Talk:Large Hadron Collider/Archive 4

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bombardment from space

I'm confused by the section on potential dangers. It says that earth is regularly hit by high energy rays far more powerful than those being procuded by the LHC. But if so why is the LHC even being built? Why not just look at these beams from space instead of having to make our own? I'm assuming it is because there is something *special* about the LHC that makes it different from the space rays - so surely it is possible this difference is what may cause a catastrophic event? --86.152.126.105 (talk) 17:41, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

First of all cosmic rays aren't a beam, they are a single particle. In answer to your question I'd imagine it something along the lines of the amount of collisions generated. Cosmic rays you can see using cerrtain apparatus, the direction can't be guarenteed, the amount, the timing or even the energy. The LHC will create a magnitude more collisions, in a controlled environment exactly when and where and at the energies the physicists require. Khukri 18:28, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
It would be awfully hard to predict where a cosmic ray is going to hit, and try to maneuver the ATLAS detector into position in time.  :) And you would probably have to do it for several billion years to observe as many events as an LHC detector can see in a few hours. Rotiro (talk) 20:49, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Cosmic rays move at speeds very close to light. The collision products from the LHC will in some cases be more or less at rest. That's the difference; they're going to stick around long enough to interact with the environment, while cosmic rays can't. (I really, really hope the physicists are right in their guesses that (a) black holes are unlikely and (b) they would decay fast, because the most common argument - that cosmic rays also make them and we're still here - is flawed. Couldn't this wait a few decades until we could build it on mars or something?) Anaholic (talk) 23:44, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
I think the argument that collision products will often be produced at rest is flawed as described here. Perhaps if by "rest" you mean less than around 10 kilometers per second, it could happen on the rare occasion, but if you mean something like 1 meter/s , it's exceedingly improbable even for the heaviest objects that LHC can possibly produce. And, the argument that we build the LHC instead of using cosmic rays because of relative speeds is also not entirely true. Besides, due to time dilation, a fast-moving particle lives longer than a slow one. In any case, most particles of current interest will never live long enough to interact with the environment no matter their speed. The particles themselves never touch the detector, in fact sometimes they never even travel the distance of a proton's diameter. Instead, you just detect the decay products. Rotiro (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Given that Earth's escape velocity is 11.2 km/s, I think 10 km/s is quite low enough. Perhaps if it's rare enough we'd figure out something bad is going on before we *capture* a black hole or similar bogey, though. My criticism isn't based on this being at all /likely/, though; it's based on the theory that we already know enough about the universe to be able to colonize this solar system fairly safely and easily, so we don"t really need to build it yet. If there's zero benefit, no risk is worth it; if the benefit is sufficiently low, even a trillion-to-one chance of disaster is too much, and I suspect that the scientists in charge of judging the risk are biased in favor of letting LHC go ahead. Anaholic (talk) 20:38, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
How about a google to 1? Some cosmologists think that there is an incerdibly tiny likelyhood that the LHC could destroy the universe. It is unlikely because the conditions present in the LHC are still less harsh than those present in a supernova, and under that theory, a supernova could have destroyed the universe.Holoeconomics (talk) 12:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Animated GIF

Is it necessary to have a 4.0 MB file loading in this page? It's horribly boring and doesn't add to the article. It just slows down the load time tremendously. —scarecroe (talk) 16:56, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I was going to suggest the same thing. Stuck on a capped connection, loading this page is a nightmare. --Closedmouth (talk) 01:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Resolved
 – Khukri 08:26, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't see how degrading the quality of this article by removing such an informative and enlightening image is a positive change. At the very least, that image should be accessible from the Commons link or something to that effect - bumping it off the article entirely was not helpful. MalikCarr (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
No one said you can't add a link to it. Khukri 20:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Expert

Other than general overview, what are we looking for an expert in the field for? I have a masters in physics so I'd put myself forward but Im not an expert on particle physics so I may be able to help. CaptinJohn (talk) 13:11, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It's mostly the safety concerns section that needs to be worked on. Claims and counter-claims are made which can't really be verified by someone without the necessary understanding of the subject. --Closedmouth (talk) 13:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
The main problem is the fact that most of it is theory, and in the same vein as the Young Earth Creationist v Evolution debates, there are too many arguments started from a sound basis in physics or science that jump to scare mongering, horror stories and down right rubbish. I could get any number of physcists to check over the article, but unfortunately in the same way that so many people believe that there was someone on the grassy knoll, this would just lead to accusations (such as I have received) of censorship and bias. I'm keeping an eye on the page as it's clear a few others are. I'll delete the spam to external sites that aren't used as a clear reference or read almost identical to the moon landing hoax websites.
Though in saying all this it is a valid concern that has gained popular press so it should be adressed, but not to become the focus of the article. Now my personal opinion we'll find out soon enough, and in 8 months time it'll become a footnote in the same way the fears that the manhatten project were going to ignite the atmosphere are nowadays. Khukri 14:24, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, now can we remove the "Needs attention from an expert" tag? Dark Formal (talk) 03:57, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
I think so. CaptinJohn (talk) 11:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 Done --Closedmouth (talk) 12:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Safety Concerns section

Expert Opinion! I'm Coming in at the top of this thread because it kind of cuts across everything being discussed here. We need an expert to weigh in with an independent opinion and try to turn this matter into some content that's actually reliable and useful for readers of the main article. So I've put a request on this for an expert in Health and Safety to have a look at all the physics arguments and try to pull the safety concerns section together into something meaningful and relatively definitive.

Robfrost (talk) 15:14, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

As a physicist somewhat involved with the project, I'll recuse myself from getting rid of all the BS, but I am going to get rid of redundant parts. -- Jeffakolb 22:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

At the end of the "safety concern" section it says that cosmic rays have millions of times more energy than what the LHC produces. But what counts is the center of mass energy and that's not so much more for cosmic rays hitting earth than for the LHC, thus I've changed the formulation. (Nota bene: far be it from me to give any credence to this science-fiction safety concern bullshit, but let's at least be correct.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.0.81.16 (talk) 21:24:11, August 19, 2007 (UTC)

I don't think we are all going to get sucked into the LHC, but genuine, well referenced content that informs readers about safety concerns relating to the LHC keeps getting deleted from the safety concerns section by people apparently having a vested interest in the project. How would everybody feel about the proposal that people refrain from deleting perfectly good Wikipedia content such as the following:
"The Large Hadron Collider is expected to create tiny black holes within the Earth [1]. A primary cause for concern is the fact that Hawking Radiation - the only means by which these black holes could be dissipated, is entirely theoretical."
It's accurate, factual and informative. People who think the project is safe, if they have some well referenced and reasoned argument, perhaps they ought to consider adding a section of "Safety Reassurances" rather than subverting the "Safety Concerns" section into a "It's Really Safe" section. The Wiki guidelines say "INCLUDE CONFLICTING VIEWPOINTS". -Robfrost 20:18, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Please keep in mind: these concerns about particle collisions causing some gigantic catastrophe are usually considered to be "far-out". Mainstream physicists really don't believe there's a possibility for something like that happening. I'd say just a brief mentioning of the issue is enough (well, don't know). By the way: I think "...LHC is EXPECTED to create black holes" is saying too much. I think even this is rather speculative. Maybe better: "...may possibly create (according to some theories)...". Also: To me a quick "back of the envelope" calculation indicates that indeed cosmic rays generate events with higher center of mass energies than LHC (though not millions of times more), thus I don't see a problem with that argument. (Or maybe some people expect big deviations from Lorenz invariance...? Again, I'd say: very inprobable and speculative...) 85.2.203.71 15:23, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I think most people with safety concerns agree with you that the likelihood of disaster is infinitessimally small. However the point they are making is that the potential disaster scenarios are so grave (i.e. worst case scenario - destruction of the planet and anihilation of everything on it), that even the tiniest probability of that event constitutes a serious safety concern. I think there's a feeling out there that in view of the size of the stakes, somebody detached from physics and separate from the project such as a judge or polititian should have everybody up in front of them and make an independent review of the project's safety. That's what has happened with one previous particle accelerator that I know of, before allowing it to go ahead.
As regards the energy of the particles, CERN's own paper on the subject says that although the LHC particle energies are individually lower than cosmic rays, it is the concentration of them that is much greater within the LHC, which poses additional risks - risks which they have attempted to quantify.
I don't agree that the "creation of black holes" statement over-eggs the argument. Much publicity has been created by those promoting this project that it is recreating circumstances that haven't existed since a fraction of a second after the big bang. That's a pretty big claim, but once the discussion moves to safety they want to distance themselves from it.
Finally, us physicists have a proven track record of generating unforseen results. That's the thrill of physics. John Hall Edwards pioneered the use of X-Rays in medicine but had to have his hand amputated. Super K exploded. Even my school teacher blew the windows out.
I would like to pose these two questions to anybody participating in the safety debate:
What constitutes an acceptable probability of global anihilation?
And what is the probability of the LHC causing such a disaster? -195.195.109.134 18:08, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
As a random layman, I appreciate your perspective on this. Russian roulette with a billion-barrel gun is still Russian roulette. And I always find the probability "calculations" funny because what they're really estimating is the chance that the standard theory is wrong. How can you estimate a probability for a theory being correct or incorrect? Some theories may have less support, but they're just as likely to be correct. What should really be said is, "By the standard model, there is no chance of creating a stable miniature black hole that could threaten the Earth. Some models, however..." Any numbers people give you have to be completely arbitrary. Let's just hope Hawking is right.--24.143.237.216 20:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Third question: what is the probability of global annihilation in the absence of the LHC?. Indeed, from natural causes independent of man? Well, it approaches 1 if we wait long enough; the obvious candidate is the sun becoming a red giant in about 6 billion years. This leads to an answer to your first question: I would say that anything less than a tenth of the "background level" of global annihilation probability is acceptable, although others might like to reserve some of that budget for non-LHC experiments. I cannot prove anything with exactly zero chance of error, including that the earth exists in the first place, that vogons are not going to blow it up tomorrow to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and that my next fart won't crack the planet in two. There are just some probabilities so low that even Pascal's wager is a silly argument. I'm not going to bother holding in my next fart due to a non-zero probability that it will destroy life as we know it.
What is the probability that the LHC will avert global annihilation through the new physics it discovers? It sure would be nice to stop burning all that coal. 71.41.210.146 (talk) 08:49, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure, if a possible accident is very bad, one wants to make accordingly sure that it's really very unlikely. But there should be some plausibility to the accident, otherwise we would have to start to consider speculative "alternative theories" for every case where something new is being done (...). Anyways, it's a fringe community that thinks it's worth worrying about the LHC, and let's make sure this is clear in the article. 85.2.203.71 21:04, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by a "fringe community" and what evidence do you have to justify categorising people with safety concerns as such? -Robfrost 17:04, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I didn't mean to be offensive. But I claim that within the scientific community these LHC safety concerns are not given credence (like it or not) and that this should be apparent in the article. --85.2.249.107 21:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Not offensive in the slightest. If you want to make this apparent in the article you just need state it and provide some good reliable sources. It looks to me like there are plenty of sources in the scientific community that DO give credence to the safety concerns, and the references are provided. 195.195.109.134 17:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Do people think we could combine the 2 safety sections into one (perhaps Safety Issues with a paragraph or 2 on concerns and then a paragraph or 2 of rebuttals). As it is it's confusing because both seem to be speaking authoritatively when perhaps neither should. Also aren’t most of these issues (not monopoles) covered at Blackholes and in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider articles. Perhaps we should add that despite arguments over the size of the risk and its nature the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has been running for a while without incident. Hope this goes down well. John CaptinJohn 14:59, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi John, I'm happy with the changes you've made, but the article has suffered from an editing war, particularly by so-called "scientists involved with the project" calling safety concerns "BS" and deleting them. The sections were separated into to two to try to alleviate this problem by representing both points of view fairly. 195.195.109.134 17:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Just getting back to this after a bit of a wiki-haitus: As far as I know, I'm the only one who's called anything "BS" and I'm the only one who's identified him/herself as associated with the project (and only tenuously so). Furthermore, I haven't deleted anything since my original edits in August, which were well-explained here. As the article stands, though, I'm basically content. I still take issue with some of the arguments for the inclusion of these highly speculative disasters. For instance, Hawking radiation is basically un-proven, although it fits quite well with astrophysical data. I would argue that the proposed mechanism for black hole production is even less likely to be correct, which makes the whole point moot. In any case, I don't see the need to make any more edits to this section. Jeffakolb (talk) 23:21, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


Somebody just deleted the entire section on safety concerns without any apparent consideration of this discussion. Could I suggest that at least some of this be reverted? Whilst some points may have been unneccesary, I don't feel the entire section was useless as there are genuine concerns about it. People maybe need reminding that just because it doesn't match your opinion, it doesn't automatically make it BS and give you a right to delete it all. --86.147.120.171 19:41, 18 October 2007 (UTC)


I'm not a scientist in physics but I follow the development of the LHC. I note in this section the attitude of some "scientists" about safety concerns, see "science-fiction safety concern bullshit". Well, I have some questions for the real scientists/physicists(since I'm not one): Let's suppose a /(maybe more?) tiny black hole is created, according to the hypothesis described in the main article, when the heads of the two beams collide. Does anybody know what is suppose to happen when this tiny black hole is bombarded with the accelerated protons following in the beams? L.F. P.S. I hereby lay open an invitation to any scientist involved with LHC, as appreciation for their work, for one drive on German highways with 250Km/h in one of the safest car possible. I assure everybody that I'm an excellent driver (although I never drove at such speed before) and I give my personal guarantee that no accident will happen. I hope they will trust me as I have (no choice but) to trust them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Liviu Filip (talk • contribs) 12:59, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

You raise a good point. What will actually happen, is that whichever particles zoom 'through' the black hole, even at 99.99% the speed of light, will of course be captured by the black hole. The particles will also 'weigh' a LOT more than you would expect, due to their ridiculous energy levels. 725MJ in fact!. If all of this was captured, it would be 8.05x10-9 kg, or 1000000000000000000 proton masses / hydrogen atoms. Which is a lot, and you would have to add the physical mass of those atoms to the black hole too. This is a valid point not addressed in the 'safety concerns'. Does anyone know how to pose this question to the LHC physicists? I would like to see what they say. (I would note that; the mass was calculated using E=mc2, then divided down by the mass of a proton. Buckethed (talk) 09:52, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
The particles will not weigh 725 MJ. That is the energy stored in the entire beam (half in each beam, actually). Anything created in a collision has nonzero transverse momentum, so it will get out of the way long before the next bunch of protons arrives. The bunches are spaced by 25 nanoseconds, enough time for a relativistic particle to travel about 25 feet in the lab frame. This is a very complicated experiment, and it's easy to get lost in the details. PSimeon (talk) 16:36, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
The particles will not weigh 725MJ, but will 'weigh' 725 MJ :). Weight is in newtons anyway, it was just a figure of speech; in the same way that, if an object heats up, the effective mass increases, the particles will have a higher 'mass' due to their energy. Also, the items created in a collision will have a random, almost always nonzero transverse momentum, however there will be up to 600 million collisions per second. The truth is, this experiment has risks, because, if it had no risks, there would also be nothing to discover! We don't know what we will discover, and if we make no 'unexpected' findings, the LHC itself will kind of be a waste of time except for the 'Higgs Boson' which would only be a verification of our current theory anyway. Buckethed (talk) 19:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

