In the latest Science Saturday at Bloggingheads, Jennifer and I zip from the breathtakingly topical — the Large Hadron Collider, what it’s good for, and why you shouldn’t be scared of it — to the profoundly eternal — calculus, and why people are scared of it.
I’ve finally settled on a proper response to questions about whether the LHC will destroy the world. (After the initial response, I mean.) It comes in two parts.
Part One: To an inquisitive person who is asking in good faith, who has heard a bit about disaster scenarios involving black holes swallowing the Earth, and wants to know why we’re so sanguine about the possibility of global cataclysm. Sure, we can explain that it’s really unlikely you would even make a black hole, and even if you do, that all of physics as we understand it predicts that such a black hole would evaporate away, and that this has been carefully studied.
But the better, and punchier, response is simply: there’s nothing the LHC will do that the Universe hasn’t previously done many times over. This is, of course, the conclusion of the recent paper by Giddings and Mangano. It’s long been understood that the energies attained by high-energy cosmic rays are vastly larger than those created by the LHC; the collisions at CERN aren’t the most energetic in the universe, they’re just the most energetic ones created by human beings, that’s all. But the alarmist brigade, desperate for continued relevance, came up with a loophole: what if black holes are created, but ones from cosmic rays simply escape the Earth’s gravity, while those created at the LHC sit around and eat us up? What G&M show is that, even if that were possible, cosmic rays bumping into to white dwarfs and neutron stars would have created black holes that did get stuck, and would have eaten them up. But the fact is, we see plenty of white dwarfs and neutron stars in the sky; so that’s not a danger. It has nothing to do with any arrogant presumption that we understand physics at high energies, or the evolution of microscopic black holes; it’s simply that there is no scenario in which such black holes are created without having other observable effects. (See a nice write-up of this by Michael Peskin in the new APS online review magazine, entitled simply Physics.)
Part Two: Experience reveals that, even if you carefully explain why there is no allowed scenario in which black holes swallow the Earth, some stubborn folks will still say “But you can never be perfectly sure! So why take the risk?” For them, it makes sense to switch from science and turn to an analogy. (Experience also reveals that people would rather nitpick at the ways in which the analogy is imprecise, rather than addressing its point; but we soldier on.)
So imagine that you go home to cook dinner — you boil some water, drop in some pasta, and pull a jar of tomato sauce from the fridge. But wait! Are you sure you want to open that jar? After all, if you ask any hyper-careful science-type of person, they will tell you that they can’t be absolutely sure that this innocent-looking sauce doesn’t actually host a virulent mutated pathogen. It’s possible — not very likely, but possible — that when you open that jar, a deadly virus will kill you dead, and proceed to eliminate all human life over the course of the next two weeks.
What is the chance of this happening? Very, very small. But not strictly, absolutely zero. And, we must admit, the consequences of being wrong are very bad indeed. And frankly, how much enjoyment are you going to get from that jar of tomato sauce, anyway? The only logical and moral choice would be to forgo the sauce entirely, and just enjoy your pasta plain.
Except this is nuts, of course. Even if the consequences of an action would be truly cataclysmic, sometimes the chances of it happening are so low that we have to take the risk. Or, more accurately, we choose to take the risk, because science never proves anything beyond any possible doubt, and we can’t help but take such improbable risks all the time. Maybe there is a fleet of invisible alien spaceships hovering over head, testing our commitment to unlocking the secrets of the universe, and they will destroy the Earth with their alien death-lasers if we don’t turn on the LHC. There’s a chance!
And that’s a chance I don’t want to take.
But are black holes the only danger to consider? Are “strangelets” even worth considering and worrying about? They sound like a sort of vampire matter. The Wikipedia articleindicates some relevance to real theory, and that Ed Witten was involved with the “strange matter hypothesis” – that larger complexes with strange quarks could exist. The article says that if the strangelet idea was true, neutron starts would have already been “converted” by now. But evidence shows neutron stars are likely to have “normal” (relatively speaking) composition, so I suppose there won’t be a problem.
