76 thoughts on “What Should I Say if Someone Asks Me, “Will the Large Hadron Collider Destroy the World?””
Ian B Gibson
Okay, we’ll trust you. But if the world does get destroyed after all, we expect a full and unreserved apology.
Elliot
I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that any damage done by the LHC will be on the order of 10^9 – 10^12 less than the collective damage that the Bush-Cheney regime have done in Iraq.
Is it time for international war crimes tribunals yet?
e.
Bottlerocket
Come on. It probably won’t destroy the world. Murphy’s law is wrong–most of the time bad things don’t happen. Besides, you know how people are, we apply a technology first, and then decide whether it was a good idea later. And, the bottom line is that science is so specialized, probably only a handful of physicists in the world could reasonably address this issue–and I bet they wouldn’t all agree. Ever read any of those math books about real life risk? We would more profitably worry about pollution, auto accidents (and war of course).
In the world of physics, I’d worry more about the risks of nuclear reactor accidents (remember them?). This is not an anti-nuclear polemic; the risk is negligible, but not zero. I’d recommend people read the book, “Normal Accidents” by Prof. Charles Perrow, who was a consultant to the TMI commission. That will give you something to think about.
Who has time to worry about nuclear accidents when 2-4 million people die from air pollution every year?
If you are the sort of person who is worried about catastrophic events, you best bet is to wear a motorcycle helmet every time you get in a car. That will reduce your risk of dying in a freak accident more than turning off nuclear reactors, hardon colliders, or anything else sciency and strange.
Arun M Thalapillil
On the bright side….this has created a lot of interest/discussion about particle physics in general. I had a friend of mine from the “arts” recently ask me all these interesting questions about what particle physicists do, that I was like WOW! I hope the funding agencies start getting excited about the field too..pretty fast..before it’s too late 😉
chris
and even if you happen to be wrong, nobody will blame you anymore 🙂
Amanda, the crucial point is the last objection mentioned on page ten about dominant risk. Kent uses an emotional argument to dismiss this objection, but from a purely objective point of view, it doesn’t make any sense to worry about a probability of global wipe-out of 10^(-15) per year or less if you know that the probabiliy of being wiped out by a 10 km asteroid is 10^(-8) per year.
Eric
Thanks, Sean, for your pithy response. It’s the same answer I’ve been giving people (and they have been asking).
I’ve been puzzled about the actual physics of this issue, though. Positing for a minute that a microscopic black hole were to be created, and that our theory of Hawking radiation is wrong so that it wouldn’t evaporate instantaneously, what’s the posited mechanism for “destroying the world”? One thing I emphasize in teaching introductory astronomy is that black holes aren’t giant vacuum cleaners – a solar mass black hole in the center of the solar system would no more suck in the Earth than the Sun itself does; the gravitational force at a given distance is exactly the same. So why is a proton-mass black hole more dangerous than, say, a proton? (I don’t know what the posited range of masses would be – up to the beam energy I guess – but that’s the gist of my question.)
Clearly there’s a piece of the picture here I’m missing. Is it the black hole mass? Or is there some other effect? Thanks for any clarification anyone can provide.
I think the difference is that the black hole can continually grow via accretion, unlike a proton. But once you’ve chosen to ignore some laws of physics, it’s not clear to me how you decide which ones to keep.
John R Ramsden
Jeff (#10) wrote:
>
> It could destroy the physics world if Higgs isn’t found.
Chortle! It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good – Some of us are hoping the Higgs won’t be found, myself in particular as I have a $500 bet with a certain string theorist that neither hide nor hair of it will be found by 2012-12-31 😉
KR
When trying to make a decision that has both costs and benefits, probabilities are multiplied by those perceived costs and benefits. 10^-X multiplied by infinity (my perceived cost of the physicists being wrong) is infinity, no? And seeing as the post stopped at ‘no’, the perceived benefits, from the perspective of John Q Public are 0. Although I support the implementation of the LHC, I also think that the patronizing tone of the post was neither helpful, nor written with any cognizance of how lay people are evaluating this effort.
Yeah, I replied to a post on a blog crying that the LHC could destroy the earth with some reason and facts, links to actual science articles about it. The response (from a well-educated person, mind you): “Well, I’d rather be safe than sorry.” ?!?!?!? I don’t get it.
The Almighty Bob
I hope you replied with “if the world is swallowed by a black hole, you’re unlikely to be around to be sorry” or some such. (“,
Chris
KR, I strongly doubt that you actually place a value of infinity on the cost of being wrong. Suppose I said ‘hey! KR, I’ll pay you 10 billion dollars in exchange for letting me run the LHC”, your argument remains unchanged for determining the expected pay off, and you would still say “No.”
Feel free to postulate the response of John Q public, which evidently you have a keen understanding of.
Randy
I’m not too worried about the LHC, but according to Richard Rhode’s book on the making of the atomic bomb there actually were some concerns before the Trinity test that the chain reaction started there could spread uncontrolled. Somebody (Edward Teller maybe??) did the calculations to demonstrate that that couldn’t occur.