This section is constantly censored by people working at lhc, please refrain from censoring security concerns, which is the theme of this section. If you believe in reason you will let the reader to get its own conclusions. If scientific reason says there is no risk, the reader should decide without censorship. as a scientist with a phd in particle physics and no involvment in the project i believe there are reasons for con-cern. It is however up to the reader to weight both sides of a discussion without censors, otherwise we can think on the legal definition of terrorism: 'a hiden action that might harm a great number of human beings' and ad to the long line of fundamentalist a new strain of 'scientific fundamentalists, argue, dont erase.Fact is hawkings radiation is not proved and discussed, otherwise mr. hawkings as per the economist this week, would already have a nobel prize. So far, the only proved theory of black holes is relativity and according to einstein all black holes are stable. Ditto per the second scenario of a strangelet runaway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.246.73 (talk • contribs)


The section on safety concerns not only contains a bunch of speculative BS, but repeats the BS multiple times. john

Please do not mistake removal of information as censorship, just the removal of orignal research. There are a number of links already within the concerns section to published papers on these theories, and if you wish to add more, or links to any recognised publication then no problems. But there are far too many theory sites out there, that base themselves around the uncertainty with regards to hawkins radiation and/or cosmic rays, then go off on conjecture and unsupported hypothesis to scare mongering. It's a perceived problem and people will be coming to wikipedia to try and understand the issue, so lets make sure the article sticks to the facts (what is known), that there are a few members of the scientific community that have concerns, and what are the foundations for theses concerns. Khukri 11:10, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
I have complied with your requirement quoting the soruce of strangelet dangers, much bigger for what i have now researched for my article, than the black hoel hype. The group of shangai researchers working at mit is among the most celebrated physicst today in china, please do read the article before erasing my changes this time, as it is in arx.org and i trust you do undestand its basic physics. Otherwise i will have to conclude that this is a matter of censorship and contact also wikipedian adminstration to decide the issue.
Well, the matter is clearly one of censorship, you cannot erase once and again an article of the seriousness of Mr. weng work on color-locked strangelets, and its stability.
If the article has as only reason détre to glorify CERN'S Position, the issue starts to be worrisome. i have found this rather surprising sentence:
“I know Frank Wilczek,” Engelen told me. “He is an order of magnitude smarter than I am. But he was perhaps a bit naïve.” Engelen said that CERN officials are now instructed, with respect to the L.H.C.’s world-destroying potential, “not to say that the probability is very small but that the probability is zero.” So what is the situation, dear friends/censors from cern, since i am in the process of writing a serious article in the theme for a major magazine: you have no remote idea of what is going to happen but you are gonna follow till the end? censoring all opinions and serious work that dissent? in what can be the biggest holocaust on earth? Do i have to write the article on those terms? Or are you going to reason in scientific terms the risks involved? It is a matter of public con-cern? My advice is that you behave as normal wikipedians and accept different opinions or else this theme might blow in the media in a very different direction to the one 'fundamentalist physcist'want. Einstein said, i do thought experiments.
Are you able to think? Do you know what is a color-locked strangelet, i assume not because you put also you need a specialist... anway im not going to edit this every day... But you do have now a problem of public relationships you might want to address here. All this is recorded.
This must be argued, you cannnot just censor again!. Argue here if you want us to believe in total safety at cern. Otherwise, the more you censor the more people will worry.
You state that MIT article is my original research. It is not. I am American not chinese.
Otherwise Mr. cheng proved that negative strangelets locked in color can be stable, moreover they provide the only known mechanism for the conversion of iron star cores into neutron stars which very likely have a central strangelet. It is a professional article of a renown physicist and far superior source that trivia media quoted here. As this is a case of censorship and I will repose as many times as needed.
You can argue Mr.cheng article on the stability of strangelets and hence the fact that cern wll create them with its present energy and they acrete the earth, but not censor it.
You also censor, the obvious fact that if Hawkings radiation is false, Einstein is right, and black holes will be stable accreting the Earth. How can you claim Einstein's work is not a reliable source?
There you really went over the top, censoring Einstein!
Regarding Hawking's, he is not proved, you cannot only quote him. In his 77 article, a young, brass, Hawkings played as most ambitious physicists do, the old trick of self-promoting himself as the next wannabe Einstein.
So he ended his article in the soft-version for laymen in scientific american, with the sentence: 'Einstein is double wrong'. I believe if Einstein had been alive he would have put the Hawkings radiation to rest as he did with Weyl, in a single letter. The doubts on Hawking's radiation are very extended, for experimental reasons - it has never been founded - and for theoretical, gruesome errors. Since Mr. Hawkings departs from the 'assumption' that black holes will feed only in antiparticles; hence reversing the arrow of time and evaporating. Which is to like saying that the dead will resurrect in the arrow of time was reversed on Earth. Fact is such assumption from where he develops his radiation is totally gratuituous. We never have seen an arrow of time to the past, and for that reason we have never seen Hawkings radiation or zombies resurrecting.
He could have perfectly assumed that time moves towards the future also in black holes, as Relativists always have done. Then a black hole will feed in both, antiparticles and particles, thus evaporating instead the electromagnetic world in which we live as all other black holes do. As a result of this gratuitous choice, by changing the arrow of time, he changed the laws of physics and then he run into the information paradox which he himself recently apologized for.
According to the scientific method, when you dont have experimental proves, when you contradict proved laws of physics (thermodynamics, Einstein Relativity, Information paradox), you are a hoax.
Hence, despite so much hype-media Mr. Hawkings have no Nobel Prize, and no prove whatsoever of his radiation.
People also believed in the XIX century in Ether, a substance stronger than iron, more flexible than water which filled up the Universe. It was as absurd as Hawking's radiation.
Cern is using the only article of the many opinions on black holes that justifies the fact that black holes are harmless. Might it be because, it had spent 8 billion dollars on the making, already when Dimopoulos and others found they would be making black holes? It is obvious cern cannot recognize any danger, as per the statement of mr. eng... 'instructing people to assume zero risks', because it will be a blow to the entire concept that we have to make bigger accelerators instead of studying better the laws of the Universe and do as Einstein did more intelligent calculations.
The scientific community does not consider Hawkings proved. Some have called his work 'fantaphysics', with all those fancy books about going back in time and killing your father. Einstein is proved. I can see also in the recent development of fantaphysics a certain disrespect for Einstein, perhaps because he after all disrespected quantum physics.
Fact is, as the Gospel say that you have to give to the Caesar what belongs to the Caesar.
And all things related to mass and gravitation belongs to Relativity.
While all things related to electromagnetism and particles belongs to the Standard Model.
Which as today are totally different, seemingly 2 fractal space-times that hardly influence each other.
Not to go into the mathematical details: Mr. hawkings' assumptions used quantum calculations with lineal equations when even the sophomore physicist knows that gravitation is not lineal. Thus all attempts to unify relativity and quantum physics for the single perspective of quantum physics might be considered at least dubious, specially when they lack any prove. There is no reason to unify both forces beyond aesthetic reasons. The Universe can be perfectly dual not monist and so far is the only thing proved. In the recent decade, the most prestigious models go in that direction (Nottale's fractal space-times, quantum space-time theory, RS models of an electromagnetic sheet floating in a gravitational space, etc).
Those models do not need Higgs particles. In fact, Einstein perfectly explains mass as a vortex of space-time. So the Higgs 'hoax' that Nobel Prize Weinberg compared to a toilet flush, is very likely nothing but yet another attempt of quantum physicists to rewrite Einstein's theory of Gravitation in terms of quantum particles. Certainly it is not the messianic, fundamentalist fantasia of Jos Engelen “It’s probably the closest to God that we’ll get'. Yeah, right, (-:, as if we didnt have enough of those God-quoters 0-:,
So what are the facts, not the fantaphysical theories cern will prove?
The facts we know is that strange matter, tau-quarks and black holes are real, extremely dangerous and whenever we look at them, they are feeding into radiant matte, which is far less important to the Universe, only 4% of it. So we cosmologists and relativists, favor MACHOS, not whimps as the candidates to dark matter, and expect them to show very easily at CERN. Specially strange matter.
This was proved clearly afte RHIC experiments. Indeed, strange matter was very easy to do.
Yet it was also for experimentalists 'a perfect surprise' (Sci Am article), as deconfined plasma started to form vortices that did not evaporate as theory expected but lasted much longer. The name strange matter comes from the fact that when it was created first it was far more stable, living billions of times longer.
So what very likely will happen at CERN is not the creation of higgs, but the creation of strange matter the natural, proved, next layer of the standard model.
Those are real risks.
So it is again censorship to deny the seriousness of Einstein's and other relativists, different vision of what is mass, what will happen at CERN, what is the cosmological view on dark matter.
There is always a silence and respect among colleagues. But you are censoring the cosmological version of black holes, which predict them to accrete the Earth, and so far despite so many attempts to tumble Einstein, has always been right. So cosmologists like Mr. Rees, Royal astronomer, or myself, and many which remain silent for respect to their colleagues, have huge doubts on LHC and the risks involved.
Regarding strangelets, the Chinese Team is the most advanced work. till today.
So I will repost those 2 sourced comments.
This is a matter of global importance, obviously as important as global warming and as I can see cern people are adopting the initial position of many scientists regarding global warming when Mr. Lovelock was alone on the other side: Bull SHIT. i dont like 'insults'but reason, i dont like censorship but reason.
You do have this talk page to convince us that the article of mr. weng, is false, with reason and physics not censor it, accusing me of being him.
And certainly CENSORING EINSTEIN IS an insult to our intelligence.
So i will quote him: 'Those who try to impose the truth with the tools of power, are the laughs of the Gods.
The chinese team accepts stability for A=4000/10000 lumps which WILL BE CERTAINLY ACHIEVED AT CERN. RHIC achieved with 10 times less power a ball of u/d/strange quarks that lasted far longer. and it was 'quote' a perfect surprise. I dont want perfect surprises at cern. Do you have any safety measures if a black hole or strangelet becomes stable? What are the measures you have to destroy them? Please enlighten me.
Further on, the quote that proves CERN relies only on HAWKINGS is quoted from the very same report of cern.
Where you say: 'they will evaporate by thermal radiation', aka Hawkings radiation.
It is not the very same report of CERN a reliable source about CERN opinions? That is indeed funny.
I have written articles and books on scientific themes. And I believe i know as all of you do, what is a reliable source and both the chinese article and the own cern article are reliable sources.
It is curious enough that the repositions last all the time in which CERN people sleep (-:...
Im in America, and no American wikipedian has erased the corrections. Curious indeed.
What is original research is precisely the stuff put by you, cern people, but we assume that all what is technical in this article must be put by cern people NOT the safety section, for which they have an obvious interest.
Every physicist wants CERN to find out if Einstein is right and mass is a vortex of space-time and black holes are stable, as all relativists, including myself believe, or as quantum particle theorists - obviously the experimentalist at CERN - believe, hawkings and higgs areright and all are quantum 'celebrity particles' (-:, IF THERE IS NO RISK INVOLVED...
But what amounts to a century old argument between Relativists Vs. Quantum theorists on the nature of gravitation and related-mass questions doesnt deserve to risk a single human life.
As it can be resolved in cosmological analysis and when the real, new Einstein (Not certainly hawkings and higgs, their fantaphysics had their day, but are past-due), with the needed mental power do solve the questions with pen and paper, as they havealways been solved. In any case human life is always superior to knowledge. A extint Scientist knows nothing. You have though to convince us, relativists, and common people, that there is no risk with serious physicist's talk. All other tactics will backfire. People are doing documentaries and articles on CERN, everywhere in the world.
If that is how you are going to treat their intelligence, you will be portrayed in a very different light, not as the heirs of Einstein but as the heirs of Teller who wanted to keep doing bigger H-bombs till creating the ultimate bomb. I dont think it is necessary to remind anyone the difference of intellectual and ethical stature between both. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.210.93 (talk) 18:09, 3 January 2008 (UTC)


BELOW IS THE SECTION that have been censored 9 times on account 'that they are original research'sic, which obviously are not, despite my many pleads to be discussed on account of facts, veracity and relevance.

Please any rational being that reads them, if he feels they are worth to be known, repost it:. If he has prove against its veracity, argued it.

CERN POV:. Quantum calculations presented in the CERN report predict that:

Black holes will evaporate and hence will not accrete the Earth.

FACTS as they are known: Yet that report, which is in fact called a "Review of Speculative\Disaster Scenarios at RHIC", is the report issued almost a decade ago for an American accelerator [RHIC] ten times less powerful than the LHC and relies heavily on the certainty of Hawking Radiation - 'they will evaporate via thermal radiation' (sic) - which is still a contested theoretical analysis with no experimental proof whatsoever. [13]

Thus, if Hawking Radiation is false, then we should follow Einstein's work which predicts stability for all black holes, regardless of size. Thus, in case Einstein is right, black holes produced at CERN will accrete the Earth. The chances of such black holes to be produced depends on the veracity of String Theory that predicts them. If String Theory is right - an assumption accepted according to polls by 9 out of 10 physicists (Sci Am) - then, according to the scientific director of CERN, in his last report on the particles that LHC will produce, black holes will be created at the rate of 1 per second. [14]

CERN POV: Strangelets won't be stable in case of being negative, hence will not accrete the Earth.

