Large Hadron Collider feedback needed

[James Blodgett]

Speculative theories and the precautionary principle

Scientists sometimes indulge in creating speculative theories. They call them “models” and make it clear that they are speculative.

Crackpots also create speculative theories, but think of them as more than they are worth. Even real scientists often fall in love with their theories, and for this reason normal science has appropriate filters to make sure that theories are vetted and shown to be at least reasonable before publication. These filters include peer review, the requirement for statistical significance, and even restrictions on arXiv posts. (I know a Ph.D. physicist who is suing arXiv because they won’t post his material.) There is also a qualification and a reputational filter. If these filters reject a theory with merit, as they sometimes do, this is not a big loss, since that merit should show itself later as science develops.

As a collider opponent, I have been exposed to my share of crackpots. They write about their pet theories, which incidentally say that colliders are dangerous. The implicit bargain: recognize me as the next Einstein, and my theory will prove your case. I have developed a standard answer. I tell them to read Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” and follow the path of previous Einsteins. However, I say, there is not enough time for that path before collider startup.

One of the more interesting crackpot ideas is that of the Raulians. The prophet Raul has been contacted by flying saucer aliens. They give him messages. One of those messages is that colliders are immoral. They are immoral because the universe is fractal. Sub atomic particles are little worlds, inhabited worlds. Colliders destroy those little worlds.

The precautionary principle reverses some of the logic for vetting scientific theories. I agree that totally crackpot theories, like that of the Raulians, should not invoke the precautionary principle. But speculative theories should invoke that principle, if they have any reasonable probability of being true. In the case of existential risk (risk that could make us all extinct,) that probability is one in billions. When analyzing existential risk we should refute all plausible theories, even if they do not pass all of the tests for publication and scientific respect. At this juncture I realize that it is sometimes difficult to draw the line between speculative theories that are worthy of consideration and those that are not. But that line should be a wide one and a wise one. The problem is that most scientists are so used to the normal vetting procedures that they are likely to apply them inappropriately, especially when they have a conflict of interest.

Plaga answered his critics in the current version of his arXiv post. Of course his is not the consensus. But are you sure that the probability that he is correct is less than one in a billion?

A suggestive psychometric experiment asked various types of experts to rate events as to their probability of occurrence. Those rated as “1/1000” or “never” in reality occurred 1/3 of the time.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Since accretion is supposed to be slow, previous colliders might have already created a black hole. Particle detectors might not see it if it is uncharged. I don’t worry about that since nothing can be done about it. In some models , colliders create a black hole every ten years or so of operation, so it is possible that current colliders are about to create a black hole. This might be a reason to shut current colliders down. But I don’t think we are likely to have much luck with that case.

So in your fantasy land, the evidence that all of the current colliders, including the Tevatron which operates in a similar fashion to the LHC and at the same energy levels (TeV), have not produced any danger whatsoever in the form of planet-eating mBHs is an argument in your favor?

And, not only that, you further extend your argument by saying that we need to shut down the current collider experiments? Wow.

I think this thread is generating black holes... inside your head. That's the only thing that could possibly explain how dense you are being

 

[Dancing David]

MBH are slow to accrete of the gaps argument?

 

[MattusMaximus]

MBH are slow to accrete of the gaps argument?

Exactly. The absence of evidence of planet-eating mBHs is conclusive evidence that they're about to be created and that the danger is real, real and imminent I tell you!

Rubbish.

 

[sol invictus]

Plaga answered his critics in the current version of his arXiv post.

There are some comments in that version that are aimed at the Giddings-Mangano paper, but I don't see anything that addresses the various other papers which also say he is wrong.

Of course his is not the consensus. But are you sure that the probability that he is correct is less than one in a billion?

The probability that the model he considers corresponds to reality and that he is correct about it is incredibly small. Am I sure it's less than one in a billion? No - but that's not the correct criterion, because I am sure that the risk of not turning on the LHC is greater that that. And in fact I don't really believe that probabilities that small have much meaning, especially when applied to situations significantly more complex than a lottery or mathematical model.

Incidentally, where in the world did you get one in a billion from? If you got it from the inverse of the population of the earth, that's a truly bizarre criterion... and anyway, according to Plaga's incorrect analysis, the risk isn't the destruction of the earth or the extinction of the human race.

A suggestive psychometric experiment asked various types of experts to rate events as to their probability of occurrence. Those rated as “1/1000” or “never” in reality occurred 1/3 of the time.

Reference?

 

[BenBurch]

...
I used to be, and in some ways still am, a fan of science. I used to think that real scientists were better than what I see in this debate, both here and many other places. Now I am sadder but wiser. A loss of faith. Yes, unfortunately, you guys look like real physicists.

You were a fan of Walt Disney's version of science. Not the real thing. You have zero idea how any of this works, and just want to tear it down.

Freakin' Luddites like you disgust me.

Same as the people who thought the TRIGA reactor was going to melt down and destroy the whole campus.

