LHC Facts

Luis Sancho

PO Box 411

Honomu, HI 96728

808-964-5535

pro se

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

DISTRICT OF HAWAII

–oo0oo–

LUIS SANCHO, et al., ) Civil No. ____________

)

Plaintiffs ) AFFIDAVIT OF JAMES R. BLODGETT) IN SUPPORT OF TRO ANDvs. ) PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION)

US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, et al., ) )

Defendants )

________________________________)

I, James R. Blodgett, affirm, state and declare under penalty of perjury of the laws of the state of Hawaii as follows:

1. I am Coordinator of the “Global Risk Reduction Special Interest Group” in American Mensa, Contact Person and Webmaster for www.risk-evaluation-forum.org, a member of the Ethics Board for the Lifeboat Foundation, and a member of the Society for Risk Analysis. I have a Master of Science degree in Biometry and Statistics from the School of Public Health at the University at Albany, State University of New York; a Master of Business Administration degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and a Master of Arts degree in Sociology from the University at Albany, State University of New York.

2. I have been working on issues of existential risk, that is, risks to the very existence of the human species, risks that could make the human race extinct, for several years. One of these risks is the risk that upcoming particle colliders could create particles that could destroy the Earth. Two of the particles that are predicted by some theories that might do this are micro black holes and strangelets. The collider of concern is the Large Hadron Collider [LHC] at CERN, which is currently scheduled to begin operation in the summer of 2008. This collider will be several times more powerful that existing colliders. Because of this, it is expected to probe beyond the standard model of physics and to produce particles that have not previously been seen by scientists.

3. There has been a controversy about the safety of colliders at least since 1999, when Scientific American published a letter to the editor by Walter Wagner, with a responding letter by Frank Wilczek. Collider advocates have continued to maintain that colliders are safe. At times some collider advocates appear to have ignored and even covered up evidence to the contrary. “Many, indeed most, of them seemed to me to be more concerned with the public relations impact of what they, or others, said and wrote, than in making sure the facts were presented with complete scientific objectivity.” [Francesco Calogero, "Might a Laboratory Experiment Destroy Planet Earth?" Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 25, 191-202 (Autumn 2000)]

4. Initially it appeared (even to Wagner) that black hole creation would require energy beyond the reach of any collider. This is the position of Brookhaven’s “nothing can go wrong” paper. [Busza et al, "Review of Speculative ‘Disaster Scenarios'", Brookhaven, 2000]

5. Beginning in 2000, a large number of physics papers were published, based on new string theory, predicting (if the relevant theories are true) creation of miniature black holes at colliders.

6. In approximately 2003, I used Google to search for material pertaining to black holes at colliders. As part of its listing of search results, Google offers users the option of looking at a cache of the webpage at the time it was scanned by Google. I found the following material in a Google cache of a CERN beta website that contained brief descriptions of presentations at the Atlas Lund workshop in 2001. “John Ellis was given a yellow card and cautioned by the convener during his theory introduction when he mentioned the possibility of black hole production as a signature in some extra-dimension models. The mention of the controversial term has been banned since the heavy ion media frenzy two years ago which resulted in the average teenager’s expertise being extended from dungeons and dragons, Pokemon, and Gameboy, to include earth-engulfing black holes at RHIC.” When I looked at the underlying web page, this material had been removed.

7. The ban on the term “black hole” was not successful. I guess that this is because there were too many papers predicting black hole production at colliders. By 2003 collider advocates were touting the great science that could be accomplished if black holes were created by colliders. A CERN “nothing can go wrong” paper, [Blaizot et al, "Study Of Potentially Dangerous Events During Heavy-Ion Collisions At The LHC: Report Of The LHC Safety Study Group" CERN, 2003] anticipated black hole production, but maintained that black holes will dissipate by “thermal processes,” which in this context means Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation was also mentioned as a safety factor by several other sources.