FACTS KNOWN RECENTLY: after CERN issued its assessment, Physicist from the Chinese center for Nuclear research proved that might not be the case, as color-locked negative strangelets could be more stable than iron providing the only known mechanism for the conversion of iron core stars into neutron stars with a strangelet center. If so, strangelets will become stable with A=4000/10000, a quantity certainly within the reach of CERN. Hence if the Chinese team at MIT is right, the probability of a runaway 'ice-9'-like type of reaction that will destroy the Earth, as stated by Nobel Prize Wilczek in Sci-Am, might be termed as 'very likely'. [15] 'We should believe in the authority of the truth, not in the truth of authorities'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 04:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


I check the report of New solutions for the color-flavor locked strangelets. It saids they are unable to convert our plant into a strange star. Here is the link to the report --58.178.152.74 (talk) 12:42, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


Any one care to explain how a fictional material Ice 9 is now a concern, I can't see anything in it's references. The article jumps from Stranglets to Ice 9 with no previous mention. I'll delete it unless it deosn't get re-worded to explain it's relevance? Khukri 09:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)


Morning has broken here in california, closemouth, i am not chinese, it is not original research. This is obvious. So you do not 'AGAIN' as you say take away original research. You 'AGAIN' censor important information on the stability of strangelets and Einstein's theory on blck holes. What humanity expect from CERN is a responsible analysis of the risks involved. So far it has not been done. CERN is insulting our intelligence, publishing a report made for RHIC as if it were done for CERN. it is insulting our intelligence denying Einstein's work. I have been at CERN many times. I have seen a street named after Einstein but none named after Hawkings. So why is that? I have seen also many posters: 'recreating the big-bang', even an 'Armageddon' comment on his film, 'microcosms'. It is this responsible? I was hoping CERN physicists would take note of the MIT article and argue its relevance. There are thousands of very good physicists there to analyze this recent discovery.The article is flawless in terms of good Physics. Fact is if strangelets are stable and are so easy to reproduce to the point that are a strong candidate to dark matter, this rock on a corner of the Universe is in real danger... NOTHING will happen if LHC doesnt go into work, because it is not safe to mankind. Actually, humanity will be in awe and respect that someone with power, finally! somewhere do recognize an error. It is easy to 'closemouth' closing our 'eyes'. Then if something happens we will say 'nobody told us'. point here is that if something happens, indeed nobody will be left to tell. Do you realize that for the first time, mankind faces an experiment that can terminate us with an important probability? This in legal terms is: possible victims: 6 billion x probability (Einstein vs. hawkings, Chinese Team vs. old theories, give it a 50-50): 3 billion legal death. Beyond any conceivable war or genocide... This is what ice-9 means. I believe everyone in the community of quantum physicists knows the work of wilczek in asymptotic freedom (his Nobel prize) and his metaphor of ice-9. In the same way quarks are a metaphor taken from literature, ice-9 is a metaphor taken from literature to express a runaway reaction of strangelets. It was invented by Vonnegut to denounce precisely the Nuclear Research being done at the time to make 'our nation safer'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.210.93 (talk) 01:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


Just in case it helps to be verified without revealing at least in this public page my name, so CERN people dont keep erasing perfectly scientific and proved facts on the risks involved, aducing is original research, instead of arguing what they seem unable to argue, i Registered with a californian ip an an email to prove that...this user is not any of the 3 sources he quotes: He is not chinese, his eyes are rounded... he is not CERN, he weights only 80 kilos and cost nothing to produce (-: He is not einstein, as much as he admires him... despite acusations by closedmouth of being reborn... (-: but my mouth wont be closed easily since i believe in the 1st ammendment, freedom of speech... and i believe in homo sapiens and i believe in the emotion of being alive... (hence my name)... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 02:46, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


As I have said before I have no problems with the article having a section on the perceived threats, but it's becoming more and more like your own personally musings. It reads terribly and extremly poor english and anyone who reads about this danger are going to leave this article none the wiser. Now you can go on about your first amendment rights but this is a red herring argument and has no grounds on Wikipedia, which only relies on verifiable sources. I've removed the ice-9 comment as the cited paper does not support this and I can't see any reference to Franck Wilczek saying this is highly likely. Khukri 22:09, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


I'm going to try and tidy the structure as the arguments and counter arguments are looking messy. Khukri 22:28, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Removed assurances from the title as it's the concerns that are being discussed not the assurances.
  • I've added a number of {{fact}} comments, can someone please find corroborating references or I will delete them.
  • Removed the RHIC comment, the CERN report is now correctly linked at the top of the section and is not the RHIC report.
  • The Jos Engelen presentation does not say the CERN will create black holes 1 per second, though the CERN courier does, added the correct link to the top.
  • I've removed the einstein comment, as this is supposition and written as original research, if verifiable 3rd party studies where this is writtten can be found, then by all means add it.
  • I've left the Stranglets as is, this seems to be your area of expertise. But can I ask you expand the section whilst being objective, 1) what is the perceived problem 2) what was the CERN response 3) how does you colour stranglets paper refute this? (bearing in mind User:58.178.152.74 above wrote that having read the report that colour stragnlets don't pose a problem
  • At the moment the strange matter magnetic monopoles aren't really a problem looking at the article, so again, 1) what is the perceived problem 2) what was the CERN response 3) What verifiable sources refute this evidence. Khukri 23:52, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


Someone wrote in my user page: stop editing the safety sections of the Large hadron colider. --58.179.166.212 (talk) 00:33, 6 January 2008 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Homocion"

Why? Is this a menace?

Chen and wen wrote in his work on strangelets:

all the three kinds of CFL strangelets are more stable than 56Fe, and also more stable than the normal unpaired strangelets. As for the comparative stability between the three kinds of CFL strangelets needs to be further studied in the future. This invalidates 1st cause or rather hope of assurance at the end of the article 

(only CFL1 positive will show up. we dont know, the 3 are equally probable)

chen and wen also wrote: The slet-2 and 3 are more stable than the nor- mal unpaired strangelets, and so may have chances to be produced in the modern heavy ion collision experiments.

Thus cfl2 and cfl3, neutral and negative will accrete the earth The 1st positive not. Thus probability of strangelets to accrete the Earth: 66%

2nd assurance at first sight might reduce the probability... 'when the electron’s Compton wave length (≈ 386 fm) is reached, the constraint ne = 0, (or, equivalently, μu = μd = μs) is no longer valid, and so the strangelet will be neutralized and ceases to expand its size.' But it relies in 2 very dubious assumptions: 1) That strangelets dont break apart as they grow... we dont know but it is logic to suppose specially among 'quantum physicists' that a strangelet is not a single particle of enormous size, but as everything else in the Universe a quantum fluid/solid that constantly breaks Hence the 2nd insurance dissaears. Thus what chen is really saying is that when a strangelet has packed in its max. surface a quantity of quarks it breaks in 2, which again grow as it happens with most systems of nature, 1,2,4,8,16... you know the drill every 10 decouplings 10 up to 3 new strangelets will be born in a superfluid state. Statistically however all self-similar phenomena show that the particle fissions when it reaches its surface limit accelerating in fact its rate of accretion. As fission is a lower energy process. This was the case observed in the protostable stranglets at RHICm which the experimentalists called a perfect surprise' lch merely is a super-rich(rhic sorry:) machine that will make stranglets bigger and we will be studying strange matter not higgs ffantases the next evolutive horizon of matter. Many unnown species of dark matter, some not even theorized, strange moleclules and perhaps tau quark superfluids described by wen and chen will be the basic production of the lhc, which is a factory of strange, dark matter. The theoretical development of dark maatter fluids of which the wen paper is essential show a high risk. in Comosmolgical evolution you can consider that the arrow of Einstein, the increasing curvature of space by time, evolves species into more complex forms, we are food of dark matter and it is not in evolution become prey.if the evolution of physics in XX century has shown us something is that all entities we thought static are dynamic, we thought neutrons and protons were static and it turns out u-quarks become d-quarks, converting one into others, some particles switch billions of time a second between states, gluons and quarks constantly transform into each other at amazing speeds. Neutron stars collapse the iron core of a sun in a few seconds, very likely into strangelets. What is static is the language of mathematics, nature is not We have never seen a strangelet, we dont know what we know is that strange matter has been always more dynamic and lived longer than previous calculations. it has been always a perfect surprise. But for all what we know about particles, if you look to the decuplet and to the octet of particles, the Kaon, the essential strangelet particle is in the center of both, it is in layman terms the particle which can most easily transform its nature dynamically to accrete all the other particles around it. What we do know after chen and wen, please stop calling it my article is that CERN will create stable strangelets with almost 100% of certainity, as the 3 cfl are within reach of its energy and unlie the higgs particle we do know they exist.

Regarding Einstein you should put instead Relativity, not erase it, as Relativists like Oppenheimer and Wheeler defined black holes. Yet it is an absolute fact of physics that if Hawkings is wrong, Relativistic theory on black holes hold and all of them are stable.

You have also taken away the quote of 1 black hole per second, truly relevant and the link to the text of cern that quoted it. why if you recognize it is in the report? Also the fact that string theory must have them and 9 out of 10 physicists believe in string theory according to sci am polls. That gives according to physicists a 90% of chances of producing them. Why you say 'non-standard?'. Certainly more people believe in string theory than hawking's radiation or any other higgs-like unification theory. string theory has become the standard, most believed theory of unification there is.

Those are the essential facts, needed to 'calculate' - and the mere fact of doing such calculation seems obscene to me - the probability of human extinction by the LHC. And it is high, certainly not 'zero'...

All those facts have been censored. I have not reposted them, it is up to your consciousness guys and that of all wikipedians. In the old times there was 'faith' which requireD no reason no prove, and if prove came against it it was denied it, and there was science, a rational innovation... which could accept an error when prove came. It seems that this is lost at CERN.

What CERN should do - and trust me, it would change the way humanity perceive us is this sort of statement: that in ‘view of recent theoretical developments on the field of black hole and strangelet theory, the risks of operating the LHC at maximum strength are much higher than previously expected’ hence ‘a moratorium in those experiments has been issued, till we obtain experimental prove in cosmological research of the existence of black hole evaporation, and strangelet theory is fully developed’.

And then we put the telescopes to work on the halo to see if those hard core MACHOS and strangelets are there, without evaporating, forming the dark matter as most cosmologists believe – 30 years and still not a single signature of black hole evaporation, please! - and take pen and paper as the Chinese team asked to the scientific community and resolve further strangelet theory, till we know for certain. It is not CERN fault CERN didn’t know when it started to make the machine. We all wanted that machine, but now that the risk is known CERN should not censor but acknoledge scientific facts and get if not another Physics nobel prize, a novelty, a Nobel prize for peace (-:

And a Principle of a fellow american, 'If something can go wrong, it will go wrong'.Murphy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs)

Again you added alot of blah blah blah with out addressing any of the bullet points above. Your Einstein comment though maybe relevant was not objective and written in the first person. As I said above find 3rd party verifiable sources and you can add it though I have re-added the 1 per minute comment. Please keep to the issues instead of wandering off on your own personal musings. Also if you are replying to a comment please use : to indent your comments to make them slightly more easier to follow. Khukri 09:12, 6 January 2008 (UTC)


I see here two groups of people. One has concerns about the risks of the experiment based on proved and/or commonly accepted theories, and the people from the other group seem to fanatically support the experiment(I bet they dream to get the Nobel prize by any costs/means). I am very worried about this matter and I wonder what can be done to delay/stop the experiment, until all doubts are addressed? Inform the political powers about the risks? Inform the press? For that we need a well argued paper written/supported by top renown scientists, which can be presented to the public/politicians. But we need this paper as soon as possible, knowing the delay in taking a decision caused by bureaucracy. Happy new year! I hope that's not the last time we will say that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LF1975 (talk • contribs) 11:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


At the risk of offending both atheists and the faithful can I just say "God No!!! Please, no more on safety!". There are those who think that the LHC is perfectly safe (all those working on it, otherwise why would they build a doomsday device). There are those who are convinced that it will cause serious problems (people who don’t believe in hawking radiation or who think it will produce stranglets). With every experiment that is some risk that an unknown will make it end the world. Surely the safety concerns section should say that: 1. Mainstream scientific opinion (right or wrong) thinks that the experiment is safe (otherwise scientists would be attacking the project not just in journals but also trying to blow it up before anyone could switch it on, I know I would if I was sure it would kill us all) 2. Some people are not convinced by this. Either because they don’t think that the current theories are correct (the latest string theory says ...) or because they think that the possibilities of error are to big (no one has ever tested hawking radiation). Within this we can very briefly discuss actual causes for concern eg stranglets and hawking. 3. Most scientists remain convinced of its safety

Central to this is that NO-ONE Knows if its safe, just as no one knows if anything is safe (I don’t think it is even scientific to say you know something, you only know something until someone disproves it [world was flat till a few hundred years ago, mass was invariant till Einstein, energy was conserved perfectly till Heisenberg, etc]) BUT that enough people are sufficiently convinced that it is safe for the project to go ahead, at least for now.

That should be all it says. There is no agreement about anything beyond that, so it cant be added except to say that there is no agreement.

I hope that this gets us away from long arguements between people who clearly have great understanding but cant reach a conclusion. Sorry for the block caps, Im not shouting, Im just trying to really emphasise certain parts of what Im saying that I think go beyond who is right.