 

[temporalillusion]

Rainer Plaga should be considered here. He is a real astrophysicist, and he provides all the math you guys could want. See http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1415v2 .

Plaga is not only Ph.D., but also Dr. Habil within the German system.

From the paper:

This range was derived from eq.(3.26) of G & M for the scales of L of interest
in this manuscript: 10−9 m < L < 10−4 m. If L was smaller, mBHs in the third
scenario would pose no catastrophic risk.

But since a black hole created from a few protons would have a much smaller radius...

I thought evidence for fast accretion was going to be provided? That would be pretty important to establish the hazard of these small black holes wouldn't it?

 

[BenBurch]

"Oh NOOOez! The horrible Physicists are going to DESTROY THE UNIVERSE!!!!"

And you're gonna save us all, right?

Just you and your utter lack of any understanding of how any of this works and your utter faith that you are correct that we are all in mortal danger based on flawed opinions that even at that you didn't understand?

SAVIOUR OF THE PLANET!!!

Yeah, we'll hold ticker-tape parades for you, and you'll be a chick magnet forever.

Not.

You are a legend in your own mind.

And there is no intellectual or ethical space between you and the 9/11 Truthers or the people who think the Freemasons are controlling the planet.

I think I shall dub you and those like you as Physics-Truthers. That works.

 

[BenBurch]

From the paper:

This range was derived from eq.(3.26) of G & M for the scales of L of interest
in this manuscript: 10−9 m < L < 10−4 m. If L was smaller, mBHs in the third
scenario would pose no catastrophic risk.

But since a black hole created from a few protons would have a much smaller radius...

I thought evidence for fast accretion was going to be provided? That would be pretty important to establish the hazard of these small black holes wouldn't it?

He could win a Nobel Prize if he provided that.

 

[HansMustermann]

From the past history of this forum, here is a quote from Sol Invictus:

>Well, I'm afraid JTankers is actually correct about the relativistic speeds issue.
> The LHC is designed so that the two counter-rotating beams carry the same
>energy. In other words the protons in each beam have equal but opposite
>velocity when they collide, at least on average. (The reason you want that
>is that otherwise the products of the collision would always fly off in one
>direction and you'd lose most of them out the end of the detector. There
>are actually some colliders designed asymmetrically like that intentionally,
>but not the LHC.)

>If a "black hole" was produced by a proton-proton collision at the LHC, it
> would be at rest at least on average (I haven't calculated how likely it
>would be that it has more than escape velocity, but I expect that in a
>reasonably large fraction of events it will not) . . .

When I made the same point, here is what BenBurch said about it:

>James Blodgett, your refutal (sic) of the Cosmic Ray proof is hilariously
>flawed.
>
>There is a ZERO asymmetry between the particles because of relativity.
> You have to analyze all this in terms of relativistic frames. When you do
>that, the conditions are precisely similar.

Can we schedule a debate between Sol Invictus and BenBurch?

James, you genuinely don't even realize that they're not contradicting each other? BenBurch, way I understand it, isn't even talking about the same thing there.

Seriously, this starts to look more and more like a guy who doesn't speak Japanese sitting in a kabuki theatre and going "Yeehaw! You show him, buddy!" during a love monologue.

 

[BenBurch]

BTW, and getting serious for a moment, you will note the utter lack of any astrophysical data to suggest the existence of any Black Holes smaller than stellar size.

If ANY MBHs could be created, and if ANY of them EVER could survive long enough to accrete mass and grow, then we would by now see evidence of them as planetary-mass Black Holes.

None are seen.

 

[BenBurch]

James, you genuinely don't even realize that they're not contradicting each other? BenBurch, way I understand it, isn't even talking about the same thing there.

Seriously, this starts to look more and more like a guy who doesn't speak Japanese sitting in a kabuki theatre and going "Yeehaw! You show him, buddy!" during a love monologue.

Nope. Not the same thing at all.

 

[MattusMaximus]

BTW, and getting serious for a moment, you will note the utter lack of any astrophysical data to suggest the existence of any Black Holes smaller than stellar size.

If ANY MBHs could be created, and if ANY of them EVER could survive long enough to accrete mass and grow, then we would by now see evidence of them as planetary-mass Black Holes.

None are seen.

Which is, using JBs logic, conclusive evidence that they exist! And they're going to kill us all!!!!!

 

[James Blodgett]

Here is a quote from my post, to which BenBurch objects:

Because of the asymmetry in momentum between the cosmic ray and the earth particle it hits, cosmic-ray-created black holes will always be moving at high velocity in the rest frame of earth. ..

On the other hand, the Large Hadron Collider is designed with beams of equal energy, energy that cancels out when particles collide…

That is what Sol Invictus says.

Note that I continued to make the rest of Sol’s point:

Someone mentioned the point that the energy will rarely cancel out precisely. Quarks, the colliding particle of consequence for black hole creation, have large random energy. Greg Landsberg calculated that only about 0.00001 of collider-created black holes would be moving at less than escape velocity from earth. However, since he predicts that the LHC will produce a black hole per second, that still results

 

[MattusMaximus]

Are you so deluded that you think you still have a shred of credibility here? Really?

