“But the only data CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has produced thus far is a thoroughly debunked urban myth—that the particle accelerator buried under the Swiss-French border will create an apocalyptic black hole.”

very concerned.

“In particular, at the LHC energy, any danger for the Earth on time scales lower than or
comparable to the natural lifetime of the solar system can be ruled out on the basis of its
contradiction with the observation of white dwarf stars of known mass, age and other
properties. This conclusion, while entirely valid for the LHC, would need further work to
be extended to conceivable future colliders of much higher energies.
A powerful argument applicable also to higher energies is formulated making reference to observed neutron stars, but this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos that, while highly plausible, do require confirmation, as can be expected in the coming years.”

Selective quotation can get you anywhere.

What is your reference for the novel and bizarre idea that black holes violate conservation of charge? So far as I know all people who work on BH acknowledge the idea that they can be charged, and that if they form out of charged matter they keep the same charge as the matter they were made out of - like quarks or protons. (You are welcome to try and find anyone who disagrees, but I don’t think you will be able to.)

You should know the often made statement: ‘Black holes have no hair’. To be more precise, the only three pieces of information that remain as potentially extractable from a classical black hole are its mass-energy, angular momentum (spin) and charge. These are also conserved quantities in physics. If you are willing to consider violation of energy, momentum and charge conservation then you might also try and construct some novel disaster scenarios. However, you should also check whether this scenario would destroy neutron stars or white dwarves.

But basically the calculation has already been done in arXiv:0807.3349 (page 7). Since white dwarves exist, the fraction of a nucleon which is accreted by any hypothetical mini BH passing through (on average) must be less than 4×10^-5. Otherwise BH would be stopped inside white dwarves. But if the fraction is so small, it would take 10^19 years for the BH even to grow to the size of a proton.

PS the protons are not ‘tightly packed’. It is impossible to ‘tightly pack’ protons by magnetic focusing, since they repel each other.

The 2008 LSAG Safety Report argues that the planet will not be destroyed by micro black holes based on empirical evidence from neutron stars that relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos, that the SPC Committee validates as highly probable but requires confirmation.

Are Enrique Fernandez and Fabio Zwirner arguing that the properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos prove safety from micro black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider, but are only highly probable and require confirmation with respect to micro black holes created from higher energy colliders?

Is the argument that the Large Hadron Collider will prove safety from micro black holes when it begins operations and nothing bad happens, but that future higher energy colliders will not have empirically proven safety yet?

I would prefer that confirmation of safety happen prior to operation of the Large Hadron Collider.

Thank you,
James Tankersley Jr
Co-Admin, LHCFacts.org

The comment by James Tankersley contains false and misleading statements on the SPC report. The selected quote refers to the possibility of extending the complete safety proof, that has been provided for the LHC, to colliders of much higher energies that could be conceived for the distant future.

The conclusions of the SPC report on the LHC are quite clear: “To summarize, we fully endorse the conclusions of the LSAG report: there is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced at the LHC.”

Enrique Fernandez
chair of the CERN Scientific Policy Committee

Fabio Zwirner
member of the CERN Scientific Policy Committee
and coordinator of the SPC review panel