In any case, the LHC still hasn’t done actual proton collisions yet, true? Hence we still don’t know directly what that will do … Maybe “quantum suicide” will save us even if something does go wrong, look it up.
The real danger is that LHC might turn into a helium-bomb (as in helium spilling out and destroying magnets…). It’s far far more likely than black holes or strangelets.
Neil, the people at Cern have created a nice page that addresses black holes, strangelets and all sorts of other worries. You can read it here.
That page is actually a summary of a 15-page report, available in PDF form here.
But let me cut to the chase. No, there’s nothing to worry about from black holes, strangelets, or any other doomsday scenarios.
Brilliant.
Ditto, Thomas.
i say bravo! it was most heartening when ms. ouellette expressed with such verve and force the critical importance of science & mathematics in our modern world.
yours truly,
c.v. snicker
Yeah, but if that pathogen would kill the whole world instantly, and you had the only jar of pasta sauce on earth that might contain that pathogen, you might choose not to open the jar.
Good one on the aliens at the end
This is exactly why I always make pasta sauce from scratch. You can’t be too careful.
Once I took a not-so-old jar of supermarket pasta sauce out of the fridge, unscrewed to lid, and heard a big pop. I looked around the kitchen and there was sauce everywhere, on the cabinets, the dishwasher, everything. I think it had fermented and built up pressure. To this day, I wish I never opened that jar.
And of course while you ponder the jar of sauce the pot will overjheat and when you rush to take it off you’ll burn your hand so badly you’ll end up with gangrene and have to have it amputated.
Better not to cook at all. And don’t get me started on eating!
Your Science Saturday at Bloggingheads.tv was Great!
The last huge sea change in our world was associated with CERN – Tim Berners-Lee who connected hypertext with the internet to form the World Wide Web – worked at CERN as he developed the then new and very foreign concept of the WWW. Perhaps the LHC at CERN will begin another sea change into something rich and strange.
KenF wrote:
Ken, you’re totally missing the point. There’s no basis for thinking your jar of pasta or any other would destroy the world, just like there’s no basis for thinking the LHC will destroy the world. Do you give up eating pasta sauce because someone can think of some totally unrealistic scenario in which pasta destroys the world, with no evidence to back it up? Of course not.
Eating a different jar of pasta isn’t an option — the risks are the same (that is, equally non-existent) for whichever jar of pasta you open. Likewise, it’s not like some different particle accelerator would be safer. People would invent the same ludicrous scenarios for any of them (in fact, people have voiced similar concerns for previous experiments like RHIC). So, do you give up doing high energy physics research just because people can dream up nonsensical doomsday scenarios that are contradicted by theory and by empirical observations?
Science cannot prove with 100% certainty that any action won’t destroy the world. And yet I suspect you aren’t about to give up performing actions.
This was good. But I think people choose to believe the doomsday scenario, and there’s not much anyone can do about that. Best to ignore those who keep pushing it. My Mom asked me about this – she’s the inquisitive person who asks in good faith, and she was convinced and went about with what she normally does.
The skeptics have one more argument going for them, and this is the question that even I would like answered. Many websites, including the Discovery and History Channel programs on the LHC keep repeating that the LHC is going to recreate particles ‘that the Universe has never seen’ since after the original Big Bang that created this universe. I cant immediately point to links here, but there’s plenty of talk to that effect. Which leads to the question, is it true that particles are going to appear for the first time since the Bang? If not what ARE they trying to say? The cosmic ray argument – as true as it is – doesnt seem to work for skeptics that believe that the ‘Second Big Bang’ is going to occur soon.
Seems others have asked and addressed the same question I had:
Simple Wikipedia searches tell us that cosmic energies a million times more powerful than the LHC have been observed regularly.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2008/07/recreating-big-bang.html
Its ridiculous that the media keeps spouting the same nonsense over and over and over again.
Sean, while you cite facts here, the media spreads its own version with snazzy animations and sound effects – they wouldn’t put so much effort into it if it weren’t true, would they?.
