So that's about 100 million per second over all the Earth. If you look at Ultra-high-energy cosmic rays with energies around 1020 ev, we get a rate that's down by about a million on this, but that's still about a 100 per second over the whole planet! To answer your question, just to attain the same level as ultra-cosmics would require an upgrade to the LHC energy of a factor of 10 million. Might be tricky getting funding for that... --Oscar Bravo (talk) 12:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Oscar, your calculation is not correct: you must consider the center-of-mass energy of the collision between the proton in the cosmic ray and a proton at rest on earth, and perform the calculation in the relativistic limit. A head-on collision between two protons at 7 TeV each corresponds to a collision between a 105 TeV (i.e. 1017 eV) proton and a proton at rest (see e.g. slide 9 of this talk). Increasing the cosmic-ray energy by a factor 1000 to get to 1020 eV is equivalent to increasing the collider energy by a factor sqrt(1000), i.e. approximately 32. Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Incidentally, I notice looking at the Design Report, vol 1, chapter 2, that the intersection angle of the two colliding beams is about 1 minute of arc. This means that the center of momentum (COM) is not at rest, but moving transverse to the beamline. I have not calculated it carefully, but it seems to me that the COM velocity is far higher than the 11.2 km/s escape velocity from Earth, so that any black holes produced would not be expected to be captured by the Earth, but should escape into space. Not clear that all product BHs must have velocity >11.2 km/s, but it seems that almost all would. Wwheaton (talk) 07:13, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

REFERENCE LIBRARY (Click on the link to access the page)

Article biased towards safety?

I placed a {{toofewopinions}} template on the page, as it seems that the majority of the article is giving undue weight towards the opinion the collider is completely safe, as opposed to keeping a neutral point of view that also state that there might be issues. For example, take this statement: Otto Rössler, German chemistry professor at the University of Tübingen, believes that micro black holes created in the LHC could grow exponentially.. There is no further information or details explaining his side of the argument. Instead, the subsequent section of at least 5 lines are based upon institutions that dismiss his conclusions. The entire article reads a bit like this: mention of a possible problem, 1 line comment on what it could cause, and a long comment on why this isn't in any way likely.

