LHC Finally Smashes Protons, at Highest Energies Ever Recorded

It took 16 years and $10 billion dollars, but on the day the Large Hadron Collider was supposed to begin trying to cross its high energy proton beams

Now I understand what all the fear was about. You NEVER risk crossing the beams, not unless the alternative is say, apocolypse via carpathian war-lord sorcerer turned god.

After years of collecting the data, scientists finally discover where the missing socks in the wash go.

Could you imagine if the resulting collision created a singularity? I'm all for taking chances but I think we need a moon base now :)

Incredible day - Bravo!!!!

I can understand interest to learn about the unknown. I can also understand human nature to think that if you study something long enough you are the expert and no other input is required.

However when assessing risks and a risk you wish to take or not take, familiarity with the subject is not requisite. Indeed there is evidence to suggest that decisions of which risks are reasonable are better made from outsiders.

So it is particularly troublesome to me that any opposition to the seeming cowboy safety analysis that is offered for the CERN collider is met with ridicule and these people are called nuts. Not to say that there are some in opposition from which it is difficult to understand what they are saying. However it is also true that when dealing with the considerable unknowns related to dark energy and a "god" particle these highly educated physicists may be in no better shape to judge these risks than the common man.

I do fear for our safety with the CERN collider. The fears I have are not only black holes but other unknown particle or particle energy reactions that we are unable to characterize at this time? I suggest that a go slow approach would be better for this science. I also suggest there are other ways to get much of the same data. It is more expensive and takes more time, but can be safer. These are would be measurements over longer periods of time using slower particles. The CERN collider could be operated at lower states of power for years to achieve much of the same results.

SO at the risk of being labeled a CERN nut I propose the outlandish idea that the CERN collider safety should be PROVEN to be 99.999% safe and not based on supposition. This proposal will be rejected however by the elite as they know full well they have no way to prove to a quantifiable amount the safety of the CERN collider anymore than they can predict the outcome of the experiments.

So will I ask then if we are all ignorant about the true safety of the CERN device, are we all now in a state of bliss?

@TX77092

There are far too many minds focused on the need for the advancements to come from the LHC to be sidetracked by making risky choices which would cause failure of what is being sought...In my opinion there is more risk to the staff who are at the facility who could trip and fall down, than the science going out of control.

From the CERN site:
The papers by Giddings and Mangano and LSAG demonstrating the safety of the LHC have been studied, reviewed and endorsed by leading experts from the CERN Member States, Japan, Russia and the United States, working in astrophysics, cosmology, general relativity, mathematics, particle physics and risk analysis, including several Nobel Laureates in Physics. They all agree that the LHC is safe.

Your prudence is commendable and respected by this poster, albeit a bit over zealous in my opinion.

Is it the notion of two beams colliding at 3.5 TeV each that is troublesome for you? Based on the work by so many to date, I would be curious to understand what you find concerning exactly, other than the macro concern of a go slow approach...this endeavor has not been put together at a break-neck rate by any stretch.

Can we use this technology for good?

As in using the LHC to smash Lady Gaga into a million itty-bitty pieces?

@TX77092. repost.

Congratulation for successfully smashing the beam.

There was no risk you idiots.

Something tells me that they are going to smash atoms and only end up with more questions than answers. The only thing they will find out for certain is how big of an electric bill you can have.

QuantumQuantum

My concern is the relatively cavalier way the community addresses safety publicly. I see two statements that on their face are not fundamentally re-assuring to anyone who takes the statements at face value.

1. "That the energies involved are the same as cosmic interactions with earth matter, so the collider is safe." Now that is true, but these cosmic interactions are occuring between one particles at rest and one in motion, not two particles moving. Considering the known substantial property differences between stationary mass and moving mass this logic seems too infantile to base the future of our race on.

To assure safety of the first construct would entail doing calculations regarding the background interaction of two cosmic particles not at rest, this is a much lower probability event than the aforementioned moving-resting mass construct. It may also be possible to devise experiments or data comparisons between these two different states to show that behavior is indeed similar.

2. "The other piece of logic I see is that due to some theory proposed by the rightfully esteemed Mr. Hawkins black holes are not stable with these types of particles. and once we turn it on we will see if Mr. Hawkins is correct or not." What for some reason there are limits to these this theory that do not hold up under the conditions of the collider?