Lawrence Crowell
There are of course some theories which involve how a quark-gluon plasma or condensate have a duality on a brane to a black hole interior. So there might end up being some tiny amplitudes or channel processes corresponding to a quantum black hole. However, even if so the BH will decay. These BPS-like black holes will not eat the planet Earth. Cosmic rays slamming into the atmosphere and other bodies would have turned the Earth and everything into black holes otherwise.
I would fight questions with questions: “How do you know not building LHC won’t destroy the world? How do you know the specific way you brush your teeth tomorrow won’t destroy the world?”
I recommend the answer, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
KR
Chris, now you’re changing the rules. Add 10 billion dollars to the mix changes the perceived benefits considerably, don’t you think? I’m now weighing infinity against 10 billion dollars, rather than 0. And 10 billion is going to be multiplied by my perceived value of being that rich, which could be so large, it amounts to infinity.
I don’t actually believe the LHC is dangerous, so infinity multiplied by zero is still zero, but my point is that people weight small probabilities by their perceived costs and benefits. Scientists should consider this fact when they pooh-pooh non-scientists worries about the LHC. If by infinitesimally probabilities, you mean zero, say zero. But if there is still a respected scientist out there who says it’s anything more than zero, be prepared to empathize with John Q Public, because condescension doesn’t win any friends.
BTW – my actual perceived value of 10 billion dollars is zero, which is why I am still a behavioral scientist.
Richard E.
I think the key point about this particular scenario is that collisions with much higher energy happen every day in the upper atmosphere (of both the earth, and the other planets), and if we could create a planet eating black hole with proton-on-proton collisions, it would have happened long ago.
It would be an amusing calculation to compute the number of >10 TeV protons that have hit the upper atmosphere in the last four billion years (assuming a constant cosmic ray spectrum, which may not be wise over that timescale, but is probably conservative) relative to the total luminosity we expect the LHC to deliver over its lifetime.
These collisions are not something that has never happened before in the history of the earth — what the LHC does is to control when and where they happen, and thus surround the interaction region with fancy instruments.
KR
Thanks, Richard E. THAT was the response I was looking for.
Don’t say anything, just knock them unconscious, tie them up and bundle them into the back of the van, along with the other OBSTRUCTIVE FOOLS who would forestall the Nzargs destiny of galactic domination.
The LHC might not actually destroy the world, but what is discovered might! It is impossible to hide what is found and the man can already destroy the world without the LHC, in more ways than one. Hope is under the lid and the box will never open far enough for hope to escape. Leave it closed, we don’t need to look.
Okay, we’ll trust you. But if the world does get destroyed after all, we expect a full and unreserved apology.
I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that any damage done by the LHC will be on the order of 10^9 – 10^12 less than the collective damage that the Bush-Cheney regime have done in Iraq.
Is it time for international war crimes tribunals yet?
e.
Come on. It probably won’t destroy the world. Murphy’s law is wrong–most of the time bad things don’t happen. Besides, you know how people are, we apply a technology first, and then decide whether it was a good idea later. And, the bottom line is that science is so specialized, probably only a handful of physicists in the world could reasonably address this issue–and I bet they wouldn’t all agree. Ever read any of those math books about real life risk? We would more profitably worry about pollution, auto accidents (and war of course).
In the world of physics, I’d worry more about the risks of nuclear reactor accidents (remember them?). This is not an anti-nuclear polemic; the risk is negligible, but not zero. I’d recommend people read the book, “Normal Accidents” by Prof. Charles Perrow, who was a consultant to the TMI commission. That will give you something to think about.
Who has time to worry about nuclear accidents when 2-4 million people die from air pollution every year?
If you are the sort of person who is worried about catastrophic events, you best bet is to wear a motorcycle helmet every time you get in a car. That will reduce your risk of dying in a freak accident more than turning off nuclear reactors, hardon colliders, or anything else sciency and strange.
On the bright side….this has created a lot of interest/discussion about particle physics in general. I had a friend of mine from the “arts” recently ask me all these interesting questions about what particle physicists do, that I was like WOW! I hope the funding agencies start getting excited about the field too..pretty fast..before it’s too late 😉
and even if you happen to be wrong, nobody will blame you anymore 🙂
Amanda, the crucial point is the last objection mentioned on page ten about dominant risk. Kent uses an emotional argument to dismiss this objection, but from a purely objective point of view, it doesn’t make any sense to worry about a probability of global wipe-out of 10^(-15) per year or less if you know that the probabiliy of being wiped out by a 10 km asteroid is 10^(-8) per year.
Thanks, Sean, for your pithy response. It’s the same answer I’ve been giving people (and they have been asking).
I’ve been puzzled about the actual physics of this issue, though. Positing for a minute that a microscopic black hole were to be created, and that our theory of Hawking radiation is wrong so that it wouldn’t evaporate instantaneously, what’s the posited mechanism for “destroying the world”? One thing I emphasize in teaching introductory astronomy is that black holes aren’t giant vacuum cleaners – a solar mass black hole in the center of the solar system would no more suck in the Earth than the Sun itself does; the gravitational force at a given distance is exactly the same. So why is a proton-mass black hole more dangerous than, say, a proton? (I don’t know what the posited range of masses would be – up to the beam energy I guess – but that’s the gist of my question.)