8. It was surprising to me that CERN would rely on Hawking radiation as a safety factor, since even in 2003 it was well known that Hawking radiation was totally theoretical and had never been seen. The probability that it would work did not seem adequate to protect Earth. I wondered how physicists would judge this probability. In 2004, I circulated a series of questionnaires in which I asked Ph.D. physicists to estimate the probability that Hawking radiation would fail. Those who responded estimated that probability as follows: 0, 0, 1E-10, 0.001, 0.01, 0.01, 0.01, 0.02, 0.02, 0.07, 0.1, 0.1, 0.3, 0.35, and 0.5. (Five of these responded to a questionnaire that asked for the probability that Hawking radiation would work, rather than the probability that it would fail. Their responses are subtracted from one here to give the probability of failure.) At the time I circulated these questionnaires I was unaware, and respondents were apparently unaware, of two physics papers that appeared at about that time that questioned the theory behind Hawking radiation. [Adam D. Helfer, "Do Black Holes Radiate?" Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 66 No. 6 (2003) pp. 943-1008; and William G. Unruh and Ralf Schützhold, "On the Universality of the Hawking Effect," Physics Review D 71 (2005) 024028] Had we known of these papers, it seems likely that respondents would have estimated the probability of the failure of theoretical Hawking radiation to work as predicted to be somewhat higher.

9. Discussions of collider risk have appeared in several books and several papers, including in Sir Martin Rees’ “Our Final Hour“, (Basic Books, 2003); and in Richard A. Posner’s “Catastrophe: Risk and Response” (Oxford University Press, 2004). Most such discussions conclude that the risk is low, but that the risk is nevertheless important because of expected value considerations. (Expected value is the product of probability times value, or negative value in this case. Expected value is used by decision theorists to evaluate decisions. In the case of destruction of Earth, any reasonable probability results in an enormous negative expected value.) I would say that the risk is somewhat higher than these authors consider, since they did not take into consideration some of the safety factors that subsequently evaporated. I would not say that the risk is high, since the theories that permit trouble appear to be a relatively small subset of the set of all possible theories. But I would say that there is definitely a risk, and that the risk is considerably higher that was thought until recently. Most of the authors who have written on the subject agree that there is a risk.

10. CERN’s Chief Scientific Officer, Jos Engelen, was recently quoted in The New Yorker as instructing CERN scientists not to say that the risk from colliders is low, but to say that the risk is zero. [Elizabeth Kolbert, "Crash Course," The New Yorker, May 14, 2007]. This appears to be an attempt to skew the risk analysis by administrative fiat.

11. WHEREFORE, I respectfully request that this Court issue a Temporary Restraining Order that will preclude operation of the LHC until I, my associates, the scientific community, the risk assessment community, and the public have had the opportunity and a reasonable time period to review and analyze the CERN safety report that defendants are presently preparing, and which was originally scheduled for release prior to January 1, 2008, and since delayed.

DATED: March 8, 2008

__________________________

James R. Blodgett

NOTARIZATION

Before me, the undersigned Notary, today appeared James R. Blodgett, known to me to be the person whose name is subscribed to the foregoing instrument, who being by me first duly sworn on his oath, deposes and says the text of this affidavit on this eighth day of March, 2008.

____________________________

Notary Public, State of New York

____________________________

(Typed or Printed Name of Notary)

My commission expires: ______________ [seal]

[Note: the Notary will sign and affix his/her notary seal, which should include the state where issued, and the expiration date.]

“CommonSenseStopNow” invokes the possibility of unexpected and dangerous things happening at the LHC. I agree. The point of the LHC is to explore new territory. It is typical that every time science gets a new instrument and looks at things that have not been seen before, it discovers new things that were not expected.

An indication that the set of all possible theories about what happens at the LHC has not been explored well is the extent to which purported safety factors have changed in the last few years. In 2000 the safety factor was the “fact” that black hole production required energy beyond the reach of any collider [Busza]. In 2001 some theorists began predicting black hole production at colliders (if their theory is true.) [[Dimopoulos],[Giddings] and many others] In 2003 the safety factor was the “fact” that black holes would dissipate via Hawking radiation. In 2003 and later papers were published that questioned the fundamental theory behind Hawking radiation. [Unruh],[Helfer] (Hawking radiation may still work despite these questions, but it can no longer be considered reliable enough to protect Earth.) Another 2003 safety factor was the “fact” that a group of strangelets would be electrically positive on their surface and not attract normal matter. [Blaizot] In 2006 a paper was published saying that strangelets can be electrically negative on their surface. [Peng] Now it appears that a third safety report is about to be released claiming that neutron star lifetimes show that colliders are safe. If we hurry up with our discussion at “An Attempt to Demonstrate That Risks are Low” under “General Physics Discussions” on this website, we may beat the record and demonstrate that argument to be wrong even before it is released.