The second construct is a beyond me to troubleshoot without further study, but it seems that we should not be testing the efficacy of the repulsion forces proposed by Mr. Hawkins reaction in a device we construct for the first time and operate on our planet, as has been commonly bandied about by supporters. This latter is a value judgment that could be ameliorated by experimentation of some type it seems. However ultimately may be as irreconcilable as debates over abortion if suitable experiments cannot be devised, thus my rational for risk judgements being made outside the scientific community involved as is typically done with engineering projects.

My statement that time could be a variable in the experiment design is based on the observation that the reason for the collider is to speed up nature to allow it to be observed in a reasonable length of time in a small location. We could on the face of this statement design experiments that simply waited for these interactions to occur. Now that may be thousands or millions of years, but would that be too long to assure we are not engaged in our annihilation? That is not a question I am prepared to answer and I hope you are not prepared to answer it.

Is posting multiple rational comments about a proposed risk of annihilation of our species really too aggressive? To seemingly lump my posts in with some types of internet flaming is really not fair.

Now I need to say that I am fully cognizant that the risk of anything going seriously wrong may be extremely low. However I also wish to point out that in the discipline of risk assessment there is a concept known as risk/reward ratio. I think in this case the reward to a few scientists may or may not be sufficient to potentially cause pain to our species. In traditional projects acceptable risk/reward ratios is a business issue, not a technical issue which we seem to have delegated this to our scientific community. Who should then make such judgments? A panel of judges?

QuantumQuantum

After re-reading my posts I should say I sincerely disagree with THE PROCESS we have used to determine the Cern Collider is safe. The scientific community's correct role should be that of providing calculations, proofs, potential failure modes and risk percentages. The public community should be focused on what risks should be or not be taken given these facts/estimates.

I will reference a controversial book/study on the subject of theorists making and defending theories, it was about theories made prior to and after the moon landings. I know this is controversial stuff. However considering the proposed risk of annihilation of our species, should we leave any stone unturned

TX77092, If you've read my post in the other CERN topic you were commenting in, I might have sounded a little harsh.

Here's a direct answer to your request for more risk analysis. 10th paragraph starts dealing with your question i believe.

nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/31collider.html?scp=2&sq=cern&st=cse

There was clearly a lack of safety and risk assessment that was taken care off while the collider was down since 2007(08?)

Meshca

The safety analysis you mention is that of the safety of the lab technicians. The risk/reward is contained within the target group. It is appropriate if the affected group is also the group judging relative value of risks.

What we have today regarding questions I have proposed is the risks being shared among us all and the rewards being concentrated into the hands of the few. Think Lehman Brothers fiasco ...

The problem with asking the scientists to tell us if it is safe or not, is that we are asking the beneficiaries to tell us the ones affected if we like the risks.

Now what I believe is that these CERN cowboys cannot even estimate with a reasonable accuracy the risk of the experiments either creating singularity or other calamity. This would necessarily require measurements of the efficacy of the forces theorized by the esteemed Mr. Hawkins prior to conducting experiments relying upon these forces to safeguard us all. I therefore propose to them that this risk be explored in sufficient detail to allow quantification prior to undertaking experiments, if this takes 1000 years before a civilian body will approve the experiment then so be it.

If the case is that we must judge whether to operate even though the true risk cannot be calculated for these primary processes we indicate give us safety then we should clearly state that to the civilian body who should judge whether to take these risks. I think that many who were given the duty to approve or disapprove experiments with such potential catastrophic consequences based on unquantifiable risks, would opt to disapprove of the risk.

I am sure that we can design a process that would be open and fair for us all to involve the civilian sector in a forthright and calm reconciliation of the risks and rewards. If THE PROCESS were to be employed as I have hinted I will rest assured that we have done all we can humanly do to assure safety of this exotic experiment. Anything less is to not recognize our humanity and history of failure and experimentation. Anything more is unreasonable.

I also wish to point out that this problem is not limited to the CERN collider. Should an appropriate mechanisms be formulated THE PROCESS could be applied to appropriate experimentation with e-coli, and other controversial research that may affect us all on this small planet.

