Personally, I believe that the Earth won’t be destroyed. Similar claims were made about they hydrogen bomb (that it will burn up all the oxygen in the atmosphere upon detonation, and other such nonsense).

If the earth IS destroyed, with my dying breath I’ll remember you, JTankers :).

Article quote: “But the chance that such a black hole would not instantly evaporate according to a theory famously propounded by Stephen Hawking in 1974 is even more weirdly unlikely, the theorists say”.

I did some research, and the following physicists published peer reviewed papers that question claims that micro black hole might evaporate before they grow:

Dr. Adam D. Helfer: xxx.lanl.gov/abs/gr-qc/0304042
Dr. William G. Unruh and Prof. Ralf Schützhold: arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0408/0408009v2.pdf
Prof. V.A. Belinski: ingentaconnect.com/content/els/ 03759601/1995/00000209/00000001/art00785
Dr. Adam D. Helfer: arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/0503/0503052v1.pdf

The article also reads “Cern’s most recent safety report, in 2003, focused mostly on refuting the strangelet threat in the hadron collider and devoted just three pages to black holes, saying they “do not present a conceivable risk.””

CERNs web site refers to the 1999 RHIC safety study which also determined zero risk from micro black holes, because it was determined that creation of micro black holes was not possible at collider energies. However physicist, and CERN themselves, have changed this prediction from no chance to ‘not unexpected’.
And the 1999 RHIC Safety report did not address the risks if micro black holes were actually created. It did not address accretion time, capture rates, or the possibility of evaporation. It just did not address these issues at all.

Sor CERN now predicts that micro black holes might be created at a rate of one per second, that is what they posted on there Safety web site earlier this year. And CERN still attests to the fact that micro black hole creation will not be an unexpected event when collissions begin. But they do assure us that even if micro black holes do not evaporate, they will grow too slowly to pose any concievable threat to Earth during Earth’s 5 billion year expected life time. And CERN will produce proof to this effect soon, they are still working on the proof.

However, one of Germanies more famouse scientists, Dr. Otto E. Rossler, father of Chaos theory calculates that a single micro black hole might accrete the Earth in as few as 50 months: wissensnavigator.com/documents/OTTOROESSLERMINIBLACKHOLE.pdf

But colliders are not the only type of experiment that might be capable of creating micro black holes. In fact if you ask ask Nobel Laureate Dr. Eric A. Cornell, who leads Bose-Einstein condensate research at the University of Colorado, if creation of a micro black hole might explain thousands of missing atoms after an unexplained (bosenova) implosion of a “super atom” containing 16,000 atoms at 3 nk (3 billionths of a degree above absolute zero). He may tell you that more likely there is an alternate explanation, but no alternate explanation that he can fully explain. nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2001/cornellwieman-lecture.pdf

I also know that the LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) has conceded that cosmic ray impacts with Earth would send all particles safety into space so cosmic ray impacts would not pose a threat to Earth. LSAG has also acknowledged that they do not assume that micro black holes will evaporate for the purpose of risk assessment, though they believe that is what will happen.

I also am not an expert in particle physics. But I do have a hard time understanding why we should be assured that there is no conceivable threat, when by my ‘back of the note book’ calculations, I can imagine that the threat might be as high as 100%. Or as low as zero percent, and reasonable and credible physicists do not agree.

It seems reasonable to me then, that a safety study should least address the risks that micro black hole creation an capture by Earth’s gravity might pose. And further, it seems reasonable to me that such a study be rigorously, independently and widely peer reviewed over a reasonable period of time before we find out if the risk was closer to 100% or closer to 0% by actually possibly creating micro black holes and watching to see what happens. That sounds reasonable to me.

Thank you,
James Tankersley Jr.
Co-Moderator, LHC Concerns.com, web site for laypersons

True, the LHC’s method of smashing particles together differs from nature’s, but the results are the same. The magnetic fields employed in the LHC create dense particle beams that optimize the natural situation rather than changing it. These streamlined beams lead to a higher chance of producing head-on collisions than cosmic rays do.

Cosmic ray collisions occur at higher energies than those induced by the LHC (on the order of 10^20 eV vs. 10^12 eV). Most importantly, cosmic ray collisions have greater “center-of-mass” energies — the amount of energy available for creating new particles, and therefore the quantities that would produce potentially catastrophic phenomena (on the order of 10^15 eV vs. 10^12 eV).

The question is, Have enough extremely high-energy cosmic ray events taken place in history that we can bet they won’t lead to the apocalypse? Considering cosmic rays have occurred on earth and elsewhere since the birth of the universe, this is statistically a fairly safe assumption.

Hopefully that helps; I’m no expert on particle physics. You might also be interested in this article on the LHC risk debate by New York Times science writer Dennis Overbye at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15risk.html

“the potential benefits of using the LHC far, far outweigh the risks”

According to CERN, apparently there are no risks.

However it is also possible that the probabilities of creating micro black holes in head-on collider collisions of LHC energy levels may approach 100%.

I find it difficult to comprehend how a stray cosmic ray (a rare proton traveling so fast as to have energies as high as 10^20 eV) hitting a relatively stationary particle on Earth, even if the impact was exactly center mass, could create the same conditions as head-on particle collider collisions where powerful magnetic fields laterally and opposing momentums of thousands of protons or protons to anti-protons traveling in exactly opposite directions at 99.9999991% the speed of light collide in head-on collisions designed to focus the energies between the particles on impact.

Where in nature and how frequently in nature are these conditions replicated?

Thank you,
JTankers
LHCConcerns.com

According to CERN, there are no risks. But it is also possible that the risks of creating a micro black hole may approach 100% above a certain energy.

I find it diffucult to comprehend how a stray cosmic ray (a rare proton traveling so fast as to have energies as high as 10^20 eV) hiting a single relatively stationary particle on Earth, even if the impact was exactly center mass, could create the same conditions as a head-on particle collider collission where powerful magnetic fields laterally and oppsing momentums of thousands of protons or protons to anti-protons traveling in exactly opposite directions at 99.9999991% the speed of light collide in head-on collissions designed to focus the energies between the particles on impact.

Where in nature are these conditions replicated?

Thank you,
JTankers
LHCConcerns.com