Clearly there’s a piece of the picture here I’m missing. Is it the black hole mass? Or is there some other effect? Thanks for any clarification anyone can provide.
I think the difference is that the black hole can continually grow via accretion, unlike a proton. But once you’ve chosen to ignore some laws of physics, it’s not clear to me how you decide which ones to keep.
Jeff (#10) wrote:
>
> It could destroy the physics world if Higgs isn’t found.
Chortle! It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good – Some of us are hoping the Higgs won’t be found, myself in particular as I have a $500 bet with a certain string theorist that neither hide nor hair of it will be found by 2012-12-31 😉
When trying to make a decision that has both costs and benefits, probabilities are multiplied by those perceived costs and benefits. 10^-X multiplied by infinity (my perceived cost of the physicists being wrong) is infinity, no? And seeing as the post stopped at ‘no’, the perceived benefits, from the perspective of John Q Public are 0. Although I support the implementation of the LHC, I also think that the patronizing tone of the post was neither helpful, nor written with any cognizance of how lay people are evaluating this effort.
Yeah, I replied to a post on a blog crying that the LHC could destroy the earth with some reason and facts, links to actual science articles about it. The response (from a well-educated person, mind you): “Well, I’d rather be safe than sorry.” ?!?!?!? I don’t get it.
I hope you replied with “if the world is swallowed by a black hole, you’re unlikely to be around to be sorry” or some such. (“,
KR, I strongly doubt that you actually place a value of infinity on the cost of being wrong. Suppose I said ‘hey! KR, I’ll pay you 10 billion dollars in exchange for letting me run the LHC”, your argument remains unchanged for determining the expected pay off, and you would still say “No.”
Feel free to postulate the response of John Q public, which evidently you have a keen understanding of.
I’m not too worried about the LHC, but according to Richard Rhode’s book on the making of the atomic bomb there actually were some concerns before the Trinity test that the chain reaction started there could spread uncontrolled. Somebody (Edward Teller maybe??) did the calculations to demonstrate that that couldn’t occur.
There are of course some theories which involve how a quark-gluon plasma or condensate have a duality on a brane to a black hole interior. So there might end up being some tiny amplitudes or channel processes corresponding to a quantum black hole. However, even if so the BH will decay. These BPS-like black holes will not eat the planet Earth. Cosmic rays slamming into the atmosphere and other bodies would have turned the Earth and everything into black holes otherwise.
Lawrence B. Crowell
I would fight questions with questions: “How do you know not building LHC won’t destroy the world? How do you know the specific way you brush your teeth tomorrow won’t destroy the world?”
I recommend the answer, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
Chris, now you’re changing the rules. Add 10 billion dollars to the mix changes the perceived benefits considerably, don’t you think? I’m now weighing infinity against 10 billion dollars, rather than 0. And 10 billion is going to be multiplied by my perceived value of being that rich, which could be so large, it amounts to infinity.
I don’t actually believe the LHC is dangerous, so infinity multiplied by zero is still zero, but my point is that people weight small probabilities by their perceived costs and benefits. Scientists should consider this fact when they pooh-pooh non-scientists worries about the LHC. If by infinitesimally probabilities, you mean zero, say zero. But if there is still a respected scientist out there who says it’s anything more than zero, be prepared to empathize with John Q Public, because condescension doesn’t win any friends.
BTW – my actual perceived value of 10 billion dollars is zero, which is why I am still a behavioral scientist.
I think the key point about this particular scenario is that collisions with much higher energy happen every day in the upper atmosphere (of both the earth, and the other planets), and if we could create a planet eating black hole with proton-on-proton collisions, it would have happened long ago.
It would be an amusing calculation to compute the number of >10 TeV protons that have hit the upper atmosphere in the last four billion years (assuming a constant cosmic ray spectrum, which may not be wise over that timescale, but is probably conservative) relative to the total luminosity we expect the LHC to deliver over its lifetime.
These collisions are not something that has never happened before in the history of the earth — what the LHC does is to control when and where they happen, and thus surround the interaction region with fancy instruments.
Thanks, Richard E. THAT was the response I was looking for.
(Answer to the original question)
Don’t say anything, just knock them unconscious, tie them up and bundle them into the back of the van, along with the other OBSTRUCTIVE FOOLS who would forestall the Nzargs destiny of galactic domination.
HAIL TO NZUNZU, RULER OF THE GALAXY!
The LHC might not actually destroy the world, but what is discovered might! It is impossible to hide what is found and the man can already destroy the world without the LHC, in more ways than one. Hope is under the lid and the box will never open far enough for hope to escape. Leave it closed, we don’t need to look.
Thats should Qubit not Qubits, the “s” seems to have leapt out of my email address and into my name.
And take “the” away.