You need to point to media articles like those mentioned in the link above (BBC, CNN) and call them on it. Even the History Channel program oft mentioned here (the one broadcast just before the LHC was ‘turned on’) was titled ‘The Next Big Bang’ – can’t blame people for being misled. But then again, its even harder to explain to the lay person why so much money and infrastructure goes into reproducing something thats been observed in space many times before. Its easier to justify it by saying Man’s recreating the Big bang.
I would add that it seems to me that the scenario of an advanced alien civilization observing us, with an ethical code such that we would be judged non-sentient if we do not turn on the LHC, and thus not entitled to being protected from their version of paving over our solar system, just as we might pave over an anthill, but set aside protected land for the Spotted Owl, is, on the balance, more probable than the generation of a earth destroying black hole or strangelet by the LHC!
I rather have those evil alien death lasers than the LHC swallowing us up with miniblackholes though.
Seems more cool.
So let me get this straight, since I am one of those people who do not have “genius” before my name.
You don’t know, good or bad, what will happen, then why do it
The last time you guys got together on a grand scale it was called the Manhattan Project, lost a couple cities in Japan, and started the cold war complete with backyard bomb shelters and fallout shelters.
So what do you guys think, whatever you discover will be used for the good of mankind, or will some gov’t or group use the knowledge to dominate, use, or destroy mankind, maybe instead of a few cities missing we might have a few sections of this planet missing. But that is O.K. at least we will know what happened at the big bang
Ron
P.S I hear you are looking for the “GOD Particle”, would that make you GOD-LIKE
if you find it
Oh No – No but Great – If the Physics guys cant work at finding the – big bang oracle – Let them work in Finance!!!???
The thing that bothers me about this is that the Mangano Giddings work was done and published just as the LHC was being finished. It seems to me that Sean should at least concede that the critics of the original safety reviews (including me) at least had enough of a point that CERN considered they had to answer it. The criticism was therefore not completely nutty, yet the comments of most physicists now makes it sound as if there is quite a lot of resentment that that non physicists should have had the temerity to suggest that this should be looked at.
“steve from brisbane on Sep 22nd, 2008 at 6:49 am” writes:
“…it seems to me that Sean should at least concede that the critics of the original safety reviews (including me) at least had enough of a point that CERN considered they had to answer it. The criticism was therefore not completely nutty…”
Well no, the criticism WAS completely nutty. It was obviously wrong nonsense by people who had no idea what they were talking about, as was evident to anyone who took the time and effort
to read it carefully. I note incidentally that that doesn’t include you; twice now on blogs that I was reading you tried to advertise Plaga’s wrong “calculation”. Both times I wrote a reply pointing you to the paper of Mangano and Giddings that showed the error in Plaga’s calculation [most recenlty in the comments section of Mark’s post “Calling a Crackpot a Crackpot”], and even telling you the one [1] specific paragraph you should read to see why Plaga was wrong. What was your reply? [included here for other readers’ convenience]:
“Steve from brisbane on Sep 9th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
None of the above: it was not easy for a lay person to follow that paragraph. You might spent all day reading papers with maths and physics terminology at a university level discussed in them: most of the world doesn’t.”
One paragraph! You have the time to write on multiple blogs advertising the Plaga paper, but couldn’t spare the time and effort to bother to carefully read *one paragraph* to understand whether the paper you’re using to scare people is fatally flawed or not [and it’s not even a particularly maths-heavy paragraph!].
