Botanist sues to stop CERN hurling Earth into parallel universe

Classic

Another El Reg classic.

"Appearing last year on paranormal-matters talkshow Coast to Coast ... alongside a time-machine professor"

That's all you need to know about this guy right there. :)

We need the opinion of Amanfrommars on this one real quick!

End of the world

Sounds like there's a 1 in 20 billion chance that the Swiss might produce a blackhole which could trigger the end of the world (WMD anyone?). I'm supprised the US Congress hasn't passed a bill to start a conflict over it yet. Time to clear out the hospitals and cover up any giant red crosses so the US don't think they're targets.

Merchandise

"So inevitably the things Wagner is concerned about will occur, but most of the Wagners in the various alternate Universes will persist and be oblivious to the fact that a strangelet soup claimed them in an alternative branch of time..."

Time for a new Cash'n'Carrion t-shirt?:

"The occupant of this t-shirt was consumed by stranglet custard in a perpendicular alternate universe"

Come on guys, you know you want to....

It's been worried about before

The American "boffinry community" at Los Alamos in 1945 were genuinely worried that the atomic bomb test at Trinity would ignite the atmosphere in a runaway fusion reaction. They did the calculations more than once and kept getting different results. It didn't stop them pushing the button, though. Ah, wait a moment - hardly any of them were actually Americans. Damned irresponsible Europeans, again!

Possible scenarios

Those all sound quite interesting, so damn the monopoles, full speed ahead! Threats to our continued survival are no barrier for science!

/need a Feynman icon...

Appealing to the wrong people me thinks

It's all right appealing to the doodles to get this stopped, wasn't it their decision not all that many years ago to explode a bomb that it was thought by many involved MIGHT incinerate the earths atmosphere, and then exploded the bugger anyway.

If we get sucked into a black hole at least it will be quick ;)

and err,

LMAO at " the Moon remained made of moon"

Icon as we might meet them in the // universe

Problem with his theory

There are events in the universe that are already unleashing far more energetic collisions than this generation of colliders can ever do. Thus far, the universe just keeps ticking on.

Blurring the lines a little, Walter?

A question for Walter: When you study nuclear medicine, does that qualify you to be an expert in quantum mechanics? I think not.....just because both have "nuclear" in their name, doesn't mean they are alike. The phrase "Nuclear Physicist" - as he calls himself on his "website", lhcdefense.org - is a little broad in this case, no?

@ gizmo23

I believe his title is "First Speaker"...

Black Holes and Strangelets.

As has already been noted, any black holes created by the LHC would be subatomic-particle-sized and would dissipate mass via Hawking Radiation far faster than they could accrete it.

Strangelets, on the other hand... Just as neutron stars are composed of neutronium - ultracompressed matter where all the electrons and protons have been forced together into neutrons - it is theorised that even greater compression could cause the neutrons to break down into individual quarks, creating an even denser object composed entirely of strange quarks. This "strangelet" would have a gravitational field powerful enough to accrete matter, and compress the new matter down into more strange quark matter. What is more, it doesn't emit Hawking radiation, and so won't lose mass unsustainably. It doesn't have an event horizon either, so the sensitive detectors of the LHC should be able to track its path as it falls out of the particle beam on its way to the earth's core...

Mine's the white coat, the one with the gloves attached, and the matching leggings, bubble helmet and life support pack. This sort of thing, methinks, is best monitored from the far side of the Moon.

Make $$$ quick, if you have the balls to do it like this?

So the plan, roughly, is:

1. File really stupid lawsuit in a court with zero jurisdiction over the target.

2. Put up a website to collect money for legal fees from people who are too stupid/fearful/Europhobic/scientist-phobic to realize he's talking out of his arse.

3. Go to court, representing yourself. CERN won't bother, knowing it's a bunch of hooey and the court's decision couldn't be upheld even if they did agree with the crazy bastard.

4. Case thrown out. Pay whatever legal fees are incurred. Since your opponent didn't show up, that means only your legal fees and anything to the court I would guess, IANAL though. You represented yourself so you pay yourself your legal costs. Better hope they can't charge you with wasting their time (probably not, just look at the SCO case).

5. Profit!

Of course you also have the option of halting proceedings somewhere just before #3 and making good with the money.

The court should order that he be shipped off to CERN and used as a calibration target for their new toy. :)

Meh, I will be there on monday

I work on ATLAS and it appears nothing is going to stop the LHC from starting up.

If I do get sucked into a black hole then my last thought will be "At least my mother will be proud of me..."

@Simon - what a forgiving mother you have

"If I do get sucked into a black hole then my last thought will be "At least my mother will be proud of me...""

