Is It Immoral to Crash Protons in the Collider?

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I say, “Yes, it is immoral to collide high energy streams of protons in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.”

I am a lawyer. But I know enough about particle physics to be aware that there is a danger that if those high energy proton streams are collided in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, protons will be collided with such incredible violence that they might form what might be referred to as a “Black Hole in Formation,” or “BHF.”

Collider scientists say that, indeed, their machine might form a black hole, but it will evaporate in less than a second due to something called “Hawking Radiation.”

I actually contacted one of the scientists peripherally related to the Collider experiment, and I proposed to him a very simple reason why black holes coming out of the collider won’t evaporate. (Something called “relativistic time dilation” freezes all black holes in the process of formation, so that they never quite finish forming, so that they never evaporate, so that they last as long as the Universe lasts.) He said, “I’m sure that Stephen Haking took that into account.” I showed him evidence that Stephen Hawking did not take time dilation into account. He had no explanation.

I talked to a prominent Delaware Valley astronomer about the problem. He said, “You may be correct.”

It appears that though they won a lawsuit permitting the experiment to go forward, the scientists aren’t really sure that they are correct, and would rather throw the dice and risk destroying the world – no joke! – than admit that their $20 billion science experiment is an error.

If the machine does produce a BHF, it will not evaporate, because time will functionally freeeze inside the object.

It will jump out of the machine, and begin gravitationally absorbing anything it touches. Absorbed matter will begin orbitting the particle as something called an “accretion disk,” and jets of energy ripped-out of the matter in the accretion disk will begin to blast-away at the surrounding environment. It will absorb more and more matter as it blasts its way through the rock encasing the Collider tunnels, getting heavier and heavier. There is a 50% chance it will “go airborne,” for a short time, in a brief sub-orbital flight, and then smash back into the Earth and cut its way to the center of the Earth, leaving a kind of volcano behind itself, and then absorb the Earth – and us – from the inside out.

The Collider scientist I talked to had a second argument: High energy particles come blasting in from space all of the time. If BHFs are a problem because they can’t evaporate, why hasn’t the Earth already been destroyed?

Answer: Tunguska.

More than a century ago, something flew-in out of space and crashed into the Earth, generating the most powerful blast in recorded history – some say a 100 megaton blast. Yet, it left no crater.

I argued that it passed through the Earth, and came out the other side in a second powerful blast that went unnoticed, because it happed in an ocean.

The point is, Collider scientists really are playing dice with the entire Earth.
 
collisions much more energetic than those in the collider occur daily due to cosmic radiation striking the earth (if I’ve understood what I read correctly), so by this fact the scientists conclude that the collider will not destroy the earth.

We know from Scripture how the end of the world occurs, and that it is not really the end, but a new beginning, when Christ returns.

But it is arrogant for scientists to consider if what they will do might destroy the planet, conclude on their own without any consultation with the rest of world society that it will not, and then to go ahead and do it. Arrogance is immoral.
 
Black holes are formed by collapsing stars, which are very massive (ie heavy) objects. A few protons colliding wouldn’t produce a sustainable ‘black hole’ - it would be gone in (very much less than) a blink of an eye. I would rest easy. 😉
 
All of which reminds me of a t-shirt I saw once:

“Protons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic!”
 
I I showed him evidence that Stephen Hawking did not take time dilation into account.
ok, if you are catching Stephen Hawking’s physics mistakes then you have no business being a lawyer and not physicist, or you maybe dont quite understand this as well as you think. i would ease off. they have already fired up colliders before, heck my college had one(not this big but till).
 
All of which reminds me of a t-shirt I saw once:

“Protons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic!”
Actually they are catholic… in a sense

Well, I agree with the person who said that other parties should have been consulted. Those scientiest are arrogant…
 
I recall the same concern when they first considered the Hydrogen Bomb. Would it set off a chain reaction in the ocean? I don’t remember the details of how they thought it might happen, but they finally put it in Gregory Breit’s lap to decide [see **Brighter Than a Thousand Suns].

The problem with answering a problem like that is that being wrong is akin to Pascal’s wager. If you say it is okay and you are wrong, no one will be around to criticize you. If you say it is too dangerous and are wrong, sooner or later someone will try it anyway and you are the goat.
 
The Collider scientist I talked to had a second argument: High energy particles come blasting in from space all of the time. If BHFs are a problem because they can’t evaporate, why hasn’t the Earth already been destroyed?

Answer: Tunguska.
I was interested in this, so i looked up Tunguska and found the following tidbit on Wikipedia regarding one of the many hypotheses of what might have taken place there:

“Black hole
In 1973, Albert A. Jackson and Michael P. Ryan, physicists at the University of Texas, proposed that the Tunguska event was caused by a small (around 10-17 kg to 10-19 kg) black hole passing through the Earth. This hypothesis fails, as there was no so-called exit event — a second explosion occurring as the black hole, having tunneled through the Earth, shot out the other side on its way back into space. Based on the direction of impact, the exit event would have occurred in the North Atlantic, closer than the impact event to the seismic recording stations that collected much of the evidence of the event [earlier the article stated that ‘The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia’]. The hypothesis also fails to account for evidence that cosmic material was deposited by the impacting body, including dust trails in the atmosphere and the distribution of high-nickel magnetic spheres around the impact area.”