Meshca

Here is Lucio Rossi's published account on what had occurred:

iopscience.iop.org/0953-2048/23/3/034001/pdf/0953-2048_23_3_034001.pdf

@TX77092

It is my firm belief that of course the public at large should question a lot if not everything...but the "cowboys" at CERN, are not cowboys...CERN is a multi-national, multi-disciplined, peer reviewed, highly scruntinized endeavor to say the least. The scrutiny not only comes from themselves, but a lot of angencies, universities, companies, as well as scientists...in member countries and non-member countries.

There is no simpler way to put this...the LHC is human kind's largest scientific instrument to date, it is a very complex machine to say the least. This Joe Public's opinion after reading the VAST amounts of details concerning safety, and the use of this device is safe here on our planet.

Parse through the years and years of data, discussions, debates concerning the LHC from concept through the actual build, and I feel pretty confident that you will find that the collective brain power humanity has invested into this project has humanity's well being in mind...

It is also this Joe Public's opinion that after scouring through endless discussions on the public being misinformed, this quote really made sense concerning Black Hole formation at LHC:

"Physicists calculate and measure probabilities much smaller than a few parts in a billion. If that kind of things were a human attribute, it would be improbable to happen in the entire population of Earth. When we say "negligible", we mean it."

Here's another:

"A black hole created from the mass of 10 protons won't magically have an extremely large gravitational pull just because it's called a 'black hole'.

If a black hole were created, and if somehow everyone was wrong about black hole radiation, and if this black hole were created completely at rest on earth (as otherwise it would just leave pretty damn fast), then its gravitational pull would be so incredibly tiny that it would be undetectable by anything except LHC detectors."

To question everything is a great trait...just keep digging on the details of the concern(s), and I hope you keep sharing them. I personally hate to fly...I get reminded of how safe it is constantly, but can't get passed that when it fails you fall out of the sky. I trust what's going on with the LHC far more than flying on a commercial aircraft...

QuantumQuantum

You are trivializing my comments.

Of course I know the cowboys are sophisticated, highly paid and they are capable of intense calculations.

It seems that you have not even addressed the fundamental physical relationships I have proposed must be quantified if they are going to have a ghost of a chance to quantify safety. Do you understand the constructs I have presented? To simply put in that forces are large etc etc. These statements are no more than platitudes that are intended I believe to pacify people who are ignorant of the basics of these sciences.

That we simply seem to returning to the old ways of the AEC where people who question safety are removed from their jobs or are otherwise ostracized for even bringing up ideas, or in your case are simply issuing platitudes to make it seem like the person simply does not have a grasp of the complexity of these projects. I am not any of these people I have worked in engineering management on more than one project that are is large as the collider and projects that are equally complex. This collider is not the most complex project on our planet. The fact that you seem to pull the, Oh I will talk at him like he is in high school approach is is simply not meeting me eye-to-eye.

However risk selection should not be in the hands of scientists any more than it is in the hands of engineers at Nuclear Power organizations in the hands of people who design nerve gas destruction plants or any other number of dangerous endeavors that I have been involved in.

I am one of the few people who have worked in nuclear and chemical safety design functions that have posted here I believe. I also believe I am one of few that are calling these people for what they are. Cowboys ... Yes it is derogatory, but it is offensive to me that these people do not follow rudimentary procedures regarding risk analysis and risk determination. It is also dangerous when you here them speak on the television about what makes the systems safe and a rudimentary understanding of quantum mechanics makes a persons spine chill. Rather than be pacified the very words of these scientists are what caused me to become concerned in the first place.

The fundamental aspect of excellent safety management is that all potentially affected parties have input. To concentrate input only in the hands of the beneficiaries often results in decisions that are internally politically correct but not as good of decisions as those where all stakeholders are required to give input. In this case they should be looking for an outside body to review calculations of the risk and versus consequences and determine what experiments to pursue. Rather they issue papers declaring the processes to be safe.

What the scientists should be doing is calculating the probability of unsafe occurrences and submitting these numbers for approval from political bodies or judges who are educated to evaluate these numbers. That education is in risk assessment not nuclear science.

I would conjecture that there are a number of people who would not really want them to proceed even if there were a 1 in one billion chance of catastrophic consequences, Is this the reason they do not publish the risk numbers? It is contemporary safety analysis for the risk level to be known and the hazards accepted by appropriate business leadership, not technical leadership. That they likely cannot even calculate the consequences exactly and must estimate ranges based on best available data and likely design experiments to determine closer values should simply add to the fun for these people.

