Strategy to stop the LHC 9th of April 2010 by Alf Pretzell

1. discussions with colleagues about possible weaknesses
2. law suits
3. scientific publications
4. informing the public via internet, newspapers, TV
5. informing authorities like governments or political organisations, ask for their responsibility and intervention

1. I put the item about discussion with the experts to the top because I think it would be the best way the particle physicist themselves would correct this situation. This is why I have been three times at Geneva and sent hundreds of mails to my colleagues. They are willing to give information and to discuss the topic up to a certain level but are not ready to really question the experiment as such. Typical comments I received from particle physicist in Germany and worldwide: You are right: Safety might be a problem but stopping the experiment would be a major drawback / Up to now nothing went wrong, we should not worry / I am not involved in this project / Go to the responsible persons and ask there (LSAG group) / Yes you are right: This (an argument I mentioned) is in principle right but I do not think it is a safety problem / Bizarre concerns of the type you mention I heared already two decades ago / It is impossible to entirely exclude a remaining risk, some risk has to be accepted There is absolutely no commitment to question the experiment in reality, it seems to me my colleagues are assuming they would betray the others following a kind of group thinking. As everybody knows it is an old and important culture to exchange arguments, publish them for discussion and correct the own opinion in the case of refutation.
   
   
2. Law suits have been filed in the United States, in Strasbourg (EU), in Geneva (UN), in Germany (Bundesverfassungsgericht). One might think this immense pressure from the outside should be sufficient for the people at CERN or for the jurisdiction to deeply reconsider the LHC case. For CERN this is not the case. Concerning the judges they seem to rely fully on the assessment of the LSAG group. Because the case has never happened before and the matter is very complex [1] they seem to be overstrained as well. In this respect this (little not much more than ten pages) – LSAG report [2][3] is the bottleneck. It is extremely difficult to be successful in this respect due to the special isolated role of Switzerland in the world and additionally because of the extraterritorial position of CERN. Nobody from the outside feels responsible which perfectly agrees with the fact that CERN itself did the assessment by and for itself.
   
   
3. Concerning publications there are the safety papers presented by CERN on their web pages and related material and on the other hand the publications questioning the experiment. The latter I think one can divide into two groups: Publications from the critics, e.g. [4][5][6], and publications from other academics not meant to assess LHC but providing direct proof the experiment is highly questionable , e.g. [7][8], relying for safety on a theory by S. Hawking which has never been observed [9]. All in all this massive material also should be sufficient to realize our aim a summary – by some critics can be found here [10]. Major issues which have been not rejected clearly up to now are as you know: Possible micro black hole production at TeV- gravity, strangelets, the questionable comparison with cosmic rays, weaknesses of the assessment itself or dangers by nuclear fusion processes. The material presented by CERN is not detailed enough: As an example I point to the publications discussing the central argument of CERN, the comparison with cosmic rays by de Rujula/Dar/Heinz 1999 [11] and Hut/Rees 1984 [12]. The latter is a one page sketch, the de Rujula et al. paper is by far not enough to guarantuee the safety of the LHC project discussing only the special case for strangelets and containing other omissions like detailed analysis of particle production or detailed probabilities for reasonable reaction environments. The ongoing process shows that scenarios which have been declared to be impossible once are now widely academically discussed e.g. micro black holes [7][8]. Others have been already discussed and are not clarified up to now exactly due to uncertainties in shower experiments e.g. Lorentz invariance violation and other common physics at very high energies [13][14]. New physics is awaited and wished like SUSY particles or the Higgs boson. Some argumentation has been verified to a certain extent only recently e.g. the GZK cutoff by AUGER in the year 2009 [15] after the LSAG report had been written 2008 [3]. All this shows that research which is still debated is not adequate to guarantuee the safety of the experiment - this is a clear cut case as far as I see. Only very well explored physics (maybe even only high precision experiments), clear numerical results including error analysis should be taken for the assessment of experiments not found in nature and especially for this extreme research at the edge of present knowledge. This does not make any new experiments impossible but forces us to be more careful and to act with more foresight.
   