If it was my mother she'd probably say "Fucking typical".

Although there might be some brief ironic enjoyment of going down several billion dress sizes.

any bets he's a registered Democrat?

Doing more to show the stupidity that infests the left of America, abusing the system, screwing other people including a freaking botanical garden over for his own personal gain, and trying to stop real science with stupid ideas and in an inappropriate venue.

bet on weekends he b*tches about American "imperialism" while he and his ilk are the ones actually doing the "imperialistic" actions on the rest of the world.

Democrats and liberals remember: for all the hands pointing fingers, there are four fingers pointing right back atcha. Cultural imperialism, supporting dictators, suppression of science and reason, forced military drafts, censorship and thought control-always we're warned it comes from the Right but it gets implemented by the Left.

The real reason we don't have a HLC type device here in America? Environmentalists and luddites oppose the building of the device and people who want more money to go to socialistic welfare programs and flawed experimental climate research oppose the funding. But no, pull out the same tired "it's not us, it's Bush and Iraq" lie when you all know the HLC was designed and planned and funded loong before, and American projects were shot down in the concept stage long before Soros started his anti-American propaganda activities.

Fire it up, CERN! And worst case, if it does create black holes, imagine the power of the discovery! The magic energy sources all "green" technology needs to actually be "green" and not a scam that moves pollution elsewhere.

At best, more understanding of the Universe we're stuck in. Boo to those who oppose understanding. Especially when there's no direct military benefit or means to oppress the human mind coming from it.

I'd just like to add....

... that should we open up a dimensional rift, I for one welcome our new Trans-Dimensional Insectoid Overlords!!

No, guys!

A lot of people keep saying more extreme conditions exist elsewhere in the universe, inside supernovas and so on, this just ain't so!

Particle smashers nowadays create conditions not seen since tiny, tiny fractions of a second after the big bang. There will be all sorts of exotic particles but they all have tiny, tiny, TINY half-lifes and decay to boring things like protons in electrons before anyone can blink. A proton accelerated fast enough can be turned in to a black hole but that, too will evaporate before it can take in other particles and destroy the planet.

Really strangelets are more worrying although I don't think that's a feasible danger either. Like 'neutronium' strangelets, like the matter of the hypothetical quark stars will probably not be stable anywhere else. He's just a crank...

If the world does end I won't be able to read The Reg anymore... I guess I'll find another website.

You mean they could be inventing the...

... Infinite Improbability Drive?

"Monopoles could trigger a runaway reaction not unlike the quark-strangelet scenario, in which everything gets changed into something else. This could lead to a turn-up for the books, in which the Moon remained made of moon but the Earth was abruptly converted into cheese."

It does work something like that, does it not? :)

I Like Mondays.....:-) Boom Times BritBrats

"Boffins are making names for themselves by spouting what they've read in sci-fi novels." .... By Earl Kubaskie Posted Saturday 29th March 2008 01:46 GMT

Bigger names are made building what can be read in novels, Earl. And it is a moot point as to who be Joint Lead in such Projects/Projections/Managements of Perception/Creations for Reality...... although who would be caring just so long as IT Leads into the Future.

"I work on ATLAS and it appears nothing is going to stop the LHC from starting up.

If I do get sucked into a black hole then my last thought will be "At least my mother will be proud of me..." ... By Simon Posted Friday 28th March 2008 20:37 GMT

Were that it, that more could not be so proud of their achievement, support and guidance ...... Being.

An Evolving Number of Parallel Universes/Dimensions?*

"There could be a parallel Earth ruled by an evil victorious Nazi empire with space battlecruisers and so forth.".... Would that be the one uncloaked by Gary McKinnon and undeniably disclosed to be true by subsequent malicious prosecution? .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon.

A whole can of wormholes in that little DRMadness.

And victorious Nazi is an oxymoron, surely .....

Vainglorious fits better, does it not?

* Well, Stephen Hawking is supposed to work in eleven dimensions, in his head, of course, which is where they are created. Sharing them makes them Real though.

Several miscellaneous comments...

1. We're already changing into a parallel universe...the one beyond this one in the future...one big, long string of parallel universes in God's universe computer. I'm just not sure if God's AFK or not.

2. If CERN does have an accident, it'll probably just nuke Europe. Definitely will make the dollar's value come back up.

3. Don't panic. The world's due to end on December 31, 2012 by some dead culture's calendar. If it's CERN's fault, at least you know how long you have left.

4. Infinite Improbability Drive? Maybe, but the earth's atmosphere will jump about .03AU to the left of Earth's current position on the universe's central axis once it's started. Oops.

5. I'm more concerned about the upcoming alignment of several planets and a supernova - and which side of the planet will be facing it when the moment arrives. Problem is, I can't figure out which side I want to be on.