References, alphabetical by first author:

J.-P. Blaizot, J. Iliopoulos, J. Madsen, G.G. Ross, P. Sonderegger, and H.-J. Specht, “Study Of Potentially Dangerous Events During Heavy-Ion Collisions At The LHC: Report Of The LHC Safety Study Group” CERN, 2003

W. Busza, R.L. Jaffe, J. Sandweiss, and F. Wilczek; “Review of Speculative ‘Disaster Scenarios’ Brookhaven, 2000

Savas Dimopoulos and Greg Landsberg, “Black holes at the Large Hadron Collider,” Physical Review Letters, 87(16) 161602, (2001).

Steven Giddings and Scott Thomas, “High energy colliders as black hole factories: the end of short-distance physics,” Physical Review D 65(5) (2002) 056010.

Adam D. Helfer, “Do black holes radiate?” Reports on Progress in Physics. Vol. 66 No. 6 (2003) pp. 943-1008. Questions the existence of Hawking radiation.

G. X. Peng, X. J. Wen, Y. D. Chen, New solutions for the color-Favor locked strangelets Physics Letters B 633 (2006) 314-318.

William G. Unruh and Ralf Schützhold, “On the Universality of the Hawking Effect,” Physics Review D 71(2005) 024028.

I have been thinking about your question about criteria. There are two things I would like to see in order to be happy.

I would like to see good reasons to think that the probability of “trouble” (a nicer expression than “destruction of Earth”) is quite low. For me that probability does not need to be as low as the very low probability required by [Adrian Kent "A critical look at risk assessments for global catastrophes," Risk Analysis, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2004] This is because there is also a low probability of a transcendent discovery that could save humanity. However, it is difficult to demonstrate very low probabilities, and even more difficult to balance them. Any demonstration of a very low probability is suspect, since the probability that the model is wrong is usually higher. At least we need to study the issue very carefully.

In order to study the issue carefully, I would like to see a fair and appropriate methodology for addressing the issue. Saying “black holes will not eat you” and setting up a committee to “monitor speculations” does not inspire confidence. However, Mangano seemed to be serious about his job, although his preliminary talk at Berkeley had good and bad aspects and is not yet convincing. Thought experiments involving compact matter are generally considered speculative, requiring verification from observation. I await the report of his committee. Meanwhile peer review is hardly an appropriate as a way of vetting that report. Physicists anxious to publish may come to see peer review as a gold standard, but it is only a method of keeping obvious errors from publication and it does that only moderately well. CERN’s avoidance of more appropriate protocols for vetting the report suggests that they know they will lose if the game is not fixed. In this case CERN appears to be stacking the deck with peer reviewers known to think that colliders are safe. Meanwhile, outside experts are kept in the dark about report contents, and apparently will not get a chance to comment until CERN has made up its mind. Real environmental assessment protocols include solicitation of public comments, with adequate time for the public to study the issue. In addition, best practices include use of experts from more than one discipline–in this case it would be helpful to have ethicists, risk assessment experts, and astronomers who are experts in neutron stars. Experts in these subjects are not just window dressing–there appear to be risk assessment issues that physicists in general and Mangano in particular do not understand. I fear that CERN will have a rubber stamp peer review committee declare the LHC to be safe, and then fire it up before others have a chance to study the issue. This is not an appropriate way to handle an issue of this importance.

Science can handle these things well. As models, I point to the Asilomar process and the precautionary principle. (At Asilomar, biologists agreed to limits on dangerous experiments, limits that allowed most experiments to continue.) It is disappointing when science falls short of these models.

Here James Blodgett is debating with a physicist from CERN on the topics which are assumed to be the focus of the soon-to-be-released LSAG safety report:

I say:

Relativistic strangelets are torn apart when they hit a neutron star, or a planet, and are converted into normal matter.

You answer:

There is nothing whatsoever in physics that would make this happen. It doesn’t matter whether or not the strangelet is “relativistic”, because it is only relativistic relative to some frames of reference. The entire point of the strangelet is that it is more stable (theoretically) than ordinary matter, and hence would never be reconverted. So this counter-argument is not sensible.

Here is what the RHIC safety study has to say about it:

strangelets produced with even relatively low rapidity in the lunar rest frame do not survive subsequent collisions with nuclei in the lunar soil. [from W. Busza, R.L. Jaffe, J. Sandweiss, and F. Wilczek; "Review of Speculative ‘Disaster Scenarios' Brookhaven, 2000, p.22.]

“Not surviving collisions with nuclei” is what I mean when I say they are “torn apart”. Busza et al say that this happens even with relatively low rapidity, so I assume that it will also happen with high rapidity. I suppose that you could be correct and the Busza paper wrong. However, in the face of a citation like this, you need to provide better evidence for your assertion. Until that time, I classify your assertion as not yet demonstrated.