John CaptinJohn (talk) 14:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

"1. Mainstream scientific opinion (right or wrong) thinks that the experiment is safe ..."
"Mainstream" scientist from NASA gave the "GO" to Challenger Shuttle before the last launch.
"2. Some people are not convinced by this."
2. "some" NASA engineers (one) raised concerns about the "O" rings behaviour in cold temperatures
"3. Most scientists remain convinced of its safety."
"Most" scientists remain convinced of its (shuttle) safety.
Nasa has more than one shutle. Do we have more than one planet?
Based on common knowledge everything that happens in this universe is ruled by PROBABILITY. Everything made by man that was deemed initially very safe, has been proven to fail sometime, even more often than calculated previously. Remember Chernobyl and the space shuttle? Or show me something made by man which never failed! But compare these cases where the risks were concerning just some people, with the risk of the CERN experiment which concerns ALL HUMANITY.
In the cases of Chernobyl and Challenger lessons were learn for the use of others. If the LHC experiment goes bad, there will be no one to learn anything anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with taking risks for the sake of progress and discovery but only when the risks concern me and/or a limited number of volunteers, while well aware of said risks.
Therefore, taking this risk (LHC experiment) is just immoral, and even if everything goes well the scientists promoting the experiment should be condemned.
I remember seeing somewhere a formula calculating the probability (again this word) of extraterrestrial life in the universe. In this formula there was a factor relating to the number of technologically advanced alien civilisations which destroyed themselves by accident. I say that we should be wise and wait until we contact other civilisations (some scientist say that this will happen with a “great probability” in the next 20 years) and see if they have stories about other alien civilisations eaten by a black hole of their own making.
Oh, I know, some will say: "Nothing the human race will do can destroy earth because Jesus has not came back yet". Well that may be also possible/probable, but in that case, why hurry His comeback?
Once created, the black hole will, at the beginning slowly, eat the matter of the earth and all the wise CERN scientist will be able to calculate will be the time left to live. I fear the most of humanity will become a cancer patient knowing just how long it has to live, while some will hope that “Jesus will come tomorrow”. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LF1975 (talk • contribs)
In response to both editors above and to anyone else reading, as one of the only editors at the moment trying to keep some form of control on the section I'm not trying to advocate who is correct, just what is verifiable. Taken from this link;
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that readers should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed.
Unfortunately Wikipedia is not the place for analysing the risks, only for documenting what is verifiable. I've stated all through this furore, there has been popular press on the issue, it is a perceived problem therefore it is quite right that there is a section on these issues. But what Wikipedia (or it's editors) can't do is draw conclusion within the article itself. There have been a number of studies carried out on this accelerator and others that reach the same conclusion, these have been referenced in the article. If there are any published papers etc, that confirm or support the black holes or any other issues then by all means add them, but what we can't have is 'I heard it from a man in a pub who said he was a physicists' stories. I will not remove information that is verifiable (hence the reason I have left the stranglets paper, though can't access it) and information that does not constitute as original research.
I have deleted 2 sets of links within the article and have done so with this in mind.
I personally think that I have left the section with a balanced perspective and to the first editor I think it's disingenuous to be calling either party fanatical. Cheers Khukri 15:06, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
I realise that I might have offended some CERN scientists by using the term "fanatically" previously. I'm ready to apologise and delete the text myself with one condition. But before that I would like to state that I understand by “fanatic” the following:
- Someone who’s so convinced that he is right that he refuses to even consider another opinion contrary to his own (e.g. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, etc), and moreover wants to impose on others his own believes/values (e.g. terrorists, religious fanatics, etc).
All these considered here’s my condition to apologise and delete the text:
The supporters of the experiment to thoroughly consider the concerns and arguments of the other part and if they come to the conclusion that the risk is absolutely zero without any margin of error, to show this proof to the public.—Preceding unsigned comment added by LF1975 (talk • contribs) 12:42, 7 January 2008
I would like to reiterate the reminder that this article needs to follow Wikipedia's official policies and guidelines. Specifically, supposition and other original research has no place here, claims both pro and con need to be properly sourced and cited, and sources should be strictly limited to reliable, third-party, published sources. --Kralizec! (talk) 16:22, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps I did not make myself clear (sorry if that sounds arrogant). I don’t know if the LHC is safe or not. No one does. This is because there is always some chance that something strange and un-foreseen will happen. The article should say that most people (scientists, politicians etc) THINK that it is safe because that is verifiable. It should also say that some people THINK it is not safe because that is also verifiable. I am not saying that we can verify that it is safe and that it is not safe. I am saying we can verify that some people THINK it is safe and some people don’t. We can also verify that the project is continuing. So the safety section should say
1. Most people THINK it is safe
2. Some people THINK it is un safe
3. The project continues
Kralizec! is quite right to say that only what is verifiable should go in.
Thanks you
CaptinJohn (talk) 10:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I've re-worded the colour stranglets part, as the chinese letter only theorises about the stability of color locked stranglets in relation to Iron. It does not theorise on their relationship or their ability to turn anything into anything. Though the stranglets article does give a much better description on the process about neutron stars etc. It's with this in mind this topic seem to have been brought up in other articles, RHIC and here. I propose to create on single entry on wikipedia about these fears and the science behind them, might I suggest that;

These two sections better describe the issues, and the chinese theoretical paper can be added here if you so wish? Cheers Khukri 11:05, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Also I've just indented some of the above discussions, to make it easy to follow and to attribute who said what to whom. Please feel free to revert if you aren't happy with it. Khukri 12:45, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
There is parts of the colour flavour-locked stranglets thoy that have assurances that saids that it won't convert the earth into a strange can someone please add this to the article and keep it there (that means you Homocion :) ) to have to sides of the safety argument's of the collider.
We need have a Dispute resolution over this. And please stop using the talk page as getting the point of view as this is not a fourm but a ::way to approve the article 116.240.141.173 (talk) 10:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that, I've finally manage to gain access to the report but not being a scientist, can't claim to understand the intricacies of the letter. To help with this discussion, could you point out clearly where in the report it says it will or will not do anything, because all I can see is it theorising about the stability of colour-stranglets in relation to iron. Khukri 10:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

This came from the page 4 right hand side from the report:News solutions for the color-flavor locked strangelets

uThe slet-2 and 3 are more stable than the normal unpaired strangelets, and so may have chances to be produced in the modern heavy ion collision experiments However they are unable to transform our planet into astrange star for the following two reasons. First, the positively charged slet-1 is the energy minimum for the same parameters. And secondly, when the electron’s Compton wave length ( ≈ 386 fm) is reached, the constraint ne = 0,(or, equivalently, µu = µd = µs ) is no longer valid, and so the strangelet will be neutralized and ceases to expand its size. --116.240.141.173 (talk) 11:58, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if anyone takes into consideration the direction of the colliding beams relative to the sun. I guess nobody wants to send any strange thing that might be created straight into it. This might happen if the collision takes place around the east-west direction at around 6 o’clock in the morning or afternoon. I think that the direction of the colliding beams should be north-south so that in case something nasty is created, its trajectory will be perpendicular to the solar system plane. Is this a reasonable thing to ask CERN to take in consideration or not? --LF1975 (talk) 09:51, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I just want to add that the speed of the thing should be at least five to ten times the solar escape velocity of 42,1 km/s, lets say, 0.001c just to be sure. But for this, the energy of the beams must be imbalanced quite a lot. --LF1975 (talk) 13:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm extremely concerned about the ramifications of particle accelerators as well, and the whole point of the safety concerns section is to bring these saftey concerns to light. people act like the danger is zero, this is not factual. the danger is real, and even if the danger is unlikely (black hole creation for example) the only potential solution for a black holes dissapation is as of yet unobserved, and once more, Hawkings radiation is as much a theory as the higgs Boson is a Theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.137.64.26 (talk) 20:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I do not think the "Other" section belongs in this article. Listing highly implausible and unreferenced claims just spreads the paranoia of safety concerns to those willing to believe it. I'm referring to the talk about "magnetic monopoles that could catalyse proton decay" and "penetration of energy barrier separating our Universe from a lower-energy Einstein-DeSitter space." I would like to remove this section because it is not something that would appear in a reputable encyclopedia; one could list thousands of implausible scenarios with any new technology. If nobody responds within a week or so, I'll just remove it. PSimeon (talk) 02:34, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: I agree. I have just rationalized the rest of that section, collecting together material that was previously repeated in different places, and focusing on reputably published material (radical concept, I know...). Dark Formal (talk) 04:28, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Is it just me or does the black hole section now read that it is hawkings radiation itself that is the danger by emitting copious radiation? Instead shouldn't it be the fear is that non relativistic black holes could be created and as hawkings radiation is a theory, that the black holes might not evaporate blah blah blah. Cheers Khukri 08:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
You are right in that it currently has the wrong safety concern. The concern for some people is that black holes will not radiate and will accumulate in the earth. Radiating black holes pose no threat as they are no more dangerous than the other particles that spew out of the detector. Someone should correct this. I see how touchy people can be about "censoring" their safety concerns, so I'll let someone else do the editing. PSimeon (talk) 16:12, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Oops, sorry, you're right, I got that the wrong way around. Thanks to RickWagnerPhD for correcting it: I just smoothed out the corrected version a bit. Dark Formal (talk) 02:16, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


I made a few changes that I hope everyone can agree with. Mostly I just emphasized the conclusions of scientific articles that have been written on the subject (using direct quotations), and tried to use neutral wording. Also I re-organized some references into appropriate locations where they are most relevant. Oh, and I hope I made it clear that some theories do indeed clearly predict micro black hole production at the LHC, but regardless the black holes are expected to be safe. Rotiro (talk) 21:38, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
'Dark Formal:' Did you add ref [4], which is long and tangled? If so, please could you reduce it to one or two citations normalized to the form of the other refs. Dark Formal (talk) 23:40, 6 February 2008 (UTC)


Good news everyone! (quote from Futurama's professor). We might not need to worry anymore about LHC creating MBHs which will accrete in the center of the earth. Such MBHs might have been already created in the Bose-Einstein condensate explosions. Since "About half of the atoms in the condensate seemed to have disappeared from the experiment altogether, not being seen either in the cold remnant or the expanding gas cloud.", I think the only possible explanation for this is that the atoms became part of a MBH, which was not detected, and which is now safe inside the earth. Have you noticed strange earthquakes lately? What would have been the life expectancy of such MBH according to Hawkins theory? --LF1975 (talk) 07:33, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

This is just speculation and original research. However... given that there is NO explanation for this finding, that explanation is as good as any other, and is in fact what you might expect to find if a Micro Black Hole was created! For what it is worth, the UK seems to have had a fair few larger earthquakes recently, which appear on BBC news, saying, 'Reactivation of previously unknown fault systems' are the cause. The Hawkins theory is that the life expectancy would be a tiny amount of time, and basically the MBH would disappear as soon as it was created. The real question is : Does anyone know, if MBHs were created, how long they would take to eat the earth?. If it was a few hundred or thousand years, that gives us time to set up on the Moon / Mars, and start again! If the earth did get devoured, all the satellites / space stations would stay in orbit 'forever', as there would be no atmosphere left to slow them down and make their orbits decay :) Personally, the Strangelet idea is a lot more concerning, because they would destroy the earth with a much shorter timespan, possibly hours to weeks. Buckethed (talk) 10:55, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


Questions for experts

I think it would be a good idea to have a section where questions about LHC can be answered by experts. My (new) questions would be:

1. Considering that black holes are born in collapsing iron stars, what is the known "breaking point" mass of an iron star and how this mass value(or gravitational force/pressure in the centre of the star) can be converted in collision energy value for lead ions in order to determine if the collisions of the lead ions at the LHC will create black holes or not?

2. Considering that a lead ion is at least 204 times heavier than a proton, in that case the mass of a MBH created would be considerably bigger compared with a MBH created by proton collision, and since the LHC is a very precise instrument I assume that the MBH would not have a high velocity relative to the point of impact, how likely it would be for that MBH to be hit by other lead ions from the beams, or coalesce with neighbouring MBHs? Was this scenario considered by CERN?

Somebody here said that two particles would never destroy Earth. I say it is not a matter of number of particles but a matter of energy. I'm sure that before Einstein’s E=mc2 many scientists would have said that a few kilograms of matter would never destroy a city. --LF1975 (talk) 13:09, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not really an expert but I can try to answer a few things.

1. Re: a "breaking point". The critical condition for a black hole to form is not high mass, or small size, but both together (high density). You can easily calculate the Schwarzschild radius of any massive object, which is the radius within which that mass would have to be compressed in order to form a black hole. So if the sun were compressed to a radius of 3 km or the Earth to 9 mm, they would become black holes. For subatomic objects it's more complicated (quantum field theory and you can't just use that simple classical Schwarzschild formula. However, I think it's widely accepted that black holes can only form at the LHC if there are extra spatial dimensions (in which case things get waay more complicated :) ). 2. This is naturally what would have been considered in the report by J. Blairot et. al. As a point of interest, the mass equivalent of all the energy stored in the LHC beams would be on the order of micrograms, and for two colliding protons it would be on the order of a hundredth of a nano-nanogram. 137.138.99.123 (talk) 19:38, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

In the CERN courier from 12-11-2004 [1] it is assumed that the creation of mini black holes at LHC is highly possible and that these mini black holes will evaporate.
However, in the article "Do black holes radiate" [2] by Adam D. Helfer, from the Department of Mathematics of the University of Missouri it is stated that the mini black holes might not evaporate after all. Since both these articles are written by experts, and since there is no consensus I think that we, the human race, have a good chance to shoot us in the leg, so to say, if the LHC experiment goes forward as scheduled.

--LF1975 (talk) 09:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

If a cosmic ray creates a stable micro-black hole, would it get captured or just blow straight through the planet and leave the solar system? If LHC does the same, what would happen? Just curious.. Anaholic (talk) 23:52, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Considering that a MBH can occur only on head on particles collision of a particular energy (particles speed) you can approximate the speed of the resulting MBH using the formulas here: Elastic_collision#One-dimensional_relativistic. Since at LHC the particles/ions will have practically equal opposite speeds, the resulting MBH's speed should be close to 0, considering the precision of the LHC. Doing a bit of math, for a cosmic particle, say a proton having the speed of 0.99999999991c (LHC speed) hitting a proton in the earth’s atmosphere of 0 speed, the speed of the resulting MBH will be 0.999999964c, if the two protons coalesce completely in the MBH, without any loss. --LF1975 (talk) 13:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
The argument that particles are likely to be produced at near-rest is wrong for several reasons. Most particles (except extremely heavy ones) are quite probably relativistic. (Granted, black holes are quite heavy.) For one thing, the colliding particles will not have equal and opposite momenta. True, a proton will have precisely 7 TeV of energy, but the constituent quarks and gluons inside will have various different amounts of energy, and in general two colliding partons will have quite different energies. Another problem with this argument is that you haven't considered the possibility of momentum in all three directions - even if the initial total momentum in the z direction (i.e. the beam direction) were zero (which it is not as I just explained), there still can and will be particles moving with very high speed in the +y, +x, -y and -x directions, such that momentum is conserved. It's really unlikely that anything in a LHC collision will be travelling slowly, especially considering all the energy there is to go around. Also, you can't use those formulas because nearly all LHC collisions are emphatically inelastic. Rotiro (talk) 23:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Maybe you are right about the energies of the quarks and gluons. But you are wrong in the case of the formulas. If v1 = v2 you get the equation for the inelastic collision. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.64.134.222 (talk) 12:44, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray argument

One argument used by LHC safety proponents is that ultra-high-energy cosmic rays have been observed hitting the earth. Since the energy of these "particles" is above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit this leads to the GZK paradox, if the particles were "most likely " protons. Would it be possible that these "particles" were in fact MBHs at very high speed with a sufficient mass to disrupt the earth matter in their path, and the release of energy observed to originate in fact from the implosion of matter in their trail? Would a MBH be affected by the GZK limit? Since a black hole is the only object in the known universe that contradicts the Pauli exclusion principle, I guess a black holes might be in fact a true "black sheep" of the universe, breaking physical laws which all other "things" obey.--LF1975 (talk) 13:03, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Black holes are hardly the only thing not to obey the (highly suggestive) pauli exclusion principle - I suggest you read wikipedia's article on it. It only applies to *identical* /fermions/; there are plenty of non-fermions, to begin with. Anaholic (talk) 10:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for correcting me. I cut out the passage relating to "only object". How about answering the questions?:).--LF1975 (talk) 14:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Strangelet Section