6. Just imagine what happens when CERN's billiards game screws up...CERN scratches, and a chunk of Earth flies into space...and hits the moon! The moon's going out of orbit...and it hits Mars! A chunk of Mars goes flying into the asteroid belt...and a huge asteroid goes flying back towards the Sun...and slingshots around...and hits Mercury! A chunk of Mercury flies past Venus, and smacks into Earth, right at the exact spot CERN was located. Don't you just hate it when beginners get lucky trick shots?

7. Maybe, just maybe, they'll get it all right, and quantum physics will be reconciled with newtonian physics, and they'll build a bridge between them, and we'll be able to manipulate quanta with machines, then build machines into ourselves a la Technomages in Babylon 5, then wield magic for real, and then we have our first magical civil war. Why worry? It's far too late already.

8. There is no number 8.

9. They wouldn't spend billions of (insert currency unit here) on the machine if they didn't know how it was supposed to work. Unless it was someone else's money...or they wanted to make Bear-Stearns look stupid.

10. It's the world's biggest crappuchino machine. Look out, Starbucks, you've got competition.

Okay, folks, we need a towel icon.

Crackpots in Physics? ..... You cannot be serious.

"I think the crackpots see physics and they somehow think they can make a name for themselves without doing too much hard work." ..... By BKB

Posted Sunday 30th March 2008 04:58 GMT

Methinks physicists would see that as a crackpot's notion, BKB, for one can never ever make a name for oneself without more hard work/sustained application than the next man/woman or even any man or woman before in their Fields. However, they would fully understand why such notions are mainstream and it wouldn't phase them at all .... as IT is a Very dDeep Field with more Tangents and Tangrams in IT than can be Mainstream Imagined. It is their Privilege and Pleasure to Reveal them to All ...... for your Enjoyment and Edutainment.

A New Dawn

Wow, 86 comments on a Large Hadron Collider story. Crackpots and/or super sub-atomic physicists galore supporting El Reg with Thoughts for Binary Inspection/Positive Rendering/Big Picture Inclusion.

Way to Boldly Go, El Reg. The AutoPilot System works Well.

Cosmic Rays Prove Little

CERN’s web site states that we have not been destroyed by effects of cosmic rays and micro black holes will evaporate.

However, cosmic rays travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, and Hawking Radiation is disputed (http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0304042) and contradicts Einstein’s highly successful relativity theory.

Collider particles smash head on like a car collision and can be captured by Earth’s gravity, and relativity predicts micro black holes will not decay (Hawking called Einstein doubly wrong, yet it is Einstein who is repeatedly found to have been correct in his theories). There is currently no reasonable proof of LHC safety, LSAG (LHC Safety Assessment Group) has been trying for months to prove safety without success. I hold the minority opinion that it may not be possible because it may in fact not be safe.

If micro black holes are created, we may soon be trying to calculate the growth rate, and in my personal speculation, it might not be too implausible to believe that calculation might need to account for the same quantum effects that Hawking predicts but as an accelerator not as a decay factor.

NewScientist March 22-28 “Stakes get higher in antimatter puzzle”: “We can say with greater than 99.7 per cent probability that CP violation is there” says Sivestrini [of Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics INFN] (link corrected from article: http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.0659)

Cosmic Rays from the legal complaint.

…any such novel particle created in nature by cosmic ray impacts would be left with a velocity at nearly the speed of light, relative to earth. At such speeds, …, is believed by most theorists to simply pass harmlessly through our planet with nary an impact, safely exiting on the other side. … Conversely, any such novel particle that might be created at the LHC would be at slow speed relative to earth, a goodly percentage would then be captured by earth’s gravity, and could possibly grow larger [accrete matter] with disastrous consequences of the earth turning into a large black hole.

Sincerely, JTankers LHCConcerns.com

What? Me worry?

There's bound to be a Vista PC involved somewhere in all this - so...

It won't work anyway.

(well, there's the IT angle guys)

Ok, I'm going now.

What's a resonance cascade???

Userfriendly.org yesterday:

http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080330

(Yes, I know I'm late)

@everyone saying why sue in america

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?ex=1364529600&en=e0f3790b6598f9ca&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

seems that the reg left the important detail out.

American companies are supplying some components, the person is asking CERN to comply voulentarily, but the law suit intends to kneecap the project by taking away components needed during the build.

what black holes?

you all speak as though black holes exist! its a stupid idea dreamed up by excited scientists in desperate need of funding. Show me some actual evidence for their existence. And as for you beloved hawking, don't even get me started.

Stop - please stop refering to black holes as though there existence is factual.