You say:

One piece of information: The escape velocity of a neutron star is a very large speed, already relativistic (something around 50% of the speed of light).

Okay, but consider a micro black hole (of any velocity) about to enter a neutron star from well outside. In this position, it has all of the potential energy of a fall from well outside to the center. That is exactly the energy required to carry it to the symmetrical point on the other side of the star. This is in addition to the energy of its intrinsic velocity. So (assuming no collisions) when it gets out of the star it still has the velocity it had when it entered. This is basically true whatever the escape velocity (until an event horizon forms). The exit arm of a hyperbola of a comet rounding a star looks exactly the same as the entrance arm. In the case of a black hole it can dip into the star and still get a similar hyperbola. Also note my assertion that almost all black holes will be relativistic, so the velocity when they get out is still relativistic.

The other case is when a cosmic ray hits a neutron star particle and forms a micro black hole. In this case I assert that the micro black hole will always be relativistic and I conjecture that it will always exit the neutron star. It might be possible to show calculations that prove me wrong.

You say that a neutron star is dense. You also say:

If black holes interact so weakly that they would pass through a neutron star unaffected (more or less) then they pose no threat to us, even if they are stable.

Regarding density, I understand that the collision of consequence is the collision with the quarks. Even at nuclear density, quarks are widely spaced. A neutrino can traverse a light year of lead. I conjecture that a neutrino (or a micro black hole) can traverse a few kilometers of neutronium. A micro black hole is even more likely to traverse, since when it hits a particle it accretes and slows slightly rather than stopping. I could be wrong. I await calculations that show that I am wrong. I await calculations that prove your point about neutron-star-traversing black holes posing no threat.

It is appropriate that I ask for calculations. By the precautionary principle, it is up to advocates of a dangerous activity (i.e. you) to prove that it is safe. This is not just tree-hugger anti-science philosophy. It makes sense in most plausible risk contexts. Consider the opposite. Consider that opponents have to prove that an activity is dangerous by the standards of normal science, the standards required for publication. Now suppose that I have a reasonable reason to question the safety of a passenger airplane. Suppose even that an evaluation of data suggests a 20% chance that the data shows that the airplane will crash. I have not proved that the airplane will crash by the standards of statistical significance. Therefore should the airplane be approved for flight? Do you want to ride on that airplane? The precautionary principle is accepted by risk experts, and I think we should accept it here. So the burden of proof is on you (or CERN).

You say that the LSAG report will develop limits on how fast a micro black hole can accrete based on neutron star considerations. I agree that this could be a productive approach. However, this still leaves us waiting for the LSAG report. (I’ll bet we get no more than a month or two to evaluate that report before LSAG startup, and no official avenue for objections if we find valid reasons to object.) I have asserted that a black hole would almost never remain in a neutron star, and you have not yet shown that I am wrong. You conjecture that a black hole that can traverse a neutron star accretes so slowly that it is no threat. This could be true but it is not yet demonstrated. There are a bunch of models for black hole accretion. They vary by orders of magnitude in the time to swallow Earth. I very much hope that the LSAG considers all of these models, demonstrates that the models are exhaustive, and refutes all of the fast ones.

James Blodgett is giving a presentation this week at the Second World Congress on Risk.  This is the abstract.

Risk Analysis Under Adversarial Conditions

Risk analysis can develop adversarial elements. Those proposing an activity have an interest in showing it to be safe. Those exposed to risks have an interest in finding those risks. Some risk analysis tools fail under adversarial conditions, since estimates of risk have subjective elements about which adversaries can disagree. The precautionary principle addresses this issue, but has philosophical and practical difficulties. A recent case study highlights the difficulties. Particle colliders were thought to be very safe, but several safety factors eroded. Nevertheless, application of best practices risk methodologies was strongly resisted. Proposed solutions include special courts (proposed by Judge Richard Posner,) and red team/blue team methodology (proposed by Sir Martin Rees and Francesco Calogero.)

——–
I am adding another solution, Carolyn Raffensperger’s court-appointed advocates for the future. I will have handout material on several aspects. I would like to see development of even better solutions and even better protocols.

If anyone has ideas for improving these protocols, I would be interested. Consider how protocols would apply to issues other than the one being debated on this website. For example, suppose the nanotech folks propose self-replicating nanobots, or the AI folks propose a computer that transcends human intelligence, or (on a more mundane level) a liquid natural gas terminal is proposed for Boston harbor (to receive shiploads of liquid natural gas–think megatons.) How should we vet these things? How do we balance the risks and the benefits? How do we quantify risks if advocates and opponents present reasons to estimate them as quite different numbers?