I admit that my own knowledge of physics is nowhere near the level needed to give an argument supported opinion on the safety matter, but still i think that the article reads like it is biased. Having read around a little bit on both support and criticism sites, it seems that there are more people with the "Professor" title questioning the safety of the collider. No matter which side is correct (I admit i tend to believe its safe), if we are going to have an article discussing the safety of the LHC, both sides arguments should be included without giving to much weight to either one. Excirial (Talk,Contribs) 10:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:NPOV states that "We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation in reliable sources on the subject." Rossler and Wagner (2 people) espouse minority views, and the fact that these views have drawn significant media coverage does not change that fact. These views are given due weight, that is, they are properly contextualized and contrasted with mainstream and opposing views. In fact, if these views had not drawn any reliable media coverage, then they would not even belong in the safety article in accordance with WP:NOTABILITY. --Phenylalanine (talk) 10:31, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
At the moment, there is very little in the way of criticism towards the LHC. The stuff that's been published, and can be reliabily sourced, has been rebutted by someone. There is also only one physicist that has voiced concern, and even at that he agrees with the LSAG report, but adds a different scenario in. This has also been rebutted. Rosslers work, for example, already falls squarely into WP:FRINGE. He is also in the extremely small group of people that questions the LHCs safety, which mean that he also falls into the minority. By and large, we've already debated this and come to the conclusion that it's very hard to actually represent the "anti-LHC" said without giving undue weight to minority/fringe opinions.
The main reason this article is heavy in the "LHC is safe" camp is purely because there is very, very little to say that it is not. I think that if people with "Professor" in the title are questioning it, their opinions can only be added if they put their thoughts under peer review and publish them accordingly (as a couple have done already). Otherwise it'd just end up as list of people who say it's unsafe just because their title gives them an appeal to authority, but haven't published work to that effect...THMRK1 (talk) 10:40, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
The problem is, his inclusion isn't about his science he isn't an expert on the subject, but his inclusion, notability if you wish, is about the fact he managed to garner alot of media attention as part of the cult of the black hole if you will.[11] There is only one person whose arguments do warrant studying and which was that of Plaga and his problems with the LSAG report are quite clearly laid out, as you requested. Other than that there isn't a physicist out there who has shown through their works, published or reviewed, that support these positions. All there is is uneducated opinions and whilst we will include them for their notablility in creating alot of noise, we certainly won't be including them for their knowledge of physics. Having professor in one's name doesn't make one an expert, and this has been the standard appeal to authority used with alot of handwaving but unfortunately has contained little of substance. So if we are going to follow your addition of toofewopinions, lets find the physicists out there who are against the LHC or think it will destroy the world. So far out of all the tens of thousands of physicists in the world, we have one, an astrophysicist who had a minor issue with the LSAG report, not sure we'll be getting many more educated "opinions". Khukri 10:46, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
It is unknown how many physicists are concerned. Senior astrophysicist Dr. Plaga also refutes safety conclusions of particle physicists who conjecture on properties of dense stars (astrophysics), Dr. Rössler is a an award winning former visiting Professor of Physics famous for his contributions to Chaos theory's Rössler attractor and founding the field of Endophysics, Walter L. Wagner completed two years of physics graduate work with cosmic rays at the University of Berkeley and other physicists have also expressed concerns. I don't know how many CERN physicists or other scientists are concerned, CERN scientists are asked to affirm no risks regardless of personal opinion and clearly it might not be a prudent career choice to publicly express concern. Another concern that inhibits scientists from openly discussing risk is fear that science spending could be negatively impacted as CERN's Michelangelo Mangano said in response to comments by Toby Ord At the Global Catastrophic Risk conference that a 1 in 1,000 chance exists that CERN's safety assumptions are fundamentally wrong: "Jeopardizing the future of scientific research would be a global catastrophe." --Jtankers (talk) 13:48, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Plaga's objections have been promptly refuted by Giddings and Mangano in a follow-up paper, arXiv:0808.4087, which points out a macroscopic error in Plaga's reasoning. Jtankers, why do you never ever mention this refutation? Why? Why? Ptrslv72 (talk) 14:05, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
JT, from that 3rd article you posted: "As intriguing as Ord's argument is, I am ultimately unpersuaded by it. Why? Largely because the empirical evidence is that the universe has been running trillions of these high-energy physics "experiments" for billions of years without disastrous results. In fact, Ord's colleagues Nick Bostrom and Max Tegmark from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculate that the empirical evidence suggests a conservative estimate of the annual risk that LHC-like experiments would destroy the earth is 1-in-a-trillion. At the end of his talk, Mangano reminded the Oxford conferees, "Jeopardizing the future of scientific research would be a global catastrophe." Any theory, model, or calculation that suggests otherwise is clearly flawed." You seem to have misreprsented that link. Rossler has been refuted. As has Plaga. Will you ever take note of this?!?! THMRK1 (talk) 15:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
James, James, James, so he's a senior astrophysicist now and lets not forget the grand master poobah of endophysics, they and the nuclear safety botanist with 2 years of physics experience all have one thing in common, they all don't know their arse from their elbow where high energy physics is concerned. You have come out with some ridiculous conspiracy theories since you first start promoting your cult beliefs on Wikipedia, but saying physcists are worried for their careers is amongst the most ridiculous. Do you really believe that a physicist if he thought the LHC could destroy the world would protect his career before his life or that of his family and the rest of the world? But no you know why they aren't all crawling out of the woodwork screaming. BECAUSE THEY DON'T EXIST.
Why is it James that you are willing to believe people with no qualification or back ground in a subject, who have such amazing insights and can see something that the worlds most eminent physicists have somehow managed to miss. But this amazing insight is so marvellous it doesn't hold up to graduate level physics, and cannot get published.
James when will you possibly admit that a nuclear safety botanist with 2 years of Jnr physics, a biochemist, who is the big daddio of endophysics, which as one eminent physicist said is beneath contempt and who doesn't understand the theory of relativity, an astrophysicist might not be the best expert witnesses in comparison to TENS OF THOUSANDS of physicists out there.
You know why James, because you are not interested in the truth, you are on a crusade. No matter how muchy proof is laid before you showing the LHC is safe you will always continue. All of your "experts" on the subject have been disproved with all of the science in the open for all to see, and how many have come out and said "Oh you know Plaga, Rossler might be on to something" a big fat none. Khukri 23:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Khukri, if that was not completely against the WP guidelines I would replace the entire Safety article with your paragraph above... ;-) Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes Khukri, senior astrophysicist. Dr. Hibil. Rainer Plaga also completed habilitation, the highest academic qualification available in Germany. Perhaps it is notable that apparently no astrophysicist of Dr. Plaga's caliber has written a detailed paper affirming CERN's dense star based safety conjecture or rebutting Dr. Plaga's paper, only a page and a half of opinion from particle physicists. Stating tens of thousands of physicists ignores the fact that CERN employs a large percentage of the world's particle physicists and they are under censorship directives. Scientists who publicly express concerns are belittled by CERN and the small number of independent safety papers tend to refute Hawking Radiation, refute cosmic ray safety assumptions and conclude that safety is unknown, so lets be fair. --Jtankers (talk) 13:21, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Jtankers come on, stop whining and be fair yourself. It is not Giddings and Mangano's fault if it takes only a page and a half to point out a huge mistake in Plaga's paper... If this was really about science, Plaga would now either withdraw his paper or rebut Giddings and Mangano's rebuttal. Since you are so chummy with him, have you asked him what he is planning to do? And I am really curious to know, what do YOU think about the arguments of arXiv:0808.4087? Concerning the caliber of scientists, you don't know what you are talking about (just count the citations collected by Giddings, Mangano and Plaga, respectively, in the course of their careers). Ptrslv72 (talk) 13:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
"For months on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Wikipedia page a war has been raging between independent physicists and CERN....." pray tell James, who are these poor martyred independant physicists? If the blog can't even get it's opening sentence right, what hope is there for the rest of it, but no, who needs facts when you can wave your hands faster than I can. And if it only took a page an a half to debunk Plaga, why waste any more time on it? So there isn't a single physicist out there that doesn't value his life above his career, my god what a nasty bunch they are, you'd think there'd be at least one out there that might value his poor dear old mothers life, or young family over his career. Khukri 15:56, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
James, are you seriously saying that all physicists in CERN place their own careers above their own lives? You do realise that their entire career would become completely irrelevant if they were wrong, right? Your position is laughable, man. You can't even provide any proof saying that a non profit organization such as CERN has placed censorship on everyone. All you provide is a link to an affidavit in a legal case. Provide us another reference. Provide us some information about these other physicists who are persecuted.
In the end, James, we're also here to help. If you can provide reliably sourced articles on all of your claims that do not come from your own website, we can re-evaluate the article where appropriate, and edit it where required. Until the, please keep your hot air out of this article. You've yet to provide a single shred of proof in any of your claims. For christ sake man, I'm not even a physicist, I'm not even good as physics and I can see through your straw man arguments. THMRK1 (talk) 22:40, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I am aware if both the notability and the NPOV guidelines on this matter, and i agree that initially the "There could be an issue" viewpoint was nothing more then an interpretation from just two people. In fact, when this entire media hype just started i would question the need of its inclusion as much as any other doomsday thoughts from random persons.
At the same time, the media hype seems to have caused something else: I notice more and more persons get involved into the debate. Most of these can be summed up as: Professor/Scientist X of university/company Y published a paper claiming that the collider is/isn't safe. By now i start seeing more and more people who at least have a title that indicates they should know what they are talking about getting involved with the entire issue. As a result, i am wondering how much of a minority view the danger issues still represents. While it seems that the "No Danger" camp is still (by far) the majority, i am not sure if the size of the "There is danger" has crossed a certain threshold that raises the camp above being a non notable minority. Or as jimbo would say: Are there enough prominent people in the minority camp, and are there enough reliable sources available for that camp? Those are two issues i cannot answer myself. Excirial (Talk,Contribs) 10:58, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Notice: I typed the above responce before either Khukri or THMRK1 came in, which means it possible contains some points that don't hold ground anymore. Excirial (Talk,Contribs) 11:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
As said before, i am absolutely no expert in either physics or the subject, and the only reason for me to get involved in this article was the somewhat unusual "Name and quick Counter" format for the issues raised. If the three of you state that there are no further researchers of any influence involved with the negative camp, then i will happily agree that it is nothing more but a media hyped minority view that does have no notability except that it was being hyped. Thanks for clearing that issue up for me, seems like i better remove the template as well, as it seems to be invalid par this discussion :) Excirial (Talk,Contribs) 11:11, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