Based on this, i believe the argument the scientist made still stands and that all the evidence points to the Tunguska event being caused by a meteorite exploding in air (as opposed to ground impact, which is why it didn’t leave a crater).
 
You do realize that there is already a stereotype about lawyers thinking they are smarter than everyone else??

Hint: you ain’t helping the profession any! 😉
 
I am a lawyer.
Which might explain your hubris in thinking you know more about physics than Stephen Hawking or the physicists working with the collider.
But I know enough about particle physics
No, you don’t.
to be aware that there is a danger that if those high energy proton streams are collided in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, protons will be collided with such incredible violence that they might form what might be referred to as a “Black Hole in Formation,” or “BHF.”
This doesn’t appear to be a standard physics term.
Collider scientists say that, indeed, their machine might form a black hole, but it will evaporate in less than a second due to something called “Hawking Radiation.”
Less than femtoseconds, actually.
I actually contacted one of the scientists peripherally related to the Collider experiment, and I proposed to him a very simple reason why black holes coming out of the collider won’t evaporate. (Something called “relativistic time dilation” freezes all black holes in the process of formation, so that they never quite finish forming, so that they never evaporate, so that they last as long as the Universe lasts.)
You’re wrong. Relativity doesn’t apply at the quantum scale. Relativity is a macroscopic theory which only applies on macroscopic scales; once you’re down to the size of individual molecules/atoms, quantum mechanics takes over, and relativity ceases to apply. One of the major efforts in physics today is to reconcile this issue: that’s the “grand unified theory” that physicists are looking for: one that unifies relativity and quantum mechanics in one theory which applies at all size scales.
He said, “I’m sure that Stephen Hawking took that into account.”
And you think you know better, apparently.
I talked to a prominent Delaware Valley astronomer about the problem. He said, “You may be correct.”
You apparently talked to one of the scientists with more tact than sense, in this case 😉
It appears that though they won a lawsuit permitting the experiment to go forward, the scientists aren’t really sure that they are correct, and would rather throw the dice and risk destroying the world – no joke! – than admit that their $20 billion science experiment is an error.
Or, alternatively, your armchair physicist degree isn’t quite as applicable as you think it is.
If the machine does produce a BHF, it will not evaporate, because time will functionally freeeze inside the object.
Except it won’t, because if relativity applied at the quantum scale, time would be frozen in all atoms
It will jump out of the machine, and begin gravitationally absorbing anything it touches.
Except that it won’t be big enough to absorb anything, and anything it is big enough to absorb will be connected to other particles by far stronger forces such as electrical attraction and weak/strong nuclear force. Gravity is exceedingly weak at the quantum level.
Absorbed matter will begin orbitting the particle as something called an “accretion disk,”
Orbits don’t exist at the quantum level. Please stop applying macroscopic physics on a microscopic scale.
and jets of energy ripped-out of the matter in the accretion disk will begin to blast-away at the surrounding environment. It will absorb more and more matter as it blasts its way through the rock encasing the Collider tunnels, getting heavier and heavier. There is a 50% chance it will “go airborne,” for a short time, in a brief sub-orbital flight, and then smash back into the Earth and cut its way to the center of the Earth, leaving a kind of volcano behind itself, and then absorb the Earth – and us – from the inside out.
Perhaps you should consider writing science fiction; your account is enthralling, even if completely fantastical.
The Collider scientist I talked to had a second argument: High energy particles come blasting in from space all of the time. If BHFs are a problem because they can’t evaporate, why hasn’t the Earth already been destroyed?
Answer: Tunguska.
More than a century ago, something flew-in out of space and crashed into the Earth, generating the most powerful blast in recorded history – some say a 100 megaton blast. Yet, it left no crater.
I argued that it passed through the Earth, and came out the other side in a second powerful blast that went unnoticed, because it happed in an ocean.
The Atlantic ocean, far closer to the seismological devices which detected Tunguska. If those devices detected Tunguska, then a fortiori they would have detected an exit event.

Furthermore, you’ve now added inconsistency to your description. Why would a tiny black hole produced by the LHC leave a Volcano in its wake, if the much larger black hole that you hypothesize caused Tunguska left none? Why would a tiny black hole produced by the LHC settle in the center of the earth, while the larger one that you hypothesize caused Tunguska did not?
The point is, Collider scientists really are playing dice with the entire Earth.
No, you just don’t understand how physics actually works.

Jeremy
 
Hi, Jeremy.

Time dilation is of the essence of the quantum scale. It is what the Lorentz Transformation measures in the most quantum scale quanta of all – light.
 
It just goes to show that they should have built the collider in western Kansas, somewhere between Tribune and Sharon Springs.

If a black hole did form and an accretion disk began to suck in the surronding matter, it would take a long time before anyone would notice.