THE CENSOR HAS ERASED THE ENTIRE SECTION OF STRANGELETS, SINCE LHC WILL BE PRIMARILY A PRODUCER OF STRANGE MATTER (AS RHIC WAS BEFORE IT) TO CENSOR STRANGE PHYSICS (ALSO IN STRANGELET AND STRANGE MATTER ARTICLE) AND SPENDING 14 BILLION $ TO CONSTRUCT A MACHINE TO make STRANGE MATTER, SEEMS SOMEWHAT A CONTRADICTION. i reposted again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk •contribs) 00:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


I am not "the censor", I am a physicist who has worked for many years on strange matter and strangelets. If you want to add material on this topic then please propose it on this talk page first, and I will help you make it correct. What you added isn't correct, which is why I have deleted it.Dark Formal (talk) 02:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Glad you did; I was about to tag the section {{inappropriate tone}} and {{technical}}. --Kralizec! (talk) 03:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Could you please explain why it's incorrect, otherwise we end up with an "oh yes it is, oh no it's not argument" and bring this once and for all to a conclusion. Thanks Khukri 15:59, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
The claim that a particular group theorized that "colour-locked negative strangelets will be more stable than iron" is vacuous. Anyone can "theorize" anything: that doesn't make it worthy of inclusion in wikipedia. Also, the stability of any kind of strange matter depends on an unknown number, the bag constant. If the bag constant is small enough, strange matter will be stable, so the "theorizing" just means asusming a small bag constant, which has been done by many people. Moreover, this group's research is highly speculative and has not been cited by anyone (except themselves). It certainly doesn't reach the level of impact or general acceptance required for inclusion in this article. It might be worthy of mention in the strangelets article: I am hoping that Homocion will collaborate with me on that. Dark Formal (talk) 20:19, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

You miss the entire point of this section dark formal. This section is a sub-article on bio-ethics, not a scientific article on theoretical certainties but probable risks. Thus it works in theoretical probabilities.And it is theoretically possible the creation of negative strangelets at LHC. It is also an experimental fact. The previous Hadron Collider, RHIC main produce was strangelet plasma. Hence, LHC will collide hadrons producing strangelet plasma and probably with far more energy stable, strangelet matter theorized by both the chinese researchers, wilczeck and others. So the scenario we are reposting here is possible theoretically: the creation of stable strangelets and its fission and catalysis in an ice-9 transformation of radiant matter into strange liquid. It is also helpful to complete the cosmological model of star formation. And we know that in physics all things possible theoretically with some experimental prove tend to happen. So the strangelet scenario is today the most probable catastrophe scenario and it has to be reflected in this article, which would also need a final section on 'probabilities'. This is a 'bio-ethic article', and bio-ethics is not an exact science, but a science of prevention. It works pointing out events that might probable harm human beings. So all bio-ethical arguments and articles 'theorize' on probable events. Do not erase it again please. If you want to update strangelets and strange matter and ice-9 you are welcome, but again do not just erase, update and correct.Today there is consensus that CFL strangelets are stable in the range it will be produced at LHC. Hence the issue enters for that reason also in the realm of Bio-Ethics and deserves a sub-article with a bio-ethical treatment. It is no longer only a technical issue. People in all spheres tend to deny that certain issues like war, possible catastrophes, human rights of all kinds, etc. are beyond the individual or private sphere but they are. Please if you disagree on the need for a bio-ethical sub-section in this article let me know why, but dont erase it.

All the themes I introduce are new themes that were not treated previously and now are at the edge of strange matter research. I suggest you write your versions. The previous articles have 20 years old references and ice-9 was not even an entry in the dictionary when the term has been a decade around, and used by the BBC and Scientific American. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 02:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Please review Wikipedia's official policy on verifiability; it states that "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." In addition to being incomprehensible to a layman such as myself, your edit has zero citations from reliable, third-party, published sources. Please note that as per the verifiability policy, un-cited edits that are challenged may be removed at will by anyone. --Kralizec! (talk) 02:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
This is not a bio-ethical article, this is a factual article about the LHC. Khukri 08:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

OK KUKRI, I CUT TO THE SHORTEST VERSION BUT YOU CANT CENSOR IT ALL, YOU HAVE TO LEAVE A part, this is a wikipedia destined to 'humanity' and humanity wants to know the risks involved, so you cant censor the fact, fact is lhc is basically a transformer of ordinary matter into strangelets and strange physics are here to stay and must be represented up to date in this encyclopedia. The Universe is what it is not what our theories imagine... face it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 10:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

A couple of points:
  1. Please do not characterize this as a dispute between you and Khukri. Dark Formal (talk · contribs) reverted [3] you at 15:05, 10 January 2008, Closedmouth (talk · contribs) reverted [4] you at 21:47, 10 January 2008, 58.178.144.222 (talk · contribs) reverted [5] you at 02:47, 11 January 2008, Khukri (talk · contribs) reverted [6] you at 03:24, 11 January 2008 and again [7] at 04:48, 11 January 2008, and I reverted [8] you at 07:40, 11 January 2008.
  2. At least three of us have requested that you properly source and cite your edits to reliable, third-party, published sources. If you choose not to do this, then your edits may be found to be in violation of WP:VER and reverted. --Kralizec! (talk) 12:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Kukri works in cern, the rest of you probably do or take the official position as per the president of cern: 

'we have instructed everybody to say there is zero risk'. Now i have quoted reliable sources, in fact everybody who is somebody in strangelet physics, i have cut to the minimum the section and you still keep erasing it all.

This is censorship. There was here a dialog till you dark mask decided to come like an elephant in the argument and erase it all. You know CERN will do strange liquid, you do not discuss the argument and the theme but only 

mass-bullying me to erase all the articles i introduce. I have the same interest than you in seeing

running the lhc as my original research is intimately related to what the lhc might or might not find, but here im trying to write from the perspective of humanity who cares mainly about security concerns. Wikipedia is NOT an outlet to promote your work kukri, in this case the lhc, which is an industry in itself.

KEEP COOL GUYS, YOU ALSO ERASED ALSO THE 'WIKIPROJECT HEALTH AND SAFETY' WHICH I DID NOT PUT THERE, SOME ADMINISTRATOR PUT IT, AND KEEP MENACING ME WITH EXPULSION, erasing all material about strange physics. As i say you are making a 12 billion $ machine to produce strange matter (for sure) and perhaps something else… and you dont want to talk strange physics? You are suppose to be experimentalists, if you make a machine that will produce 99% of strangelets and perhaps a Higgs particle? (which we relativists doubt as we explain better mass as a fluid vortex of space-time)… What is for sure is that LHC is going to be a transformer of normal matter into strange matter as the rhic is. But there is not a single mention of it in this article and the others. That is censorship and very stupid because cern is not a private company but a public, paid by the tax-payer and you cant just deny what it is going to be produced there. 

Dark mask you say you would collaborate so put your version of ice-9, just dont simply deny a physical process

of strangelet fusion and say it does not exist because the theoreticians that explain it are not your preferred sources. I quote arx.org, peer reviewed articles AND THOSE ARE THE BEST SOURCES FOR AN ENCYCLOPEIA, HOW CAN YOU DENY THEM?. If you work with wilczeck explain for normal people to know the process, as he described it, if you dont like my explaination but dont just ERASE, then YOU CENSOR, YOU DONT AD NEW MATERIAL YOU DONT EDIT YOU JUST ERASE AND THE 'WIKIPROJECT HEALTH AND SAFETY' IS NOT MINE AND SHOULD NOT BE ERASED. All what i can say, is that the more you censor information and i guess you are doing it with everybody that comes to cern for information the more people will worry.

Dark Formal: The generally agreed situation concerning the "ice-9" effect for strangelets is already described in the strangelet article. What you want to add is a wild speculation made by one group, which has been published but hasn't been accepted, cited, verified, or even noticed by the physics community as a whole. It may deserve a mention, but it does not deserve to be presented as the mainstream accepted account. Dark Formal (talk) 02:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It is a fact that 99% of the LHC produce will be strangelet matter. Is or is not truth?

Dark Formal: Not true. Strangelets are not the same as QGP. Dark Formal (talk) 02:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

It is a fact that theoretically strange matter can fusion the Earth. It is or it is not truth?

Dark Formal: It is a speculation that has been around for a while. It is already described in the strangelet article, and doesn't need to be re-described here. Dark Formal (talk) 02:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Answer, edit, reason, give your version of strangelet theory and recent facts, dont simply erase. And please if someone wants the info to STAY, can you help here? this con=cerns us all. Fact is that you dark mask are just destroying the articles, in account of some supossed ‘pope-like’ supreme knowledge of strangelets which I presume you wont mind share with us? (-:, so say things about strangelets don’t keep yur supreme knowledge for yourself, please enlighten us. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 18:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: I don't work for CERN and I will not protect them from uncomfortable truths about their experiments. I work on strangelets and strange matter, and my only real concern is making sure that strange matter physics is described in wikipedia in a correct and balanced way. Dark Formal (talk) 02:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Let me remind you that physics cannont provide probability over these new theroys becoming true. The same thing can said for black holes . 58.178.139.54 (talk) 04:23, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Sry to say this but this is irrelevant in regards to this article. We are not here to ascertain the truth or veracity of the arguments for or against the LHC, but I repeat for the umpteen millionth time what is verifiable. If a nobel prize winning physcist puts in writing that the LHC will create pink fluffy bunnnies, or Nature magazine publishes that it will bring back Elvis, however inprobable it is verifiable and this can be included. Anything else is original research Khukri 09:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

The recent editing of the stranglet section is inacurate as quak mater and strang matter are completly different types of matter. Also the quark-gluon plasma doesn't does not consist of strangelets. Can someone redo the section. And this time make sure it verifiable and complete free of original research. 58.179.131.78 (talk) 13:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I realize that there has been a lengthy ongoing discussion and my opinion might not be helpful, but could I at least suggest that if the strangelet safety concerns stay that they are properly cited? It seems like a decent compromise. In particular things like "Chinese theoreticians" should be replaced by actual researcher names with citations to relevant papers. That the researchers are Chinese seems irrelevant to me. Additionally, adding footnote citations to match the rest of the article seems appropriate. If there are no references, then it seems to me it should be removed and the issue dealt with via a moderator, but I'll let people with more vested interests decide what they want to do. Steve Avery (talk) 17:48, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: The two posts above are completely reasonable. The QGP does not consist of strangelets, and the ethnicity of the researchers is irrelevant and should not be mentioned. The current strangelet section of the LHC article is much too long and detailed: the LHC article should contain a brief mention of specifically LHC-related issues, and all details about the hypothetical behavior of strangelets should be in the strangelet article itself. I am happy to implement these features myself, but I'll wait a day or so to give "Noah" a chance to respond. Dark Formal (talk) 02:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

How can the earth turn into large Strange Star [aka Quark Star] where would it get the mass from? Khukri 08:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC) small kukri if that consoles you, it all fits in the toilet flush, just by the side of the Higgs (-:

and it took you 10 minutes to erase ice-9 (-;, u are getting better guys. How many are working on this (-:, you should get extra-hours... ah, why dont you take a break, the 9 bus to geneve and enjoy your chocolat aux lait, and think the sensations youll be missing...

Let us just wish that dark formal is right, and strangelets dont become stable within the energy range of lhc. Would be a first: a sound physical theory which is wrong. Because those chinese articles are as far as my math go totally right and you havent given us any reason why you think they are wrong. iwent through the model twice trying by all means to find a hole, as i need the lhc as much as you do to complete a long, serious theoretical career. I passed it to others with the same qualifications that your friend wilczeck might have. None found it wrong. And the bag is statistically the most probable. So, if ice-9 doesnt happen, we might have to change the scientific method... because precisely what has made science so powerful is the fact that sound mathematical theory with an insight into a previously non-explained basic phenomena of nature, has always been truth. and that is what there is there dark formal. Or there is any other sound theory that explains the most common happening on the Universe, the evolution of a star from its iron-gravitational collapse into a neutron star far more denser? The point of doubt is not that: it is if strangelets will be stable at the pressure of the Earth. Or in other words, how many quarks are needed to make a sud ball hold by the gluon-strong force, as it does in the inner core regions of old stars? Obvoisoulsy at a certain moment the gluon will be stronger than the external lack of pressure and the ball will hold, depending on the bag, but most bags are within lhc power. That is the question Dark mass and if you can inform us on your opinion it will be grately appreciated. That is the parameter that will decide if we spend other christmas with the family. All what we know is that it has to be a bigger ball than RHIC… But lhc will make them up to 20 times bigger. What do you expect then dark formal? What is the expected behavior of a lump of thousands of s-d-u quarks, made everysecond, with no control? They must become stable at certain point or there would not be neutron stars. What is the threshold of stability if you don’t believe in the Chinese team? Because any stable, neutral strangelet will just fall to the center of the Earth undetected and there it will find exactly the same conditions you find in any collapsed star with an iron core, and only they explain how it becomes a neutron star. So seriously dark formal, make my day and give me hope. Why the chinese are wrong? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 00:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: There are serious misunderstandings in the above paragraph. The main one is that there is good evidence that neutron stars have nuclear matter surfaces, which is strong evidence that strangelets are not stable and do not exist. This is already explained in the strangelet article and its references. On the theoretical front, as I have explained several times in Talk:strangelet, the theoretical models all include an unknown parameter that can be tuned to make strangelets stable or unstable. So is is not true that astronomical observations or theoretical analyses demonstrate that strangelets are stable. We can discuss this further if you like. Talk:strangelet is probably the appropriate venue, since this topic is not specific to LHC. Dark Formal (talk) 00:56, 22 January 2008 (UTC)




Hi. The 9 bus doesn't go to CERN anymore since the new tramway opened in December 2007. These days you want to take the 56 to Avanchet, then get on the 14 or 16 tram down to Cornavin. 137.138.42.22 (talk) 13:30, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Cosmic Ray Argument

There is certain disputes over if cosmic rays collisions from the atmosphere are the same thing as particle colliers such as RHIC and LHC. Can we talk about this matter? 116.240.143.97 (talk) 07:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I've seen personal opinions that there are contradictions, and the article often gets edited as such, but I'm still waiting for verifiable 3rd party sources to explain the physics behind these fears. The CERN report is at the top of the article, but I haven't seen any published papers that refute CERN's position or directly calls them into question. Cheers Khukri 15:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

There is a significant difference between miniature black holes [MBHs] created in nature, and those that might be created at the LHC. The constant bombardment of earth's atmosphere by high-Energy cosmic rays does duplicate, and exceed, the center-of-momentum [COM] energy capability of the LHC, based on the recent November 9, 2007 Pierre Auger announcement essentially proving that those highest-energy cosmic rays are high-speed protons that originate from extra-galactic AGNs in "nearby" galaxies. The very reason we build colliders is to take advantage of the fact that if we generate the collisions in earth's reference frame, we have the full energy of the collision available for particle production. The cosmic rays, though of very high energy, have a much lower energy in the COM rest frame, which is the frame of interest for particle production. However, with the recent Pierre Auger results showing those cosmic rays to be normal protons, even the COM energy of the collisions of those protons with earth's atmosphere exceeds the LHC capability [but only by about 3 orders of marnitude].

