Thursday, August 7, 2008

OMG CERN is fly

LHC turn-on delayed by infestation of rappers


6 comments:

JTankers said...

Fly!

Got LHCFacts.org?

chris said...

It's super duper! If the world ends in a series of black-hole suckings, which is highly unlikely, IT DOESN'T MATTER!

Gulf War ends, you're suffering PTSD, the Tories stick you on incapacity beneift and forget you, and you're eventually reborn as a full-time interweb doom-monger.

JTankers said...

Interesting theory. Actually I am a US Army Officer veteran, work full time as computer programmer and I do not suffer PTSD.

I hope that CERN's interesting safety conjectures work out better than your's.

Have you read Dr. Rossler's rebuttal to CERN's arguments and his warnings about the dangers of micro black hole creation on Earth?

goosefat101 said...

hang on thats the same link twice over in two seperate comments. Or else some horrific thing has happened where every internet link has suddenly been diverted to this one page, full of some big article about science that I don't have time to read. (A shame cos I am interested in black holes.) But if this is the case I do have time to read it, its the only thing I'll ever be able to read online. It's a virtual groundhog day. Back and forward to the same link... never... ending... like... being... sucked... into... a... black... hole...

Hang on its just two links to the same blog, rather than specfic and relevant posts. I remember when I used to do that. But surely a computer programmer would be more specific. Maybe he wants me to think he's a computer programmer but actually he's a robot or a computer virus... or maybe...

MUST RESIST:

Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.
Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.
Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.
Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.
Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.
Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.
Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.
Think in your head, not outloud in a comment.

chris said...

Sorry for the delay, weekend away. And my apology also for assuming you were nothing more than a paranoid bedroom-dweller, rather than a veteran of the US military. The difference of course between my guesses and CERN's is - well, almost everything.

Yes, I read Dr. Rossler's page. Not being a particle physicist I have no idea what weight to attach to it. You and he raise some very interesting points, although I daresay he is a bit narked at having to rely on numerologists as allies, since that probably doesn't help get people listening to him, or at least not people who follow a generally rational approach to the world.

The most interesting thing you allude to is (to paraphrase) the groupthink in the particle physics/science community which leads it to ignore credible warnings of the end of the world. Rossler talks about needing assessment by scientists of the risks; of course, safety assessments have been done, including responding to the possiblity of little black holes. The bulk of the world's particle physicists are employed with CERN, and I find it a stretch that among those hundreds of people (scientists!) there is nobody capable of spotting truth in the scarey claims.

But even allowing for the possiblity that the solidarity of superiority has caused a great conspiracy to downplay the risks...

My lack of concern comes from a skepticism toward 'end of the worldism'; a curiosity about how the world would react with only 50 months to go; preference, generally, for risk over caution, especially where the reward is big (beauty, understanding, other tittillatory traits that make us human) and the probability of catastrophe small.

I'm not saying anyone should agree with me, and if it were a military activity I would probably be much less enthusaistic. I guess I am, however, saying that on my understanding the risk is worth it, and that I hope the CERNies are not massively less risk averse than me.

I also realise that if it were not Earth-gets-eaten but Earth-is-ravaged-by-firestorms or something that would cause great suffering on an ongoing timescale, my view might be different. But ding, four years and change and it's all over, kingdom of heaven here I come.

From the PR perspective, Rossler's letter needs to be much shorter (possibly ditto this comment).
~
On a related tack - cruelty and dignity (talked about by Rossler) are not constant quantities. Nor even is suffering. Which draws away, for me, from Rossler's talk of having the first chance in human history to end cruelty. We know badX is happening, thanks to the internet cetera; that knowledge causes the loss of dignity (in our eyes); that internet allegedly enables us to stop it. Except the far greater impediment to achieving dignified lives for everyone is that selfishness and indifference, never mind cruelty, are deeply in us, as people and as groups. The internet makes little difference. (Though I don't assume j tanker is so taken by the cruelty-dignity part of the question.)

JTankers said...

No problem Chris, I'm impressed with your research and logical response!

Your reading and analysis of Dr. Rossler's work is probably more research on the safety than done by most of the physicists that have appeared on mass media to assure the public that all is safe.

Assurances of safety appear to be based on little more than CERN's cosmic ray and stable body arguments that CERN's own LHC Safety Assessment Group rejected after nuclear physicist enlightened CERN of the obvious flaws with their logic (results of cosmic ray impacts with Earth travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity). The 2008 LHC Safety Report used these arguments anyway backed up by flawed original research to back them up including a sad misunderstanding of how micro black holes could generate electromagnetic fields. That's the best safety arguments CERN had and experimentation is their goal. Now our shared risk.

Cheers,
JTankers