Wow. Cognitive dissonance indeed.

 

[Tubbythin]

Incidentally, where in the world did you get one in a billion from? If you got it from the inverse of the population of the earth, that's a truly bizarre criterion... and anyway, according to Plaga's incorrect analysis, the risk isn't the destruction of the earth or the extinction of the human race.

He keeps pulling these random numbers out of nowhere. Haven't you noticed? And then saying how he despairs of us/scientists because we refuse to agree with his completely unsupported numbers he picks out of thin air.

 

[sol invictus]

Here is a quote from my post, to which BenBurch objects:

That is what Sol Invictus says.

Note that I continued to make the rest of Sol’s point:

I'm not sure what you think the disagreement is.

When two protons at the LHC collide, they will have equal and opposite momenta on average. However the quarks within the proton do not always carry 1/3 the total, and so the collision (which is best thought of as being between two quarks) will not necessarily produce something at rest. Actually even if the two quarks did carry equal and opposite moneta, the putative "black hole" still might not be at rest, because other particles could also be emitted in various directions (so that the "black hole" would have to carry momentum as well). So there will be some velocity distribution for these "black holes", and if - for some reason - you want to know how much of it falls below 11 km/s in the earth's frame, you have to do some work.

When a high energy cosmic ray collides with a molecule in the earth's atmosphere, one can apply almost precisely the same analysis in the center of mass frame of that collision, and then transform back to the earth's frame. Since the cosmic ray was moving very rapidly and the molecule was close to at rest, in that case you'd be sampling a different part of the velocity distribution (the part that corresponds to less than 11km/s in the earth's frame, which is something else in the CM frame). It's far from obvious what the answer will be - again, it would require some work to find out. Probably Giddings and Mangano did it; I haven't looked. But as I've said multiple times, in my view this calculation is useless, because there is no model in which the result implies anything.

If anyone disagrees with anything I said there, please say so.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually, hmm, call me paranoid but... 1 in a million _and_ one created per second, seems kind of a nice combination for a doomsday theory. A billion seconds is a bit over 31 years. It's just the kind of number I'd pull if I had to come up with something that both (A) hasn't happened in two decades yet, and (B) is going to kill us all any day now. Especially if one does the human thing and applies the gambler's fallacy to it, it can even feel like there's a countdown to extinction going on.

Of course, that's if the collisions were running 24/7 with no break ever, but I doubt that Joe Public will think that deeply into it.

 

[Cuddles]

As a collider opponent, I have been exposed to my share of crackpots.

As a collider opponent, you are a crackpot:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crackpot

one given to eccentric or lunatic notions

Opposing the LHC based on deliberate ignorance is bad enough, but opposing existing accelerators cannot be described as anything less than lunatic.

 

[James Blodgett]

MattusMaximus and Cuddles object to my comment about shutting down current colliders.

I’ll see that and raise you. Let’s up the anty, and talk about firing all current physicists. Get rid of those folks who gave us the A bomb! A conflict of interest for you guys, but not for me! But then some of you might go to work for Ben Laden.

Colliders would be great for Ben Laden. He could destroy the world from the safety of his cave!

As was demonstrated even after I spelled it out before, I need to say THIS IS A JOKE!

Actually, shutting down existing colliders does make some sense. Think about it, honestly. Understanding other positions is an important part of effective debate. But I agree that it is unlikely that the rate of black hole creation would be low enough to make it make sense, and I also (as I said) accept that such a thing is unlikely to be politically feasible. And I do understand the gambler’s fallacy.

Incidentally, I do not “fear” colliders. I have said several times that I think the probability of trouble is low. I would just like to see appropriate management of this issue, with careful and appropriate consideration of various aspects of decision theory including expected value.

I know that this is a difficult issue to manage, with some hard judgments to make. I would just like to see those hard judgments made by what looks like competent judges. If I am not a physicist, you guys are not risk management specialists; none have ever been consulted. And the discussion here (and in some other places) sounds more like a kangaroo court than like competent judgment. I realize that we often have to accept what we can get. The LSAG reports were a lot better than what preceded them, and were not totally incompetent in their judgment aspect. And I more or less accept that the population of the world is voting with their indifference to let the LHC proceed. But I don’t think it is quite over yet. I would like to see appropriate vetting of Plaga, Rossler etc as to whether there is any possibility that they might be right. Some of you guys might actually help with that, if you could approach it with the right attitude. And the final result of public opinion may be less than indifference. It isn’t over until it is over.

Auguste Comte, the founding father of sociology (but they don’t exactly admit it) had a procedure he called “mental health.” It consisted of not reading things he disagreed with. By this standard, physicists appear to have robust mental health. I should practice the same thing, and stop listening to you guys.

I’m outta here, so I may get that chance. See you in a few days, maybe.