[Someone] has raised the specter of unfounded fears. As a counselor she has reason to help people overcome fears. Let us put that in the moral balance with unfounded reassurances. Unfounded fears may give a few folks sleepless nights. Unfounded reassurances may kill 6.5 billion people, plus all of our hopes for the future. I suppose that one could weight probabilities to put that in balance, but it would take a very disparate weighting of probabilities.

The best solution is to found both our fears and our reassurances.

On the fear side:
I personally think that some folks overstate the probability of trouble. The theories that enable trouble seem to be a small subset of the set of all possible theories. However, there are respectable theories that enable trouble, so the space of the subset is hardly zero, or even the one in billions that collider advocates tout.

“Whitegoddess” wants to know how “it can all go wrong.” That is simple. A black hole is created at CERN, as predicted by some theories. It does not dissipate via Hawking radiation. This failure to dissipate is predicted by some physics papers. It them begins to slowly accrete particles. This accretion increases exponentially, with the increase in size of the black hole. In a few years (or a few billion, depending on the theory) it swallows Earth.

Now, some of the steps here are perhaps unlikely. I have not personally stopped planning for the future. However, a passenger airplane with these prospects would not be allowed to fly. Earth has 6.5 billion passengers. I think that a small amount of fear is not inappropriate here. Would Whitegoddess want to cure fear of tigers so that small children pet tigers in the zoo? But let us not have inappropriate fear! On some days the tigers are not hungry.

On the reassurance side:
If one is going to give reassurances, they must be grounded in safety factors. The safety factors that collider advocates claim have tended to erode. In 1999, the main safety factor was that black hole formation required energy beyond the reach of any collider. Then some string theorists began predicting creation of black holes at colliders. I concede that their theories are speculative, but since there are multiple published papers with more or less reasonable theories grounded in attractive conjecture, we have to assign at least a small probability to the possibility that they may be right. In 2003 the safety factor was Hawking radiation, which would dissipate the black holes that collider advocates now conceded might be created. (Indeed they looked forward to the opportunity to study black holes.) Then published papers pointed out problems with the fundamental theory behind Hawking radiation. This does not prove that Hawking radiation will not work, but again given published papers we must assign some reasonable probability to that possibility. Now an analogy between colliders and cosmic rays is supposed to demonstrate safety. Collider opponents have pointed out ways in which that analogy is inexact. Some folks seem to assume that collider opponents must be wrong simply because they are so wrongheaded as to oppose colliders, but Michelangelo Mangano, a member of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Safety Analysis Group, at a recent talk at Berkeley, discussed problems with using “cosmic rays hitting the Earth” to rule out black holes and agreed with many of the points made by collider opponents.

If you want to say that colliders are safe, it seems morally imperative to have good reasons for saying so. Mangano’s group will issue a report soon. Let us hope that they have good safety factors this time. Meanwhile, folks keep claiming the old safety factors. The practice of claiming safety factors that those claiming should know are not good if they did a minimal literature review seems the moral equivalent of not checking one’s brakes when driving a truck loaded with plutonium (deadly if released in the atmosphere, a potential atom bomb if the plutonium shifts around.) Oh, but I am raising unfounded fears! The truck probably will not crash.

You ask good questions. You ask me to explain the sources for the following chain of dangerous events:

1) A black hole is created at CERN, as predicted by some theories.

The following two papers predict black holes at CERN. These were followed by dozens of other papers making the same prediction.

Savas Dimopoulos and Greg Landsberg, “Black holes at the Large Hadron Collider,” Physical Review Letters, 87(16) 161602, (2001).

Steven Giddings and Scott Thomas, “High energy colliders as black hole factories: the end of short-distance physics,” Physical Review D 65(5) (2002) 056010.

CERN itself considered the possibility of black hole production in the following paper. This paper predicts that black holes will dissipate by “thermal processes,” which in this context means Hawking radiation.

J.-P. Blaizot, J. Iliopoulos, J. Madsen, G.G. Ross, P. Sonderegger, and H.-J. Specht, “Study Of Potentially Dangerous Events During Heavy-Ion Collisions At The LHC: Report Of The LHC Safety Study Group” CERN, 2003.

2) The black hole does not dissipate via Hawking radiation. This failure to dissipate is predicted by some physics papers.

The following two papers question the fundamental theory behind Hawking radiation.