That does not prove that MBHs are safe.

The rest frame of the collision product of such high-E protons is very high speed. The incoming protons are at about .9999999999999999999999c [if I counted the 9s right]. The collision product is reduced in the number of 9s, but is still very nearly relativistic. In other words, if the collision product is a MBH, it will be a near-relativistic MBH that would then strike earth after being created in the atmosphere. At that speed, it would transit earth in about 1/4 second [if it has not evaporated by Hawking Radiation, which is the issue of concern].

The likelihood of interaction of such high-speed MBH is extremely minimal. In the parlance of nuclear reactor neutrons, it would have a very tiny cross-section for interaction. It would require a 'direct hit' in order to accrete a nucleon, and it would be of such small mass that its ability to 'suck in' matter due to its own gravitation would be infintessimally small. It would, for all intents and purposes, be the gravitational equivalent for the neutrino's exceptionally tiny cross-section for interaction with respect to the far stronger 'weak force'. Trillions of neutrinos pass through us each second, yet they never interact. Only with great care and precision can we detect that they can interact on rare occasion [see our work at Fermilab for details].

This contrasts sharply with "at rest" MBHs as would be produced at the LHC. The phrase "at rest" is quoted, because they would have some inherent kinetic energy relative to earth, but not much. An appreciable percentage would have speeds below escape velocity [40,000 kph] anda become gravitationally bound to earth [if they don't "evaporate" via Hawking Radiation]. They are "at rest" because that is the design of the LHC, to have the two beams of circulating protons [or Pb ions] of equal but opposite momentum, so as to both maximize the available energy for particle production, and to create something in which the particle detectors can be placed 360 degrees around it, and not just in the forward direction [as in fixed-target accelerators]

By being captured by earth's gravity, if they don't evaporate, they would endlessly orbit through earth, giving repeated opportunity to interact and grow. Production of millions of them [as some have suggested might be the case], coupled with an inherent growth capability that might be as short as millenia to accrete earth, could be disatrous, which is the reason some of us mainstream physicists with backgrounds in applied nuclear physics, who have obviously thought about this in greater detail than have the CERN physicists, are concerned. <Noah> -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.248.7.121 (talk • contribs)

This is what we want the mainstream stuff, I'm not an expert on the subject at all, so can you find this published so it can be sourced and referenced please? Cheers Khukri 19:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I would like just to add that due to the special conditions created at the LHC, common sense (here's a reference:) ) tells me that a MBH “at rest” created at the colliding heads of the beams, will practically be injected with the matter following in the beams, thus the mass of the MBH might increase above the critical mass from which it might accrete matter from the neighbouring atoms solely by gravitation. LF1975 (talk) 14:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by LF1975 (talk • contribs) 14:06, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
In the case of Wikipedia, "common sense" generally equals the verboten original research. --Kralizec! (talk) 14:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

As the author of the preceding section, it would be tempting to agree with the idea that the beam would serve as an injector of mass into a newly-created MBH. However, that does not appear plausible. The newly-created MBH would have some residual kinetic energy, and within a micro-second be out of the beam. While a few bunches of particles could have aimed at it before it removed, the MBH is exceptionally tiny and likely would not be struck. It appears that it would be very 'neutrino like' in that regard, requiring passing past numerous nuclei before encountering one 'directly head on' such that it interacted and accreted the nucleon. It might take literally millions of years before a single MBH could accrete enough matter to weigh 1 gram. However, creation of millions of them, each acting independently, might be far more problematic, as they would eventually coalesce, and the accretion rate would eventually increase as the 'diameter' of the MBH exceeded the diameter of a proton. 4.248.4.85 (talk) 19:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)Noah

Sources? Khukri 09:57, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
While I got an A in the last physics class I took, that was over 15 years ... and quantum physics gives me more of a headache now than it did then. That said, as important this section is to the article, it really, really needs to follow WP:VER and WP:RS. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:17, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

well kralizec ill try to explain it to you, without numbers. No I wont put anything, as it will be erased but Straight to the point: one thing is what the lhc people says to the naive, well intentioned journalists that believe in us. I also get tired of their ignorance and incapacity to understand vectors tensors and twistors but i dont lie to them. Black holes and strangelets are about 'mass', and 'mass' is about 'quark numbers' and a proton, which is the basic cosmic ray doesnt have enough 'mass=quarks' to create any mass-heavy particle.That is why we make lhc to do what cosmic rays cannot. Cosmic rays CANNOT create black holes or strangelets, because in nature a bunch of heavy ions will never be confined into a ring by stochastic cooling, (a process that constantly puts them together as speed constantly breaks them apart). In nature they break apart. Only in lhc they are put back together and let run adding relativistic mass, each turn. In nature if they ever produce relativistic mass it would be upon conception in the Nova and by the time they are here they are single ions… If cosmic rays come from the big-bang then they wont be hevy ions. So the only ones that cant do harm are heavy ions coming from nova, hitting exactly the reduced orbit of the Earth and exactly the reduced orbit of another very scarce heavy ion... i did a rough calculus and the chances that an event of a heavy ion coming from a rare bursting star knocks in the exact center another heavy ion in this exact planet and produce a black hole are far smaller than the age of the Universe. It is not a difficult calculus to do with our statistical knowledge of cosmological densities, particle abundances and novas explosions, and im sure it has been done by many. So cern knows. So what is really worrying about this argument is that it is the preferred argument of CERN So when it has to resort to an obvious lie something is going wrong with the truth. and to you noah, the question is that cern will produce one every second if string theory is truth (another of the things it is erased there)... Now the point is that for all effects there is roughly a 25% chances that the BH goes into the Earth with a 90 angle, that will cross more than 10 thousand miles and a 25% chances as in any billiar collision that one of the 'balls' looses 75% of speed. And then you put all that together and it is a rough stochastic certainity that within the first hour of experiments, one will start a vortex orbit towards that center of the Earth... The entire point of the lhc is that precisely: that the risk wont ever go away as every experiment will have it. Every experiment will carry a probability of extinction and how you are gonna deal for 10 years with the pressure of the public or the chances that represent? You wont be able unless you are open and truthful. So far facts are not known and that is why you dont have a genocide suit on La Hague. CERN is making a huge bet. That you will find the Higgs, that the BH and the QGM wont find you, and that nobody will have the honestity to say the truth to the people... and those 3 things together indeed have really a much smaller possibility than ice-9. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 00:19, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Are we talking about improving the article or are we talking about what if? 58.178.129.234 (talk) 04:53, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

The Dispute about the saftey of the LHC must end

I have a request to the admins and Experts to help resolve this editing war about the safety section of the LHC article

I getting sick of pepole keep on editing the saftey section especialy about stranglets. Also enough with the 'Ice-9' quote when referring to the Strangelet theroy.

Micro black holes (including the non-standted energy required to produce on) is a theory Hawking radiation is a theory Strangelet (color-flavor locked and the energy required to produce one) is a theory.

Even though a theory may sound plausible there is a chance that it might not happen in real life. Furthermore no one can calculate the chances of the risk of humanity if the LHC is turned on.

LHC isn't a doomsday machine but a large machine which is colliding two particles to each other with collidetion energy in higher than RHIC. 58.178.144.222 (talk) 08:30, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

We've given alot of these edits leeway, and at every turn I have asked for verifiability and not personal theories. I have said before that these are issues that have gained popular press therefor it is only right there is a section, but we have to start removing information immediately that is not referenced. Khukri 09:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

As i said, all quotes are arx.org referenced, i have quote only the best strangelet theorists there is, madsen, wilczeck, chen, etc. Now physics is a theory, as per kuhn, godel, etc. a mathematical theory but we believe that what mathematics proves is right. That is our believe as scientists. The lhc is done to verify theories. The higgs particle, the reason is done, is also a theory about mass, clearly disputed by those of us who believe Einstein was double right and a mass justa vortex of accelerated space-time (Equivalence Principle). So for the same reason strangelet and ice-9 is a theory that does deserve to be explained, as lhc will also verify it. Are we all scientists here? So let us at least keep as a common agreement the laws and meaning of the scientific method. If you want to dialog do it, i have accepted to reduce strangelet to a 3 or 4 line section providing that information real and based in arx.org paper reviewed documents are placed in strangelet and ice-9. What you cant is erase everything that has happened in strangelet physics in the past 20 years. You are going to verify theories, mainly on strangelet physics which frankly all of us would rather find false, and in mass, where you will solve the dispute between relativists and quantum higgs, also a theoretical dispute. You are a machine to resolve theories. So please be consequent with the purpose of science which is knowledge. And whoever put the 'health and safety wikiproject', please repost it, i didnt put it and i dont know why you also erased it. Humanity wants to be healthy and safe. It is a good wikiproject.


Plus you write 'NOONE CAN CALCULATE THE RIKS'.... SO YOU ACCEPT THERE ARE RISKS! AND HENCE THE SECTION MUST STAY!, i find obscene those calculus but seem neeeded. And point is that today strangelet theory is as serious about forecasting an ice-9 reaction as higgs theory is about to prove the meaning o fmass... So the probability is there, and again, frankly it is a nightmare we all rather prefer never happen, but now that we have a theory that makes it possible we have to take the very difficult decision of coming out of the closet and explain it. Not censoring it. Obviously there are jobs, professional prestige and many things at work, but we cant keep an strangelet factory going on for a decade without explain it. We all know cern will be a strange matter factory as rhic was. That is not theory is fact. Cant you people stop self-denial and take the bull by the horns. This has to be studied seriously again. Even if we have to make a fool out of ourselves... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 19:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

What I find frustrating is when I go in and edit a valid post for grammar and punctuation [homocion is obviously not a native-English writer], to 'clean up' the language, I then find that his/her work, with my grammar editing, is then erased in its entirety by unknown parties. I have researched homocion's references, and they are valid. While the idea of strange matter [strangelets] being created at the LHC might be upsetting, it is a valid theory originated decades ago by others and well-discussed in the literature. It was in fact raised as an issue by Wilczek in that SciAm article in which he claimed MBHs were impossible to produce [and then shot-down by himself as well]. Since then, other theorists have claimed there might be plausible production modes for MBHs. Likewise, the strangelet production mode has not been disproven in any theory I've seen, rather suggested as "unlikely" or "improbable". As Khukri noted, it is not possible to calculate these risks so far as I know. Accordingly, there should at least be a few sentences that additionally discuss the Strangelet risk. Since homocion had well-cited references, I would suggest he be allowed to write something. I or others could then go in and clean up his English [he seems to like to write "prove" instead of "proof", etc.]. 4.248.1.71 (talk) 19:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)noah

Sorry to frustrate you. But there are also factual errors in his posts, and I would like to work with him to correct them. It is very kind of you to help with his English, but I am really hoping he will co-operate with me to hammer out a factually correct version of whatever he is trying to say, and until that happens, fine-tuning his English is a lower priority. Dark Formal (talk) 19:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Apology accepted Dark Formal. I have just added another Strange Matter discourse. I haven't put the cites in yet, but I'm sure you recognize that they exist [as most of them are cites also used by homocion]. I've discoursed on various related topics, which should give an opporunity for lots of good links to outside material. I have kept it relatively to the point, without reaching any conclusions of my own. As you know, Strangelet searches were all the rage prior to start-up of the RHIC [using the AGS as a fixed target accelerator]. The most recent RHIC results were a "perfect surprise" because the presumed QGP lasted about 10 times longer than the fireball they had thought would be made. Some have suggested that creation of a few strange quarks served to lengthen its lifetime, but that they aren't quite yet to where there is a sufficient abudndance of strange quarks to make a strangelet; i.e. more energy is needed, which the some 30-fold increase in energy of the LHC might provide if we commence Pb-Pb collisions.4.248.4.237 (talk) 22:14, 12 January 2008 (UTC)Noah

OK, but I have two concerns about the material you have added. (1) The amount of space devoted to strangelets on the LHC page is now out of all proportion to their importance to LHC. Compare to the sections on Cost etc! The material you have added really belongs on the strangelet page, and in fact is already there in different words. I would welcome a discussion with you on how to add it to that page, since that's where I think much of it belongs. Take a look at the strangelet page and tell me what you think. (2) Wikipedia is a tertiary source which should focus on mainstream accepted results, mentioning cutting-edge research when necessary. The "Chinese group" is a tiny fringe group, whose work has only been cited by themselves, and has not as far as I know been noted or "raised concerns" anywhere. I have looked at their paper and actually I think it may be simply wrong, which would explain their lack of impact. They deserve at most one sentence in the strangelet article, and zero sentences in the LHC article. Dark Formal (talk) 02:38, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that Quark-gluon plasma does not contain contain any stranglets let alone anything to do with them. 58.178.143.216 (talk) 05:16, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Is anyone willing to agree that it does not mater whether CERN is safe or not. The point in the safety section should be that some people say it isn't some people say it is? Can we agree on that?

People keep arguing about strange matter and its effects. but no one knows and there is no conconcensus so we should leave it at that.