It wouldn’t even make page 24 in the New York Times for many months.

And if and when the Times finally took notice, it woul merely comment that there woud be, for the time being, one less red state to worry about.
 
I say, “Yes, it is immoral to collide high energy streams of protons in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.”

I am a lawyer. But I know enough about particle physics to be aware that there is a danger that if those high energy proton streams are collided in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, protons will be collided with such incredible violence that they might form what might be referred to as a “Black Hole in Formation,” or “BHF.”

Collider scientists say that, indeed, their machine might form a black hole, but it will evaporate in less than a second due to something called “Hawking Radiation.”

I actually contacted one of the scientists peripherally related to the Collider experiment, and I proposed to him a very simple reason why black holes coming out of the collider won’t evaporate. (Something called “relativistic time dilation” freezes all black holes in the process of formation, so that they never quite finish forming, so that they never evaporate, so that they last as long as the Universe lasts.) He said, “I’m sure that Stephen Haking took that into account.” I showed him evidence that Stephen Hawking did not take time dilation into account. He had no explanation.

I talked to a prominent Delaware Valley astronomer about the problem. He said, “You may be correct.”

It appears that though they won a lawsuit permitting the experiment to go forward, the scientists aren’t really sure that they are correct, and would rather throw the dice and risk destroying the world – no joke! – than admit that their $20 billion science experiment is an error.

If the machine does produce a BHF, it will not evaporate, because time will functionally freeeze inside the object.

It will jump out of the machine, and begin gravitationally absorbing anything it touches. Absorbed matter will begin orbitting the particle as something called an “accretion disk,” and jets of energy ripped-out of the matter in the accretion disk will begin to blast-away at the surrounding environment. It will absorb more and more matter as it blasts its way through the rock encasing the Collider tunnels, getting heavier and heavier. There is a 50% chance it will “go airborne,” for a short time, in a brief sub-orbital flight, and then smash back into the Earth and cut its way to the center of the Earth, leaving a kind of volcano behind itself, and then absorb the Earth – and us – from the inside out.

The Collider scientist I talked to had a second argument: High energy particles come blasting in from space all of the time. If BHFs are a problem because they can’t evaporate, why hasn’t the Earth already been destroyed?

Answer: Tunguska.

More than a century ago, something flew-in out of space and crashed into the Earth, generating the most powerful blast in recorded history – some say a 100 megaton blast. Yet, it left no crater.

I argued that it passed through the Earth, and came out the other side in a second powerful blast that went unnoticed, because it happed in an ocean.

The point is, Collider scientists really are playing dice with the entire Earth.
And you are reading altogether too much science fiction.

But then, having had to plow through legal opinions, I can see why it might be more attractive reading.
 
I was interested in this, so i looked up Tunguska and found the following tidbit on Wikipedia regarding one of the many hypotheses of what might have taken place there:

“Black hole
In 1973, Albert A. Jackson and Michael P. Ryan, physicists at the University of Texas, proposed that the Tunguska event was caused by a small (around 10-17 kg to 10-19 kg) black hole passing through the Earth. This hypothesis fails, as there was no so-called exit event — a second explosion occurring as the black hole, having tunneled through the Earth, shot out the other side on its way back into space. Based on the direction of impact, the exit event would have occurred in the North Atlantic, closer than the impact event to the seismic recording stations that collected much of the evidence of the event [earlier the article stated that ‘The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia’]. The hypothesis also fails to account for evidence that cosmic material was deposited by the impacting body, including dust trails in the atmosphere and the distribution of high-nickel magnetic spheres around the impact area.”

Based on this, i believe the argument the scientist made still stands and that all the evidence points to the Tunguska event being caused by a meteorite exploding in air (as opposed to ground impact, which is why it didn’t leave a crater).
The exploding meteorite hypothesis is also supported by the fall patterns of the trees. Those right under “air zero” (can’t really call it “ground zero”) were left standing, but stripped of their branches, because the shock wave was traveling straight down. As you move out in any direction, the trees were knocked down and pointing away from the central point. I can’t imagine any scenario where a black hole burrowing into the earth would duplicate that.

DaveBj
 
I say, “Yes, it is immoral to collide high energy streams of protons in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.”
I am not sure I understand why you are asking this. Are you asking for our approval of your participation in the experiment, even if it may be immoral?
 
The exploding meteorite hypothesis is also supported by the fall patterns of the trees. Those right under “air zero” (can’t really call it “ground zero”) were left standing, but stripped of their branches, because the shock wave was traveling straight down. As you move out in any direction, the trees were knocked down and pointing away from the central point. I can’t imagine any scenario where a black hole burrowing into the earth would duplicate that.

DaveBj
Was it GBS who said that the saddest sight in the world is the brutal murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of ugly facts? 👍
 
DIdn’t the Church make speeding sinful recently ???

I’m sure this collider is making these protons go much faster than any speed limit ever posted…😛

Is there any commandment that says thou shalt not make any protons collide ???

BTW were these protons wearing seat belts or any have to be in booster seats ??
 
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