Adam D. Helfer, “Do black holes radiate?” Reports on Progress in Physics. Vol. 66 No. 6 (2003) pp. 943-1008.

William G. Unruh and Ralf Schützhold, “On the Universality of the Hawking Effect,” Physics Review D 71(2005) 024028.

3) The black hole then begins to slowly accrete particles. This accretion increases exponentially, with the increase in mass and size of the black hole. In a few years (or a few billion, depending on the theory) it swallows Earth.

You don’t want me to mention Roessler, but he has the only published work that I know of on this topic. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if something this serious had been studied in more detail? I know of another Ph.D. physicist who also calculated that a collider-created black hole could eat earth in a few years, but his work has not been published. I had a posted debate with Landsberg where he made an offhand estimate that accretion would take a very long time, but that was not published in a peer-reviewed journal. Others also say that it would take a very long time. Until there is more peer reviewed work on this topic, we really don’t know what would happen, but at least some physicists calculate rapid accretion.

You also ask: “who are those theorists and how do they know ‘precisely’ what is going on at CERN? Do they or are they involved in the project? Are they as qualified as those who do?”

All of these theorists know the published design energy specifications for CERN collisions. Their predictions are based on those specifications. Unruh is a top specialist in quantum gravity. Landsberg has a top reputation. Helfer is thought to be pretty competent. I believe that all authors of papers I have cited are Ph.D. physicists.

However, you are asking the wrong question. The issue is not who is the most competent. The issue is whether any are total crackpots who we should dismiss out of hand. Any who are not total crackpots just might be correct. In the case of the safety of Earth, we do not want to dismiss a warning just because it was issued by the number three guy. In the case of the space shuttle challenger disaster, the engineer who warned of o-ring problems was not the lead engineer.

Are you familiar with the precautionary principle? The precautionary principle reverses the burden of proof in cases of scientific risk. Normally scientific publication requires good evidence that one’s theories are true. For example, the standard for publication is statistical significance, meaning loosely that the probability that the data shows the observed effect is at least 95 percent. (Some statisticians would quibble with this wording, but I have an MS in statistics, and I will defend it.) Now imagine applying this standard for proof to a risky activity. For example, the probability that the airplane will crash is only 50 percent. We haven’t proved that it will crash, so we will approve it to fly. Would you want to fly on that airplane? The precautionary principle reverses the burden of proof in cases of risk. Instead of requiring that risks be proved, the precautionary principle requires that those who propose a risky activity prove that it is safe. The precautionary principle is accepted by many risk specialists.

I bring up the precautionary principle because the spirit of your questions is to try to prove what is most likely to happen, in this case by consulting the most qualified specialists. In this case the thing that is most likely to happen is that CERN will turn out to be safe. The precautionary principle, on the other hand, tells us to worry about things that might not happen. Remember our risky airplane. It is most likely that it will not crash. It is most likely that the tiger is not hungry today. We are talking about possible destruction of Earth here. I think most rational people want that to be very unlikely to happen. If there is a serious reason to think it might happen, that is of concern, even if the serious reason comes from someone who is not the top scientist at CERN. In fact, CERN’s Chief Scientific Officer, Jos Engelen, was recently quoted in the New Yorker as instructing CERN scientists to say that the risk is zero. Should we simply salute and accept that? As a statistician I can tell you that a zero probability doesn’t make sense.

[Someone] asked me to respond to several arguments for collider safety. I am quite familiar with two of them. Two are sort of new. They may even be definitive. I appreciate the chance to think about them.

1. If the LHC can create micro black holes, cosmic rays have been doing it for years and years.
2. If these micro black holes are stable, we are awash in them because cosmic rays are producing them.

A cosmic ray hitting an earth particle and creating a black hole is an example of an inelastic collision. Another example is two billiard balls that hit and stick together. If one billiard ball is moving rapidly (the cosmic ray) and the other is stationary (the earth particle) the resulting black hole would retain the momentum of the cosmic ray. A cosmic ray that can create a black hole has a lot of momentum. The resulting black hole would be relativistic, that is, it would be moving at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. There are reasons to think micro black holes would interact with matter at rates not greatly exceeding the rates of neutrinos. Neutrinos can zip right through earth, and right through a star. Very few hit anything. Hitting something will stop a neutrino, but not a black hole. A black hole will only accrete the particle it hits, slow minutely, and keep right on going. A relativistic black hole would have to accrete thousands of particles to slow below escape velocity from earth. The binomial probability of this many accretions ever happening (given that a single accretion is improbable), even in trillions of cases during the billions of years of the existence of the earth, is vanishingly small.