CaptinJohn (talk) 11:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

No problems at all so long as these some people are verifiable people and the quotes can be attributed or an article can be cited stating there are fears , not just any old bod off the street putting their personal fears on to the article. Khukri 12:27, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

This is really getting out of hand. Khukri and the rest requested verifiable sources and no original research. We desperately need a expert to end this once and for all. 210.50.218.18 (talk) 05:38, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

im not editing but if you cut down strangelets, and keep erasing ice-9 and makign stranglets a foot note article the information is hidden. so i will keep reposting ice-9 and strangelets. it might make sense to cut down here the info as this is lhc, but you people should lead ice-9 and strangelets, what i find rude is that you keep erasing all what i do there also instead of correcting it. Why on the hell ice-9 and strangelets have to be short, and only concerned with theories 20 years old? Lhc is happening now and all probable, possible, theoretical or empiricl info should be there dark formal, you keep erasing the article abotu atoms, call it qgm if you want I just used terms for normal people. But again it keeps being erased and i keep being bullied with notes saing i will be banned from here,... That what makes me think you do not want the information to be pubic. Apart from tat there it seems no way to end this beacause basically a lot of you dont want to acknowledge 3 obvious things: - That theoretically a runaway strangelet fusion is possible and we will not know if it happens till the bottom is siwtich on ... but it is not a wild speculation formal, we all know tht it is just the most logic thing to happen as it is an erxogenic reaction. - That the lhc is not about higgs but about quark matter. that is what it will produce, call it quark-gluon plasma or quark-gluon matter or strange matter or strangelet dark formal, those are technicalities, 99% of what lhc will produce will be those kind of stuffs and there is no info about them here, the strangelet article is totally shrunk. - That besides big brains with data we are human part of a scoety which has given us a rain check on trust, money and confidence that what we do is morally responsible, it doesnt endanger mankind and it is useful. And this is not anylonger the case after we found we will do blak holes and strangelets. What cern is doing is clearly immoral, i mean the statements of the president, and i can tell you sooner or latter this will get really bad. Because point 2. If stange matter were just like the higgs or the black hole a probability you could get away with murder, but that is what you are going to produce, maybe only plasma and we will live but if it is stable we will die. I couldnt care less about castrophysic bullshits. But data is data I believe in science. To me 2+2 = 4 is theory but i believe that even more than what im seing now. And theory is totally against swtiching on the lhc without proper guides, careful consideration, slow building of power etc. this is a very dangerous machine and that cannot longer be hidden. 'You can cheat many people all the time, all the people a short time, but not all the people all the time' lincoln and again this is not about you guys whih i see are normal well behaved people which trust your institutions but about a 12 bllion dollar industry with new problems of security is not facing as routines are always seemingly easier. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 21:10, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Again you still rambling about about the safety of the LHC without ANY help to improve to improve the artile. Can you please stop adding text to the talk page until you can give us verifiable sources and no original research. Also for the record the past particle accelerators were also feared that they can create micro black holes and strangelets but they didn't. Sure the LHC is much powerful than the previous particle accelerators but considering there is still no evidence of creation of a micro black hole that it seems for me that it is possible that we will not see such result in the LHC.

This talk page is created to improve quality of the article not talking about the safety of the LHC. 58.178.156.14 (talk) 02:00, 17 January 2008 (UTC) I put all references a couple of time,s but they get erased so ill put them back when you people stop to destroy what noah below or me do. It is complex to retrieve them. You are the people who cant seem to edit or improve but only destroy. This is a useless argument. You are believers I have used all reasons. I have asked all questions. None answers. Except pretended authority of mr. adminsitrator, mr. i work with wocziek mr. I erase with a button you do the work. I mean i probably have more age, titles and medals than everyone here including dark mask but i dont impose never will impose authority, authority is meaningless. It is a shame even to mention it. i couldnt care less about who writes what or who administrates what, only reason matters in science. and nobody answers here any of the questions people are putting on about the future of our lives thatnobodyhas entrusted you to risk. If this very simple rule of human behavor is lost to all of you... Good luck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.210.93 (talk) 05:42, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Noah's post follows:

Well, my Strangelet section was erased, and replaced by one by Dark Formal. Apparently, he believed it was too long, compared to the other sections [such as "Cost"]. My solution would have been to lengthen the other sections, not shorten the Strangelet section.

However, to appease everyone, I'm going to leave Dark Formal's edition essentially unchanged. I did insert a couple of links in his work-product, without substantively changing the text [I changed "natural" to "in nature" to provide the nature link. I do not necessarily mind providing the bulk of the information by way of links [such as what theoretical strange matter is, by providing a link to strange matter], which is what Dark Formal did in his rewrite of my previous post. However, in the process, he also eliminated some information that is not provided by links, which I find unacceptable. For example, the citation to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the work they did on quark theory showing stable negative strangelets should not be deleted. I read that article, and it is as good as any of the other articles on strange matter. The reference was only about a sentence long in my prior version, and now it is gone. That is censorship; erase duplicate material if you must - leave informative, well-cited/referenced material alone, even if you don't like it. I'll think of a short way to add that back, without trying to offend Dark Formal or others. 4.248.4.79 (talk) 02:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)noah

Something tells me that you have some relation to Walter L. Wagner. 58.178.156.14 (talk) 04:30, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: Hi Noah. Why don't you get a wikipedia username? You seem like a valuable and level-headed contributor. Edits by numeric IPs are often junk, but yours aren't and I would like to be able to identify your edits immediately by seeing your name on them. Down to business: The problem with citing the "Chinese group"'s work here is that it is one tiny part of the whole strangelet literature. It is unbalanced to single them out here as authoritative, especially since their work has not been confirmed or even cited by anyone else. I added a citation to their work in the strangelet article, where there are balancing citations to the rest of the strangelet literature. By the way, I have concerns about the validity of their research (see Talk:Strangelet) too.

Were you the author of the section that I just deleted from the strangelet article? I don't mean to trample on everything you try to do, but it was mostly a restatement of things that are already said elsewhere in that article. We can negotiate something perhaps: let's continue the discussion on the Talk:Strangelet page. Dark Formal (talk) 23:41, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Dark Formal: I've obtained a user name. The name "noah" was already taken, so I'm now using "OldNoah" instead. Yeah, you've deleted some of my stuff too, that I thought was pretty good. We'll keep hammering it out, but if you are heavy on the eraser side of things, you should at least detail what you believe is wrong in your comments, so the author can correct it. I'm not without a little expertise in the English language, and my background in physics precedes Wilczek's, as he was born 10 months after me. However, I took a break from physics for a couple years, re-entering the field in 1973 when he was announcing his quark confinement ideas, and Hawking was announcing his "evaporation" ideas regarding micro black holes. 4.248.7.58 (talk) 19:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)OldNoah

Oops, forgot to log in. This should sign my name properly. Oldnoah (talk) 19:37, 18 January 2008 (UTC)OldNoah

It seems there is going to be a update of the Saftey Report for LHC to be release this year. I hope this will end some fears. Thanks OldNoah of finding the source of this :) 116.240.150.67 (talk) 06:09, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, if we craftily combine various ideas aired by people around the world, I guess we can indeed imagine a happy ending to our civilization brought about by CERN (a kind of redemption for the evil deed of having introduced the world wide web to tranquil mother earth): a clean ending in a hairlessly neat (3cm) black hole! But, alas, there's no hope of this happening through LHC. On the other hand a still not fully repudiated theory says that a web site overloaded with enough insults to reason may collapse into a nasty particle called a moron, which within the blink of an eye will turn everything into exceedingly stable "moronic matter".85.0.233.15 (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

and this adds what to the article? Khukri 23:34, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

well 85 plus must be one of those boltzmann brains that stochastically appear in the Universe, from time time, void of body and totally unrelated to reality, or as he says éxceedingly stable 'moronic matter'. Or perhaps he is on the contrary a common example of the kind of children of thought that are playing in that place with the future of the Earth? Certainly humor is the last exit to an impossible paradox: how to discover the meaning of the big-bang without doing a real bigbang. The solution is called brain power not voltage or $ power (-: Gifted those who believe without seeing because to them belong the kingdom of heavens (-: —Preceding unsigned comment added by Homocion (talk • contribs) 23:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

However Brain power has it limits. Something that is pluasable on paper can not always be true. That why scientist do experiments! The standard model was just a possible aspact of what the phyiscal universe until results from previous Collider experiments proved it was true. There was no physical proof that micro black, stranglets have been created not even a sign. While it should be true that the LHC can collide particles at much higher energies than previous colliders. Ihere it is next to impossible that the earth will be destroyed by two particles. In the next eight mouths we will see the real truth, not some "what if" theroy?. Till now can you just leave the LHC and realated articles alone, thank you. :) 58.178.156.14 (talk) 04:55, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

My friend, really, dont you see that you 'wont see' much if brain power is right? If this becomes a nova chances are that you will indeed become a strangelet but a human thought is a second and that is enough time if the qgm is stable for you that will be there with me and so many other here to evaporate... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.106.210.93 (talk) 05:59, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

"sigh" We had a long talk about this.... 58.178.156.14 (talk) 06:31, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Were not supposed to delete un helpful stuff from talk pages are we?

CaptinJohn (talk) 09:41, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

ICE 9 MUST BE DEFINED YOU CANNOT CENSO

i get blocked by administrators (mainly one John) every time i edit or try to introduce in any possible definition (ice-9, strangelets, cat's cradle, lhc, strange matteretc) so im not editing anymore. But someone must definitely define ice-9 or maybe do an ice-9 reaction dissambiguation. it is not my original research and i have repost only once but it is obvious that this is a system that empowers censors and destroyers of articles over collaborators. In any case i decided to do a book called 'ice-9' on this ugly matter. thats what you get with censorship i just started with 2 lines here and will end up doing an entire book. It is just a pity that this wikipedia doesnt let serious people to contribute properly in themes people care for. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.246.73 (talk) 19:34, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Can we chance the term "Ice-9 to catalyzed conversion it make more sense doesn't it? :) 58.179.131.80 (talk) 03:07, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Spam links

I have reverted the spam links that keep being added to the article, as these links are only being added to popularise these sites. The only one with any credibility is the lifeboat org and this gives a good insight to the issues.

The other sites promoting a paper like this with the conclusion including wording such as The main danger could be now just behind our door with the possible death in blood of 6.500.000.000 shows it is not a scientific paper but scaremongering. I've said before this would be struggled to be published in any reputable publication and until it is and becomes a reputable source or under goes peer review, then it is no more than personal musings and has no place in the article. Khukri 09:28, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --Kralizec! (talk) 15:18, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Now that I have a moment to log in I'm concerned about the bias there is with this article in the first place, the safety concerns section simply slims down as if the danger has somehow all but vanished except in the eyes of a few malcontents. I understand about some links being taken off, but there are virtually no links at all to anything other than sites and that reaffirm and support CERN's arguments. here is my problem there is absolutely no section discussing the Legal Action against CERN over the LHC, or any groups that are attempting to place the project on moratorium, this isn't about life and death, this is about proper representation of all sides, normally I never speak up, but that this point I am concerned.--Ebenonce (talk) 10:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

boldAllow me to point out that on many other Wikipedia pages where the content of the page is debated you will find that a box with following text "The neutrality of this article is disputed" is posted on the top of that page. I find it incomprehensible that this is not the case with the definition of "Hadron Collider". What is the matter with you guys administrating this? This article already posted and locked is obviously bias.Ursanautica (talk) 01:50, 21 March 2008 (UTC)Ursanautica

Addressing LHCdefense.org and other websites

Since this is the talk page I would like to discuss this first, but I got thinking on my last comment on the Spam Links and started thinking about posting guidelines and information being verifiable but not necessarily true. To that extent, I understand the error of a previously deleted change and I digress to your judgment, however I am obligated to express the following.

1. Regardless of any political/professional ties anyone may have to CERN or the LHC project, it should still be represented that the LHC defense fund exists, not who is right, or who is wrong. just an addition to the safety concerns section, you can visit LHCdefense.org all day long and verify that it's there, there is someone who is trying legal action, you can verify it, and it should be included.

2.The lifeboat foundation does indeed also express concern over this, regardless if you think they are a legitimate organization, it exists, it should be included.

3. There is a myspace group, that's right myspace group with over 950 members that all share concern over this project, we're not talking a few people, but enough people to warrant attention.

4. you know, I don't mind if there is a safety reassurances section, I think it would be fabulous, like you guys say, it's not about discussing things, this about an article, I could not agree with you more.--Ebenonce (talk) 10:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The talk page is to improve the article. This is not a forum. 58.179.196.104 (talk) 14:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Time Travel?

Is it true that the switching on of the LHC will make it possible to create a wormhole in time, allowing time travellers from the future to visit us? (AndrewAnorak (talk) 15:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC))

Probably not. Wormholes themselves are purely theoretical as yet. Anaholic (talk) 23:39, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
The subject is, however, discussed in a variety of science publications such as New Scientist, which means that it would be quite easy to find reliable sources if we wanted to add such speculation to the article. --Muna (talk) 15:34, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Asfaik, it's possible for seperate photons to travel in time from the point in time when the wormhole was created until it ceases. It's said wormholes need lot's of energy to be sustained, and be stable. Electron9 (talk) 16:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Questions about Hawking Radiation

To balance the safety issue the article needs to do more than note that Hawking Radiation is a disputed and unproven theory that MBHs (Micro Black Holes) would evaporate. The article needs to also contest CERN's flawed cosmic ray analogy which implies that Hawking Radiation is either already proven correct or irrelevant. The cosmic ray analogy falsely implies that either MBHs are not created at the proposed energy levels or that MBHs impacting Earth must have evaporated due to Hawking Radiation (the only theory CERN proposes to prevent a created MBH from accreting [destroying] Earth). The cosmic ray analogy is false because particles created by cosmic ray impacts with Earth would travel too fast to be captured by Earth's gravity (they would pass through Earth at near light speeds). However particles created by head-on collisions in particle accelerators tend to have much lower velocities and may not escape Earth’s gravity. Not disputing the flaws in the cosmic ray analogy makes the safety argument strongly biased in favor of Hawking Radiation being either correct or irrelevant. Verifiable sources are needed to support this argument and add balance to the safety issue in the article. --Jtankers (talk) 05:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Why do we believe that Hawking radiation [would] cause micro black holes to loose mass? If matter and/or anti-matter is added to a black hole then its total mass [probably increases or averages no net change]. [If] Hawking radiation defines adding one particle of matter or anti-matter to a singularity and adding the opposite particle to the mass of the [rest of the] universe [then] haven't we just witnessed the creation of matter and anti-matter in the universe [out-side the MBH], balanced by an equal mass in the [by one means or another probably] growing signularity? This question is of utmost relevance as we [may be about to] create Earth's first slow moving micro singularities this year as the result of particle collisions. A single slow moving micro singularity would not escape Earths gravity and [might] instead absorb the entire Earth. (Please read more from at lhcdefense.org [and LHCConcerns.com] by Dr. Walter L. Wagner, nuclear physicist) --Jtankers (talk) 03:38, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Neither of these sites have anything borderline on publishable, and are a collection of personal fears. In essence they are non-notable personal website/blogs and I suggest you read through the talk page and look for verfiable sources etc. Khukri 07:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

<comments below are in relation to struck out comment above>

oops... we totally overlooked this point. You're right, we're gonna die. 85.3.152.197 (talk) 12:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Look, all cynicism aside, these are relevant questions that are never addressed by CERN, I'm not saying I know without a doubt hawking's Radiation will fail, the problem is they (CERN) are saying Hawkings Radiation is sure to work without entertaining the idea that it won't.
That's why it is important that this is properly represented for the verity of the article as a whole.--Ebenonce (talk) 23:04, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Standard reply

Never addressed for some, the article correctly references that there are concerns, mainly from the media. Wagner is a concerned individual that raised the same concerns for the RHIC and was thrown out of court back then, his fears haven't changed.
As I have said since the beginning of my involvement in this article, if and only when Mr. Wagner or any other non-neutral organisation have a paper published in a respectable journal, or that is peer reviewed, then by all means his work, site, theories can be added to the article. Until then it is unsourced original research and an encyclopedia is not a discussion forum to air opinions, push a points of view, raise concerns, or anything similar. Wagner himself maybe come notable and worth inclusion, if and when his legal challenge to stop the LHC materialises. Until such time, his site has no basis for inclusion anymore than if I were to create a site with the viewpoint; there has not been ample proof provided by CERN that the LHC will not create a rip in the space time continuum to the realm of The Flying Spaghetti Monster. There would be no difference on the information contained in either site and neither warrants inclusion until such information is verifiable. To finish a little excerpt from WP:VERIFY.
  • The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that readers should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed.
With this in mind I will continue to remove links being spammed to promote unverifiable POV websites. Khukri 08:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

This wagner had a letter published along wilczeck in sci am 1999? it is not sci am a verifiable source? Khukri you are again censoring on behalf of CERN where you work, you are the guy who shouldnt be editing a page on your Company's work. That is called propaganda and it is not allowed in wikipedia, in any article so stop vandalizing verifiable sources —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.89.242.7 (talk) 19:48, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Not This again! We already address this before. 211.27.125.53 (talk) 03:24, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
That is referenced in the article, as reference number 15, if you care to read the article befre jumping to ill formed conclusions and accusations. Khukri 12:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Ditto what 211.27.125.53 (talk · contribs) said. While I cannot say that I know much about high energy physics, I do know that Wikipedia's official policies policies and guidelines on WP:NOR, WP:SOURCE, and WP:RS need to be followed in this article. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Has the article Been Locked to editing?