outdentThanks for your input, however what this does show is that the article still isn't clear enough on why we are including certain aspects, shown by yourself coming in and asking the questions you did. As an outsider could you re-read the article with what you know now, and suggest any change you feel may improve the information. Cheers Khukri 11:24, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I found an interesting blog post from somebody who bothered to investigate the scientific credentials of Plaga and Roessler: http://onscreen-scientist.com/?p=34 And here is the website of Luis Sancho, one of the two (not seven) plaintiffs in the Hawaii lawsuit: http://www.unificationtheory.com/ Fringe physics, anyone??? ;-) Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It should be said that Plaga actually seems to have a knack for writing controversial papers just to get published.. So much so that apparently no one is really willing to work with him. As for Sancho...I thought this was common knowledge? ;-) THMRK1 (talk) 13:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I knew most of the stuff in that blog, but Wikipedia isn't a place for that in my mind unless we start an article on wagner et al, and then it all has to be reliably sourced, verifiable, blah blah blah (you all know the drill :). Also there's alot more information out there on some of these people that really throws them into a different light, but we'll wait until the really become notable and get their own articles. Mind you in saying that as the finder of the magnetic monopole surely that is in itself notable. Khukri 17:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I was not suggesting that we put this information in the articles on the LHC. It just seemed relevant to this particular discussion on the Talk page, where one editor was wondering about the credibility of the LHC critics in view of their academic titles. I think that a look at Sancho's page (which I did not know until yesterday, when I found it in Boyle's article - ref.[1]) would be enough to dispel any reasonable doubt on the scientific credibility of the Hawaii lawsuit, but perhaps I'm just being snobbish... ;-) Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 17:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I would say WP:PN on the first, and WP:NPOV/WP:Advert on the second website :). But honestly, i have been re-reading some of the criticism sites, and this time i simply skipped over all the complex theories and expensive words and just applied common sense to them. Its funny quite a few have multiple articles about the same two research documents. At the same time these articles keep including the names of different professors. INITIALLY it seemed as if there were quite some people in the danger camp, but after actually reading the works quoted they state nothing else then the orgins and problems with black holes. Yet they are quoted as if that means they are against the LHC (Quite a nice trick though, gotta remember that when checking new pages here on the wiki). Excirial (Talk,Contribs) 20:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I see that in a recent revision by Phenylalanine Luis Sancho has become a cosmologist who specializes in time theory. This is rather funny especially in view of the discussion above. Would Phenylalanine please highlight the contribution of Luis Sancho to the well-respected research field of cosmology? And pray, what is time theory? Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Ptrslv72, I found the information here. --Phenylalanine (talk) 10:43, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
And what do you think of that information? ;-)
Of course it is all a matter of definition. For me a cosmologist is somebody who publishes scientific papers in the field of cosmology, and I am not aware that L.S. belongs to this category (but I am willing to be proved wrong). And time theory sounds like a branch of physics that I have never heard of (but I am willing to be illuminated). If I had to take a wild guess I would say that the information has been provided to Harper's by L.S. himself... Anyway if you are happy with that formulation I will not insist. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 10:54, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