   
4. Information of the public is problematic in my opinion for two main reasons. First most people do not have the faintest clue what is going on at CERN and in its tubes. This often results this is the second problem - for our context (criticizing the – experiment) in useless, often very aggressive disaster reports which might be indeed suitable to raise useless fear and even panic. There are very few comments from people which try to reason a balanced analysis at the problem. The comments in blogs and newsgroups also show in my opinion the public is overstrained with this problem. I remind you I value the influence and actions of the experts themselves as most useful. They operate the engine and are in principle competent. Here I also want to draw your attention to the fact that the public information policy of CERN is in principle very good: There are document servers, email addresses and information about CERN members, there is the “Ask an Expert” site, there are schedules available, live web cams and the online status of various parameters of the engine. But all this is useless if a considerable part of the public including scientists criticizing the experiment are fully excluded and ignored.
   
   
5. Concerning this strategy - turning to authorities - the LSAG report [3] is again the bottleneck. First it seems logical to appeal to authorities and tell them about the obvious leaks of the assessment procedure and possible dangers. Why this does not work? First the government or organisations like the UN are not forced to give information to citizens or to justify their decisions. If they are generous they will point to the LSAG report and that’s it. I myself went four times to the police in Hanover, at Bern and in Geneva to express my doubts and fears. In Germany the case was sent to the higher level and silenced there, in Switzerland the police wanted me to initiate academical discussions or to go to the court. Also NGO’s like environmental organisations have been amazingly resisistent if asked for their engagement or efforts. The answer here as far as I remember was that they did not feel capable to judge this case or did not see urgent need to intervene.
   
   

1. The overstrained public, authorities and judges and the diffusion of responsibility (only the very small group of LSAG is accesible, the authorities rely fully on a document not really counterchecked by them or others) is to me seems understandable as a systemic mistake, an error specific for our epoch of ever increasing knowledge understood by few with small islands of informed people often not willing to question their actions effectively. Even at CERN hardly a single person is imaginable who is able to have a comprehensive overview of the project LHC. Additionally the problem of the possibly large, even global impact of the discussed effects is not solved up to now and seems to be not understood by the society see the next item.
   
   
2. Second the assessment made by CERN for CERN is a hard problem. The scientists are (and have to be!) involved in the project and are obviously interested in its realization and its proper funding. No international institutions do exist so far for an assessment of this kind. Taking a closer look the reports assessing the safety of the most complicated engine on earth up to now involving extremely high energies are lacking detailed information as pointed out (publications by Dar et al. and Rees et al. as example [11][12]). I guess altogether they do not have more pages than a manual for an advanced mobile phone. More sophisticated assessment of the technology impact or even of the possible impact of new theories is totally excluded but nevertheless necessary.
   
   
3. There are additionally hard facts: In my opinion it is even not necessary to explicate concrete dangers in this context of possibly unknown high energy physics. The possible effects even at the nuclear level (ca. millionfold lower energy) and what was realized by man in this context are well known. For those who nevertheless claim this e.g. Deutsches Bundesverfassungsgericht [16] - there – have been proposed various possible scenarios of extremely high, even earth destroying dangers by academics which in detail have never been fully refuted. The often heard argument of energy conservation (mosquito energy) does not hold in worst cases: Critical as well as katalytic processes are nearly omnipresent in nature. Additionally the preparation LHC in this configuration can not be found in nature (like for example a fixed target setup) only after transformation and – exclusion of other effects (particle density, reaction environment, other moments of secondaries) a comparison would be allowed in a strict and in this case mandatory sense [17].
   
   
4. Fourth the remaining risk is a central issue. Here two points are worth to be inspected in more detail: The risk which is acceptable in this context seems to differ widely in the academic world as well as in the public. While there are some who want to exclude any risk at all for others risk in the range of percents seem to be adequate.
   
   This phenomenon is well known from extreme sports and in the context of other pioneering science (classical often risky discoveries). The difference in the LHC case is nevertheless all people on earth are involved in a worst case while C. Columbus or B. Franklin have risked their own lifes or at the utmost the lifes of their crew. I guess C. Columbus would have been astonished and angry if he would have been forced to take his wife and son on board of the Santa Maria.
   
