There is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the LHC destroying the planet when it eventually switches on some time later this year. Right?
Err, yep. And yet a few niggling doubts are persuading some scientists to run through their figures again. And the new calculations are throwing up some surprises.
One potential method of destruction is that the LHC will create tiny black holes that could swallow everything in their path including the planet. In 2002, Roberto Casadio at the Universita di Bologna in Italy and a few pals reassured the world that this was not possible because the black holes would decay before they got the chance to do any damage.
Now they’re not so sure. The question is not simply how quickly a mini-black hole decays but whether this decay always outpaces any growth.
Casadio have reworked the figures and now say that: ” the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible.”
Does not seem possible? That’s not the unequivocal reassurance that particle physicists have been giving us up till now.
What’s more, the new calculations throw up a tricky new prediction. In the past, it had always been assumed that black holes would decay in the blink of an eye.
Not any more. Casadio and co say: “the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly ≫ 1 sec) than is typically predicted by other models”
Whoa, let’s have that again: these mini black holes will be hanging around for seconds, possibly minutes?
That doesn’t sound good. Anybody at CERN care to clarify?
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0901.2948: On the Possibility of Catastrophic Black Hole Growth in the Warped Brane-World Scenario at the LHC
Folks – the scientists involved are proceeding cautiously. LHC will not be run at full power from day one. Rather it will be increased incrementally.
Thus if any black holes are produced, assuming they can exist at all, they will be formed at the lowest energy first where they can be studied before moving to higher energies. This allows us to maintain a safe system in spite of the uncertainties.
The drake equation underestimates the chance of advanced civilizations destroying themselves with technology which is why we are never visited by advanced aliens.
@ Nathan
Please have a look at the following video to get a feeling of phase transitions, criticality and thresholds in physics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKxgG2LUG8M
I understand why you think in the way you are going here, Because as a young person I was also wondering: Why does water not become tenacious before freezing? It is a bit more complicated!!
@ Geo
What you are reasoning seems plausible to me… there might be other reasons (strict locality, finite velocities and more…)
Best wishes to both of you
… but in principle Nathan is right: Often it is very helpful to advance taking small steps. Unfortunately not necessarily in this case!!
Generally the small steps are useful because we are acting more or less as full blinds being born without any knowledge and not attended by higher intelligence (?) for the reasons Geo mentioned. Due to this it is extremely inappropriate and unprofessional what CERN is doing at the moment in my judgement – especially because the colleagues have been warned by many concerned citizens and other academics for years! An accurate public revision (never suggested by CERN or the participating states to my knowledge) to clarify the situation is urgently needed!