No, I think you're right. I did a Google search for Sancho, and here's what I found:

Spanish science writer Luis Sancho [12] ... botanist Luis Sancho [13] ... A colourful American botanist, teacher, former biologist and sometime physicist [14] Walter Wagner, a former radiation safety officer for the Veterans Administration who studied physics at University of California–Berkeley, and Luis Sancho, a self-professed time-theory researcher ... [15]

--Phenylalanine (talk) 11:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Wagner is also calfornia maths champion, (jtankers comment bottom of page]) does this need to be taken into account? Khukri 10:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

You're kidding, right? --Phenylalanine (talk) 12:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5
  1. ^ a b Otto Rōssler Review of Safety Arguments (2008d). "A Rational and Moral and Spiritual Dilemma". (PDF)
  2. ^ a b Otto Rōssler Meeting (2008c). "Couchepin meets Cern critics Rössler". NZZ Online July 21, 2008
  3. ^ a b Otto Rōssler Theory (2008). "Abraham-Solution to Schwarzschild Metric Implies That CERN Miniblack Holes Pose a Planetary Risk". (PDF)
  4. ^ "Biggest crimes of humanity". 20 Minuten News
  5. ^ a b "Publicity for a questionable hypothesis". NZZ Online. July 23, 2008.
  6. ^ "Comments from Prof. Dr. Hermann Nicolai, Director, Max Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut) Potsdam, Germany on speculations raised by Professor Otto Roessler about the production of black holes at the LHC." [16]
  7. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference 2008_Plaga was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ a b commission on the collection and use of expertise by the Commission (2002). "Improving the knowledge base for better policies (2002)". "commission on the collection and use of expertise" Principles and Guidelines
  9. ^ Ragnar Lofstedt, Robyn Fairman (2006). "Scientific Peer Review to Inform Regulatory Decision Making: A European Perspective". (Letters to the Editors) "Risk Analysis" 26 (1) , 25–31 2006
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference LSAGreportStrangelets was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference GMreport was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ SPC Members (2008). "Scientific Policy Committee members". Scientific Policy Committee members
  13. ^ CERN Council Members (2008). "CERN Council members". CERN Council members
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Membership of Executive Board of the Division of Particles and Fields http://positron3.aps.org/units/dpf/committees/exec/index.cfm was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference . Hillerbrand, Rafaela, Ord, Toby and Sandberg, Anders (July 2008). Probing the Improbable. Methodological Challenges for Risks with Low Probabilities and High Stakes Global Catastrophic Risks Conference Oxford University http://www.global-catastrophic-risks.com/abstracts/ab_hillerbrand_ord_sandberg.html was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ http://www.toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?EndOfTheWorld
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