On the other hand, black holes produced by colliders are produced by two particles moving in opposite directions. Their momenta cancel, so they can be moving at zero velocity. Actually the collision of consequence is the collision of the quarks, which have large and randomly directed energy. Quark energy would rarely cancel precisely, so most collider-created black holes would also be moving at faster than escape velocity from earth. However, a few would not be moving that fast. They would travel in orbits that repeatedly intersect earth. If they were slow enough, they would travel in orbits within the earth. Instead of zipping through earth in a few seconds, they would have forever to accrete.

Most of the matter in the galaxy is moving at astronomical, but not relativistic, velocity with respect to earth. Unless a cosmic ray collides with the minute fraction of matter that is moving at relativistic velocity, in exactly the opposite direction, resulting black holes would still be relativistic. Therefore only a minuscule fraction of natural cosmic-ray-created black holes in the entire galaxy would be moving at less than relativistic velocity with respect to earth. Slow black holes created in other galaxies would not have time to reach earth. Even if a slow micro black hole did approach the solar system, in most cases it would zip around the sun like a comet and return to deep space. Even if its orbit intersected earth, it would only spend a few minutes within earth, not enough to slow it down.

We call this the collider/cosmic ray analogy. It appears to be a false analogy.

Mangano from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Safety Analysis Group discussed these problems with the analogy in his recent talk at Berkeley, and agreed with most of them.

3. Neutron stars are much more heavy and dense, and so would collect them faster, and inside of them the miniblack holes would accrete matter much faster.
4. Neutron stars are long lived, so these stable black holes are doing it no harm. (from this, we can actually set upper bounds on how fast black holes can possibly accrete matter in a worst case scenario). 5. This worst case scenario shows the LHC to be absolutely safe in a worst case scenario.

The neutron star argument is relatively new. I have not had time to review it completely, and I am neither a physicist nor an astronomer. We will have to work on this one. It may be the definitive safety factor that collider advocates (and all of us really) would love to see.

However, the argument has obvious problems. Neutrinos easily transit stars. Neutron stars are generally formed in supernovas. The core of the star becomes a neutron star, and the outer layers of the star are blown away. Therefore neutron stars have less mass than their parent stars. Therefore a line through a neutron star is less likely to intersect mass than a line through a star. Therefore a neutron star is less likely to stop a black hole than its parent star. Astronomers, am I right about this? And, as I say above, almost all natural black holes are traveling at relativistic speeds. Therefore they do not spend much time inside neutron stars.

The question above claims a bunch of facts. Do we know them for sure? Since my group needs to work on this issue, I would appreciate citations. It is not only a matter of appreciate. Proper scientific discussion requires citation or demonstration. If you don’t have citations you lose the argument. But for me right now, the citations are more important than the argument, and I would appreciate them.

Let us go through your claims.

Neutron stars are long lived. If I am right above, this is as expected. However, how do we know this fact? Suppose an occasional neutron star does capture a black hole and explode. (I am assuming that the core is accreted, and the resulting energy blows off the outer layers.) We see many cosmic ray bursts. How do we know some are not exploding neutron stars? There may be a reason, but again my model is not ruled out if all neutron stars are long lived.

We can set upper limits on how fast black holes can accrete mater. What are those limits? Does their calculation assume slow black holes? I would appreciate citations.

This worst case scenario shows the LHC to be absolutely safe in a worst case scenario. I really do hope that this is true. But it needs to be demonstrated.

One similar argument that was cited by Mangano in his recent presentation at Berkeley is contained in [Dar, De Rujula, Heinz,http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910471] They discuss strangelets being swept up in star formation. This would take millions of years. Therefore their scenario is applicable only if strangelets are stable for long periods. But strangelets are thought to be unstable. They even say that strangelets are unstable in their own paper. This alone seems to completely refute their argument. They also talk of a star being entirely converted into a strange remnant, and assert that this would produce a signature that is more energetic than a typical supernova. In a typical supernova, an energetic process in the core blows off the outer layers. They do not explain why the outer layers would not be blown off in the case of a strangelet-conversion supernova. If this does happen, the signature would not be more energetic. It appears that they are wrong twice.

I have seen collider advocates … assume that anyone who questions colliders must be a nut. When they find a collider opponent who asks tough questions, some take their ball and go home.

[These] questions seem quite legitimate to me…

[The] most serious challenge is to Walter Wagner. I rise to defend him. I know the details. I donated the first money he ever got. I think he started his LHC Defense because of my donation.