These people deserve to be called Cowboys for throwing this necessary safety step to the wind in an effort to get playing with their toy quickly... and meet political pressure.

They are under enormous pressure to get this done quickly and this is why they are cutting corners and do not want to entertain a contemporary safety program. This cost pressure can and often develops into unwanted results.

IGNORANCE IS BLISS, I hope you feel blissful.

reading briefly over the past comments:

If safety of the actual experiments (coliding the protonts at high energies) is a concern, there have been mention of these happening all the time just outside our atmosphere with tripple+ the energy with no concern.

And unfortunately, even if they did the calculate the probabilities, I highly doubt it will be public data.

I do agree on the cowboys are scientists part, but I don't regard that as a bad thing. But that's a whole other subjectect not worth getting into.

@Lehman Brothers example. They were economically driven, these scientists are purely research driven(not including investors here).

The fact is they are colliding 2 protons, they are not colliding a chain reaction. It can't form into a chain reaction in any of the proposed dangers. If it forms a monopole, it would be 1 small monopole, or 1 small strangelet(which even if stable will not effect anything), 1 small black hole. For the record, black hole is just something to describe the possible phenomenon. All black holes do not have the capability the super massive ones do. For all we know, it can just be a small dent in space-time that makes it look like all mass is 'sucked in.' The dangers already proposed are 1 to a billion(or more), scientifically I believe that's acceptable as zero.

I need to see/hear what are the actual dangers to humanity that need to be evaluated. Also, just wondering what are the tolerances for the safety factor are you proposing. We all know nothing is 100% and 99.99% is actually 1 in 100.

just realized I wrote protonts... protons*

Meshca

For me to give you a trivially derived tolerance for risk is not sensible. However I can tell you that severe risk impacts are often content with what is called 9 nines or 6 nines. 6 9's is 99.9999% accuracy. Since we are discussing a calamity then the risk tolerance would seem to be required to be lower than that.

The tolerance of safety should be established by the persons trained in risk assessment that have world wide political masters. That is any catastrophic failure could impact the entire world so an appropriate body would be the U.N.

If such functions were established these government bodies could be used to monitor other potentially dangerous science or industrial processes that people may be concerned about. I hope you see that I see more gain to acceptance of this criticism than simply a rant about stopping the CERN collider.

Most of the reference to proton-proton interactions that I have seen is with one proton at rest and one proton moving. This is distinctly separate from two protons moving, which is what the collider has.

Relativity tells us that mass has different properties as the relative speed in relation to the universe changes. That one proton is at rest relative to our solar system and one is moving fast says these protons have distinctly different properties. In the case of the collider, the protons have relatively the same properties. We can expect that these two different interactions will produce different particles and effects.

So my concern is that simply saying that there are proton-proton interactions in large numbers at similar energy levels is not sufficient proof of safety as relativity must be addressed to complete the safety case.

This view is as most safety logic is, based on rudimentary scientific methodologies and theories.

The scientists involved with CERN are far more educated than any of us here. .I'm pretty sure they know what the hell they're doing. .chill out. ..It'll be ok. .

^ i do agree, but that's not the issue. The issue is what the quality control and safety people are doing and what their prerogative is.

Meshca

I agree the process is the most important issue.

Secondary, at a minimum, I do not believe they have done a good job explaining why it is safe in terms that an educated person can understand. That is to someone who got an A in undergraduate Quantum Mechanics class.

Thirdly, there is the remote chance that they have the safety case wrong. Stranger things have happened.

TX77092

As someone who has not had experience nor understanding of general relativity you obviously don't realize that two objects traveling towards each other each at the speed of light is no different than one object traveling at the speed of light and the other "immobile". The word immobile matters only as a frame of reference. nothing in this universe is completely immobile. add to that the idea that nothing is faster than the speed of light and you will realize that even if two particles are heading toward each other at the speed of light, they are only doing so from your frame of reference. to each of the protons it seems as though it is immobile and the other is going towards it @ speed of light. This is not high school science where 5mph + 6mph =11mph, this is quantum mechanics and general relativity.