Furthermore, the recent criticism of LHC safety appears to be malicious, or at best self-serving, in timing and intent. The LHC has been planned for 20 years, and under construction for 10. There was a thorough safety review in 2003 by distinguished senior physicists from across Europe, following a similar study that had been undertaken to assess RHIC safety before it turned on in 1999, done by a panel of distinguished american physicists. We didn’t hear anything from Rossler and Plaga in 2003, nor in 2004, nor in 2005, nor in 2006, nor in 2007, then suddenly this year, with turn-on scheduled in a few months, they launch this emergency internet campaign to prevent the imminent turn on of the LHC, or at least delay it while they have public “conferences” on the safety, and perhaps a little publicity about how some of the CERN budget could be better spent on projects that they deem more worthwhile…. For a better researched [than I have attempted] take on the motivations of those involved you might want to look at:
http://onscreen-scientist.com/?p=34
What they used to justify this was obvious nonsense. In a perfect world CERN could have just ignored them as crackpots. In the real world with them raising an internet campaign, ably abetted by people such as yourself who were happy to advertise their views without troubling yourself too much whether they were actually correct, CERN had no choice but to do yet another study, to lay to rest the vivid fears that you had so successfully whipped up in the minds of at least a portion of the public. They didn’t do this because the “critics had enough of a point” [they don’t have any valid point at all, hence Mark’s post “calling a crackpot a crackpot”]; CERN did this because those mounting the internet campaign had succeeded in causing real fear [however groundless] and distress among at least a portion of the population. There’s no reason for people to live in groundless fear, and it has an adverse effect on both public life, and the willingness of the public to support research, and appreciate the research they do support. So CERN, at considerable sacrifice to the scientists involved, did yet another, even longer report, with of course the same conclusions [it’s not like the laws of physics have changed in the last five years…].
So let us sum up what this internet campaign of fear has accomplished:
[1] Needlessly and groundlessly frightened a segment of the population that lacks the informational resources to realize that it’s all total nonsense.
[2] Wasted man-years of time of some of the most distinguished and productive physicists on the planet, trying to repond to those fears with factual reports and public outreach.
[3] Tied up CERN legal services in two frivolous lawsuits, at least one of which involves an individual who has apparently had a long and colourful track record in the american court system. [legal services normally handles the drafting of bilateral agreements with organizations and countries to promote the access of scientists woldwide to CERN, among other things]
[4] Wasted the time and money of the Americal Physical Society, who felt compelled to file an
“amicus curiae” brief in the lawsuit in Hawaii, to point out that it’s nonsense.
[5] Tied up outreach efforts of both the CERN press and publications offices, and a fraction of the scientific staff, who spend their time dealing with misinformation, concerns, and hate mail, instead of being able to spread scientific understanding.
[6] Burdened CERN with extra costs for augmented security, in view of the physical threats to both CERN and the scientists that work there. Every Swiss Franc spent on better security at CERN is one less that is available, for example, to bring young scientist to CERN, from say the third world, or for that matter the antipodes.
[7] Subjected european and american physicists to physical threats, including death threats.
In view of this let me just try to be be perfectly certain that I understand the content of your comment. My colleagues, people that I like, respect, and admire, have had their life and work disrupted by an internet fear campaign that you have abetted, and are in some cases receiving death threats because of it. And you think that Sean owes you an apology for outing you as a clueless alarmist?
You can also use an anthropic principle to argue that the LHC will not created an Earth ending black hole. Simply: if the laws of physics were such that the energies at he LHC were sufficient to create a black hole that could cause a natural disaster, then galactic, even solar processes would have created so many of these black holes that solar systems and planets would not be stable, let alone life bearing.
I don’t believe you will end the world by accident, its the intentional use of the new
technology/science that I fear might.
So, let me try it again, can you assure my children and grand children that this new science will not be used in a future weapon that will make the atomic bomb look like a toy
Ron
P.S. You just disregarded my question, to get to Steve from brisbane and after a long tirade you call him a clueless alarmist. Nice, it shows a lot of class
maybe you just don’t care who controls, or uses the new science that results from the LHC.
BTW folks, if I can remind you again why we really have nothing to worry about for sure: if quantum multiverse theory is true, then no matter how tiny a chance any of us has of surviving whatever the LHC does (as long as it’s conditioned on quantum probability), the surviving branch-versions of us will be aware and able to say “look, here we are” – but the ones that died can’t. Hence their would-be experiences don’t count, at least according to the “quantum suicide” and “quantum immortality” ideas, and your “expectation” is to live however improbable. But it only works out desirably if the result *kills* you, otherwise you might be miserable in a messed-up world (like we have now for other reasons …)
I was at a cute lecture at J-Lab today about this, referencing work of offbeat modal realist and multiversitarian Max Tegmark: Accelerator Seminar What a blast, I did the explaining of “quantum suicide” for the assembled to their great entertainment and perplexity.
5,284…5,285….