   The comparison with car accidents explained to induce much higher danger often presented in this context is not adequate: A car accident with deads is a cruel but nevertheless sorely a well known and locally confined event. The possible destruction of earth obviously has to be treated totally different.
   
   Even in the case of an accepted remaining risk it is necessary to quantify this risk or give limits for worst cases this is the second point. Error analysis should be – included as well, the experiments which give the respective evidence should be analyzed as well [18].
   
   

1. To shed light to the problem of the systemic mistake, an error specific for our epoch resulting in uninformed authorities and public and a possible global impact in a worst case information should be provided which is easily understandable. It should concentrate on the most important facts of the experiment and explicate the discussed dangers and missing clarification very briefly and light. It is important to reach as many as possible and involve experts as well.
2. Concerning the second point of unsufficient assessment made by CERN for CERN as far as I can see the missing exactness, the omissions of the assessment procedure itself and the neglected impact assessment has to be analyzed in detail, point by point. Advantageous would be like before an understandable approach which makes participation and comprehension by the public possible. Here as well it is important to reach as many as possible. If the scientists at CERN and colleagues in particle physics would be ready to cooperate here it would help a lot.
3. With regard to the discussed hard facts - dangers and the questionable comparison with cosmic rays - point by point analysis of the weaknesses is necessary as well desirably in a short and clear manner.
4. The problem of the remaining risk can be solved in the following way as far as I can see:

   • - It has to be evaluated which risk is acceptable for the population on earth
     
     
   • -The particle physicists have to provide detailed data for the height of the risk or at least upper bounds. Error analysis and reliabilty of the respective experiments should be included as well.

References

[1] Johnson E. E. ‘The Injunction Against the End of the World’ 2009 http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.5480
[2] Blaizot J.-P., Iliopoulos J., Madsen J., Ross G.G., Sonderegger P., and Specht H.-J.,
(2003) ‘Study Of Potentially Dangerous Events During Heavy-Ion Collisions At The LHC: Report Of The LHC Safety Study Group,’ CERN
[3] Ellis J., Giudice G., Mangano M., Tkachev I., Wiedemann U., Large Hadron Collider Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) ‘Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions’, CERN. 2008 http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3414
[4] Rössler O. E., PhD ‘Abraham-Solution to Schwarzschild Metric Implies That CERN Miniblack Holes Pose a Planetary Risk’ 2008 http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/OTTOROESSLERMINIBLACKHOLE.pdf
[5] Kent A. ‘Problems with empirical bounds for safety at the RHIC Collider’ 2000 http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0009130
[6] Plaga R., (Aug 2009) “On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders.” http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1415v3
[7] Suranyi P., Wijewardhana L.C.R. ‘Black Holes in Brane Worlds’ 2002 http://arXiv.org/abs/hep-th/0207084
[8] http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/01/22-01.html?etoc
[9] Hawking S. W. ‘Black hole explosions?` Nature 248 30-31 1974
[10] www.achtphasen.net/miniblackhole/Bundesrat-Bundesgericht/LHC-Appeal-v2- internetversion.pdf
[11] Dar A., Rujula A. D., Heinz U. ‘Will relativistic heavy-ion colliders destroy our planet?’ Physics Letters B Vol 470, Issues 1-4, pp.142-148 1999 http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910471
[12] Hut P., Rees J. ‘How stable is our vacuum?’ Letters to Nature 508 302-303 1983
[13] Bietenholz W. ‘Cosmic Rays and the Search for a Lorentz Invariance Violation’ 2008 arXiv: 0806.3713.v2 [hep-ph]
[14] Pierog T., Engel R. , Heck D. ‘Impact of Uncertainties in Hadron Production on Air-Shower Predictions’ 2006 arXiv:astro-ph/0602190v1
[15] Pierre Auger collaboration http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.2319; Pierre Auger collaboration 2009 http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.2189
[16] Deutsches Bundesverfassungsgericht, case 2 BvR 2502/06
[17] Pretzell A. ‘Key arguments against the cosmic ray comparison’ http://www.achtphasen.net/index.php/2010/02/13/p1497
[18] Uebbing R.: Unzureichende Sicherheitsanalysen zum LHC-Experiment beim CERN 2010 http://www.achtphasen.net/index.php/2010/03/24/p1598