Walter is the founding father of this field of thought. In 1999 he had a letter to the editor published in Scientific American, a letter that rather gently questioned whether the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which was then being built at Brookhaven, might be dangerous. This started an earlier version of the present media flap. Brookhaven managed to turn off the flap by issuing a report by a group of physicists that considered black holes, strangelets, and transition to a lower vacuum state, and gave what appeared to be strong reasons not to worry. This successfully convinced most people and turned off the media flap. (Unfortunately, the reasons they gave not to worry did not age well. They said that black hole creation required energy beyond the reach of any collider. Now black hole production is predicted by some theories. They also said that a collection of strangelets would be electrically positive on its surface and therefore not attract normal matter. A recent physics paper says they can be electrically negative on their surface.)

Walter also tried a lawsuit at that time, but did not pursue it.

I learned about this issue in 2000. I read a popular article in Scientific American that predicted black hole production at colliders. This article said that Hawking radiation would immediately dissipate black holes. I knew a bit about Hawking radiation. One thing I knew about it is that it has never been seen–scientists have never gotten close enough to a black hole to be able to see it. As a statistician I had been working with low probability risk, so I was quite aware of the logic behind the precautionary principle. This seemed an important place to apply that logic.

I tried writing a letter to the editor. It was not published. I tried writing other things that were also not published. Editors had learned from the Brookhaven flap that there was no problem. Eventually I helped to set up two websites, http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org and http://www.global-risk-sig.org. As I studied the history of the issue I learned about Walter’s letter. I tried to call him once, but he was out. A year or so later, I was impressed when he contacted me via email. He, I and a few others became part of a small group of collider opponents who exchanged email for a couple of years. As an indication of the level of the group, I was the only one who did not have some kind of doctorate–I only had three master’s degrees. One was a Ph.D. physicist, another a global risk expert. We tried a lot of things to try to put the collider issue back on the public agenda. We tried to publish papers, letters to the editor, open letters. We applied for grant funds. We wrote to top scientists. Nothing seemed to work. (Actually, I am not sure but have reason to believe that one of the top scientists we contacted helped convince CERN to set up their current Large Hadron Collider Safety Analysis Group.) Finally one day Walter spoke of filing another lawsuit. He said he would prefer to hire a lawyer, but could file the suit himself. However, even that would cost several thousand dollars in expenses. I immediately gave him $1,000, and another member of the group did likewise.

I have great respect for Walter. He has worked on the collider issue for years, and can write well about it. He is basically a nice guy. He can also be a bit flaky at times. I knew that he had some legal problems. If I could find, and pay for, a better lawyer, I would hire that lawyer. Walter also would prefer to hire another lawyer. It is not easy to find a lawyer to take this case. I have written to dozens of lawyers in Europe, and have yet to find one interested in taking the case there. Of course it would help if we had more money. Walter has been operating on a shoestring.

Whitegoddess disparages donating to the LHCdefense fund. Yes, at the moment I believe it goes directly into Walter’s pocket. He is operating on a shoestring. However I saw a letter he wrote to a potential donor in which he offered to set up a not-for-profit organization, if he could get help in setting up that organization.
I also would like to set up a not-for-profit organization. I have looked into the procedures and the costs. There are legal, accounting, and insurance costs. It can be done on a shoestring, but that takes work, and has problems. Bylaws and a board of directors are required. I would be a bit uncomfortable volunteering to work on that board if there were no officers and directors liability insurance. Doing it right costs thousands of dollars. If someone would like to donate those thousands (or donate the legal and accounting work) we can set up a not-for-profit organization to collect donations for this cause. I volunteer to work for that organization, if it is done right. By now setting up this organization may take too much time since LHC startup is due soon, although such an organization could work on similar issues in the future. Another possibility is to get an existing not-for-profit, tax exempt organization to administer the money. (This is done fairly frequently in the world of grant funding.) Does anyone know of an organization that would be willing to do this for this issue? It is quite possible that someone here happens to belong to such an organization. Otherwise, there is something to be said for trusting Walter. If one doesn’t trust Walter, I can suggest ways to spend money directly out of your own pocket, for specific things that would help.

I would like to have a better organization. To quote former defense secretary Rumsfeld, “You go to war with the army you’ve got, not the army you would like to have.” Actually, our “army” (an important principle is that we are all independent intellectuals) is getting better all the time. For example, I am impressed with this website. But we do not have time to wait for our group to become perfect, or to even to address many of the legitimate problems that critics might point out.