I just happened to notice that it seems as though that people no can edit the Large hadrsosnd Colider anymore, what happens? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.138.145.193 (talk) 03:39, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

It's been semi-protected so only established editors can edit it, due to vandalism. If you wish to edit the article, please create an account. --Closedmouth (talk) 04:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

NG article

How about someone adding a link to the recent National Geographic article:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/god-particle/achenbach-text —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.37.169.175 (talk) 06:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Good article, but not sure what's to be gained by adding it. There are lots of articles on the LHC, and this one is no different though maybe it could be used as reference for certain points, but not convinced. Khukri 12:11, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
A good article, especially for laypersons such as myself. I went ahead and used the NG article to cite several of the unsourced statements in this article, and also added a couple of technical details. Someone with a better technical understanding of the LHC should feel free to correct my additions as necessary. --Kralizec! (talk) 20:08, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Safety Review

A question regarding the safety reviews that have been done regarding the LHC, and the risks of black holes and strangelets (as well as random generation of unknown types of dangerous matter).

What has actually been done in terms of review? And have there been any reviews NOT related to CERN, with scientists who don't have an interest in seeing the LHC proceed with operations? This is an important point for the safety considerations - especially if all the reviews were done by CERN or people involved in CERN in some way, as this would introduce the possibility of severe bias.

References are needed, either way, before adding any of this to the main article... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Buckethed (talk • contribs) 00:03, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Does this need a citation?

One concern is that, if dangerous strangelets or micro black holes were created at LHC, a proportion would be less than the escape velocity of earth (11.2km/s), and therefore could be captured by the earth's gravitational field, as opposed to those created by high-energy cosmic rays, which would leave the planet at a velocity a fraction below the speed of light, due to the laws of momentum at relativistic speeds[citation needed]

If the answer is 'yes', then surely the only thing that will need a reference is the statement that a proportion of products will be produced at less than the escape velocity of earth? (and maybe, independently, the fact cosmic ray products are also travelling at relativistic speeds?). Otherwise, I could probably go through this article and fill the whole thing with citation needed statements?

Referencing the whole paragraph would be impossible as a single unit - but I suppose that is OK, because supplying a reference for the whole LHC article would also be impossible - in theory you could put 'citation needed' at the end of the entire article, then delete it later? Buckethed (talk) 18:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Buckethed (talk) 18:01, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually LSAG is doing the safety review, and it should be avilable by April, so we'll have awesome things to reference at that point.--Ebenonce (talk) 08:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

LHC Concerns Websites

why were links to www.lhcconcerns.com removed? infact why is there no reference to the legal defense fund against the LHC/CERN by Walter Wagner, regardless if I agree 100 percent why is his website not even mentioned in passing.

I have proposed and tried a couple of times to create a section for protest and action against the LHC, why are these always removed? they exist don't they? how is that nhot verifiable

If you read the talk page you will understand why 211.27.113.22 (talk) 06:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
I refer the honorable gentleman to my previous response Khukri 08:52, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

The Voice Of Reason

The safety section of this article has been cleaned up and censored. The cleaning up is when stuff like 'CERN will kill us in the blood of six million' has come up. That is fair enough to be honest. The censorship is when people have gone around and started putting {{fact}} even on parts of sentences, picking up on bits of sentences, basically trying to destory this part of the article as much as possible.

I propose that the 'Safety Concerns' section is subject to excessive censorship, and proof of this is how such a small section has 1/3 of the references for the entire article - showing the response to the censorship that has been needed.

However, wikipedia says 'assume good faith'. Therefore, I will assume that my views of censorship are actually wrong.

Therefore, I will treat the rest of the LHC article as the safety concerns section has been treated. By the time we have finished this article will be the best, most fully referenced article on Wikipedia, and any unreferenced nonsense will be removed in due course. And all within Wikipedia rules and regulations!

I have started by requesting citations for any paragraphs that are have no citation. I will later let this filter down, even into the safety section, from both sides (e.g. the parts of the safety section which state 'LHC is safe') will be just as thoroughly analysed.

Lets all make this article great! We won't stop the LHC anyway (at least not with this article) so will let fate decide the outcome of that. The server holding this article will either persist, be converted into a strangelet, or sucked into a black hole, but at least this article will be great.

Buckethed (talk) 23:41, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I take it that you are refering to me putting two fact tags in today. I think that is assuming good faith that I didn't delete it outright as I mentioned here. All I'm asking for is some verification of who (notable i.e. again the media or have any scientists come out in subjectied themselves to peer review about this) is actually concerned by MBH's, as there is potential for this to be explored in the article and I'd like to see some corroborating references for it devouring the earth. People come here to read about what is known, or what has been stated as being a case for or against the LHC, but this information needs to be verifiable.
Again as I said above, I can't understand why you want to use Wikipedia as your forum for discussing your fears? With it's constraints on guidelines for reliably sourced, verifiability, original research its certainly not the place to push a POV, or to inform the world of your concerns. There are other forums much better suited to this role. Now you may want to read WP:POINT if you are going to add fact tags throughout the article just for the sake of it.
Personally I would spend my time finding the verifable evidence, as there is so much supposed concern out there we've only managed to find one scientist with his concerns about RHIC published in SciAm, yet nothing about the LHC so far. I'm getting tired of repeating the same ol tired phrases day in day out, though will keep continuing as the message doesn't seem to be getting through for some reason. It's easy to start name calling and bandying words around like censorship, but you don't seem to be bringing any verifiable arguments to the table.
Your or my opinions about the safety of the LHC is 100% irrelevant, it's only about the supporting sources that we can find that represents the argument. You find them I'll have no problems adding them but the published doomsayers seem to be a wee bit thin on the ground at the moment. Khukri 02:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree. The LHC probably won't kill us - but it may, and CERN's 'safety review' actually includes misleading statements to the public. The danger, possibly, is that if the people who could order a proper safety review (the outcome of which could be either way) look at wikipedia for info (and they probably do), they might be misled as to whether there are any concerns (however the safety section as it is now is fine, to be honest). I take back censorship but support my statement that there is bias in editing - the safety section is being held to the exact letter wikipedia policy - while the rest is not. I will find some sources for those statements later (if they exist). Buckethed (talk) 03:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
No problems at all, to be honest most of the CERN articles are badly written and need alot of referencing and loving attention. Adding references to alot of it will almost certainly improve the flow. It's been something I've been meaning to do for an age but just never get round to it, and I started a CERN template to try and cover all the articles and bring them under one category. Anyway I digress........ Khukri 03:41, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Best comment ever -- hinting that the fate of the world may depend on the quality of this Wikipedia article. That's one way to motivate people! 66.152.245.18 (talk) 14:22, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

"The neutrality of this article is disputed"

Allow me to point out that on many other Wikipedia pages where the content of the page is debated you will find that a box with following text "The neutrality of this article is disputed" is posted on the top of that page. I find it incomprehensible that this is not the case with the definition of "Hadron Collider". What is the matter with you guys administrating this? This article already posted and locked is obviously bias.Ursanautica (talk) 01:53, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

And allow me to point out, the article was semi-protected to stop spammer IP's continually trying to add their theory and others non-related websites, also the ubiquitous hardon vandalism here. This expires in 2 days, but will be re-applied if it continues. It's easy to make generalisms on systematic bias, but they do not help the project if you do not provide examples. Now if you are seriously interested in improving the article, explain here in details the bias you see and we'll try to rectify it. Please however read this talk page, and become familiar with wikipedia's guidelines linked ad infinitum above. Our problem is that we are having to contend with bias along the lines of, someone heard from someone, who heard from his language professor that the LHC is really unsafe and you think it should be mentioned here. As soon as we challenge this as unverified and ask to provide links we are accused of cencorship. Now these accusations I can live as these sources are fringe theory and bunkum, but what we don't want to exclude is the serious arguments about the LHC's safety, bring all the reliably sourced arguments you can and we, or yourself can certainly add them. Khukri 08:32, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I should also note that {{POV}} tags are not generally placed on articles just because the topic is surrounded by a plethora "conspiracy" theories (such as September 11, 2001 attacks, Oklahoma City bombing, etc.). This is largely due to the fact that while the theories may be pervasive, they can rarely be sourced and cited to reliable, third-party, published sources as required by Wikipedia content policy. --Kralizec! (talk) 12:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

This page has started to become a right mess, and with people responding to comments from 3 months or a year ago is making the pertinant discussion difficult to follow. I have created an archive of this page linked above, and with the exception of 2 posts (which I didn't think were going to be responded to) all sections older than 3 weeks have been archived. The main problem if the safety concerns section, which hasn't had any notable additions in a few weeks. However you feel that something hasn't been explored enough we can restart a new section, reformulating the discussion topic and continue it. Any problems give me a shout. Khukri 10:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Worth mentioning?

I just read this article and am unsure if/where it should be worked in, so I'll leave it to those of you who understand this stuff. :) faithless (speak) 02:19, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...it looks like you guys might already be talking about this a couple posts up. Feel free to remove this if it's redundant. faithless (speak) 02:20, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

RHIC Safety Concerns -- Move to RHIC page?

Should there really be so much content about RHIC safety on the LHC page? In particular, if the 1 in 50 Million number really is for the RHIC, not the LHC, out of place here. A road curve on which 1/50,000,000 cars crash at 30 MPH might cause 1/3 to crash at 210MPH. 170.37.224.2 (talk) 01:12, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

if we don't find the Higg's

Wouldn't it be correct if we point out that if we don't find the Higg's, this will be a good falsification for the whole Standard Model? Generally speaking: can we use more the falsification, can we ask it more often? Can we insert in in any scientific entry in Wiki?83.103.38.68 (talk) 16:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Sure ... as long as it can be properly sourced and cited to a reliable, third-party, published source. --Kralizec! (talk) 17:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Would anyone object if I put an archiving bot on this page? Topics older than one month? Khukri 07:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Please do! --Kralizec! (talk) 14:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

 Done Khukri 13:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposed move of LHC dab page

 Done Khukri 07:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I've proposed moving LHC to LHC (disambiguation) to allow LHC to redirect to Large Hadron Collider with an appropriate {{this}} transclusion. I'm notifying editors of each of the pages linked from the current dab page to help generate discussion from interested parties. The discussion can be found at Talk:LHC#Requested move. -- Mark Chovain 01:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking through the others only the light harvesting complex and one of the hockey clubs use the acronym LHC in the article. If it's a question of association and I think far more readers will type in LHC looking for CERN as opposed to the other two. So for me no problems and I also think a couple of the articles could be removed from the disambig page as well. Khukri 08:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Agree. Google search on LHC gets 5.6 M hits, only about 600,000 when "Hadron" or "Collider" excluded. Wwheaton (talk) 20:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Ooh - I'm not sure that move should have happened (although I still support the move). The discussion was happening over on Talk:LHC, where my proposal gained no traction. -- Mark Chovain 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
My bad, I didn't see the talk page discussion I put it all back. Though have to say I disagree with the outcome as well, the Large Hadron Collider is the only one on the disambig page primarily known as the LHC. But oh well the voice of the minority has spoken, people will still find the article because when you google it, it's still third in the list and the first umpteen pages are full of LHC (CERN) pages. In fact the first seven pages of google hits everything is towards CERN with one for Lausanne HC and one for the CERN band, which I think is a pretty clear indication of as was put on the move discussion WP:NC: "Avoid the use of abbreviations, including acronyms, in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its abbreviation and is widely known and used in that form." Khukri 07:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I probably could have done a much better job of arguing my case. The acronym argument was a furphy: it says full names should be used for articles, but that obviously doesn't apply to redirects. I'll probably wait until the first collisions occur, and argue the case again (about August perhaps). The numbers should be even clearer then. -- Mark Chovain 23:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Large Hadron Collider/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)Press [show] to view →
The collider is contained in a 27 kilometre (17 mi) circumference tunnel located underground at a depth ranging from 50 to 150 metres.[1] The tunnel was formerly used to house the LEP, an electron-positron collider.

The three metre diameter, concrete-lined tunnel ...

Is the tunnel 27km in circumference or 3m in diameter? There's quite a difference between these two dimensions.

  • It's a toroidal shape. It is specifief by two different parameters. Think of a doughnut with a hole, a familiar torus. The circumference around the doughnut is one thing; the circumference of a circular cross-section of the ring is another (smaller at that). The LHC is basically an extremely wide torus which has such a thin edge that it's almost all hole. I hope this explains it. 90.218.21.223 (talk) 10:25, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
"Major" vs "Minor" -- standard nomenclature for tori
I think the standard terminology for a torus is that the larger dimension is called "major", and the smaller "minor". This is widely used for toroidal fusion machines, like Tokamaks, at least. Of course the tunnel is not precisely circular--it has curved and straight sections here and there. But it is still convenient to use circular terminology when it is pretty close to circular. So the major radius is about 4.3 km, and the minor radius is 1.5 m. Of course one could also describe the major and minor circumference, diameter, etc. Wwheaton (talk) 17:11, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Last edited at 15:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC). Substituted at 20:41, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

  1. ^ American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News, Number 558, September 26, 2001, by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon
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