First off, I apologize for creating yet another thread on these horrid subjects but I have really lost all kind of prospects of sleep since I yet again found some disturbing things, this time about the heavy ion collisions in November.

According to Sancho(?) there is a recent study by some Chinese scientists that more or less invalidate the primary safety arguments of LHC (CR reaching higher energies). According to them there seems to be a possibility that strangelets could carry a negative charge even though LSAG expects them to be positivelly charged.

If anyone could take a look at this and explain if, and why they are wrong. Since I'm new here I can't post a direct link, but it is the latest post at cerntruth

As I said earlier, I apologize for my stupidity but I just can't find any way to get over this.

According to Sancho(?)Sancho has no interest in an informed rational discussion, he's willing to lie not just on the internet but even in court, though one could make the argument that he doesn't deliberately lie, he's just ignorant.

/edit

I've just seen on the first link for his name on Google that he called himself 'Luis Sancho, World Chair, Science of (Time) Duality'. Sounds like a self deluded title if ever there was one. He has no formal position or qualifications in any relevant science. I suggest you read Rpenner's posts here (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=85716), which include court transcripts. Luis and Walter don't do themselves any favours.

Could you elaborate that a little?=)

What is wrong with his claims?

His sources don't say the stranglets are really possible to form at the LHC, stable, negative and dangerous.

Some sources explore a mechanism where net strangeness may be distilled from a relativistic fireball of quark-gluon, with an expectation of many hyperons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperon) like Λ (Lambda) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_baryon) (uds), and Ξ (Xi, sometimes called Cascade B particles) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_baryon). Some other sources ask questions if small clusters of hyperons (like 6 Lambdas) would be bound to each other by residual strong interaction. Lambda particles, in isolation, decay to nucleons and pions, with up to 41.14 MeV in excess energy available as momentum. So even if the cluster could bound by strong interactions, it is far from clear that it is stable against weak decay. Also, the quark-gluon plasma is very hot, and it is not immediately obvious (except to Luis Sancho who is less versed in particle physics than I) that you should expect the hyperons to condense out into strange nuclei, especially when no evidence for this clumping was observed at the lower temperatures of RHIC.

Importantly, none of the papers discuss the collision of these hypothetical relativistic stable clumps of hyperons with normal nuclei. No gentle collisions these, the naive prediction is destruction of both nuclei and decay (in a tenth of a billionth of a second) of the strange quarks.

Indeed, there are strong arguments that as A increases, a hypothetically bound nucleus composed entirely of lambda particles (and thus neutral) would favor decay to a mixture of nucleons and lambda particles, and exhibit a net positive charge (negative charge being carried away by pions). The Pauli exclusion principle alone would seem to put limits on how many Lambdas you could clump together in one place, and nucleons mass far less than the more exotic alternatives.

So it looks like Luis Sancho confuses "speculatively anticipated" with "predicted by physical theory," "bound" with "stable", "made up mostly of hyperons" with "negative", and "predicted, stable and negative" with "dangerous via an ice-9 mechanism."

If Luis Sancho is not practicing physics, and is a "true believer (http://www.skepdic.com/truebeliever.html)" in the danger posed by this mechanism, no physics demonstration of the safety of colliders will ever convince him LHC is safe. If Luis Sancho has physics to support his claims, he has not brought them to the attention of the relevant physics community. Indeed, Luis Sancho took on behalf of all humanity the labor and expense of bringing his ideas to the attention of the US Federal Court system, and completely failed to bring the physics in his sworn affidavit.

http://www.archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.hid.78717/gov.uscourts.hid.78717.1.2.pdf

Paragraph 6 tries to claim "beyond a reasonable doubt" without a basis in even one peer-reviewed publication. Indeed, what happened was a 2004 CERN Courier speculative article on completely unevidenced TeV-scale black holes, an an alleged 2004 statement by Jos Engelen that they neither bothered to cite nor quote. http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/29199

Neither source makes the claims attributed to it of dangerous objects attributed to it by Luis Sancho, and neither is properly cited in the sworn affidavit. Neither is there methodology by which an expert may come to a conclusion about Luis Sancho's reasoning process -- it's just empty and baseless assertion that LHC is dangerous, and as such it was correctly ignored as the guess of someone who didn't know what they were talking about.


Under all of Plaintiffs’ theories, the LHC particle experiments could lead to the end of all mankind. (Id.) Plaintiffs do acknowledge, however, that various competing scientific theories exist regarding the outcome of the subatomic collisions to be performed at the LHC.
...
Conclusory allegations of law and unwarranted inferences, though, are insufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss.
...
Additionally, the Court need not accept as true allegations that contradict matters properly subject to judicial notice or allegations contradicting the exhibits attached to the complaint. ...
The opposing party cannot, however, stand on its pleadings or simply assert that it will be able to discredit the movant's evidence at trial.
...
Nor can the opposing party rest on conclusory statements.
http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2029021#post2029021

Luis Sancho convinced a court of law that he is a nut, firmly convinced of the value of his opinion when he has no basis for that confidence. I saw him at the appeal hearing and can't think otherwise.

Together Sancho and Wagner sought to leverage their sub-standard physics and legal knowledge into a viable path to win a victory in court against physicists and lawyers with long track records. But practicing physicists and lawyers, in order to be successful, must be be critical of their own ideas and deadly honest with themselves. In comparison, Sancho and Wagner came back with "nuh-uh."

I'll gladly admit that I don't really understand what you were saying there, Rpenner. By that I don't mean that your explanations is in any way bad, just that I have no actual knowledge of particle physics.


His sources don't say the stranglets are really possible to form at the LHC, stable, negative and dangerous.

I see, is it only CR they discuss in the paper he links to?

I read LSAG's revised safety report (v.2008) and there they compare particle collisions with a hot furnace, and thereby claim that Strangelets are even less likelly to form at LHC than at RHIC since the higher energies makes "clustering" even less likelly to happen. Is that still a valid argument?

I'm having a hard time understanding the Ice-9 scenarios link to strangelet production in particle accelerators. If Ice-9 was possible in regards to these collisions then wouldn't the same go for CR collisions?


Indeed, there are strong arguments that as A increases, a hypothetically bound nucleus composed entirely of lambda particles (and thus neutral) would favor decay to a mixture of nucleons and lambda particles, and exhibit a net positive charge (negative charge being carried away by pions). The Pauli exclusion principle alone would seem to put limits on how many Lambdas you could clump together in one place, and nucleons mass far less than the more exotic alternatives.

Do you mean that IF a negativelly charged strangelet were to form, there would be a limit to how big it would grow, thus making the Ice-9 scenario impossible?

I'm sorry for the really stupid questions here, but Goreliks and Sanchos rantings has really gotten to me. But in conclusion, is there any risk whatsoever that the heavy ion collisions could be dangerous on a global scale? Could dangerous strangelets form, if not, why do Sancho so surely claim that this will happen on his blog (the previously discussed "article")?

His sources don't say...

That was one of the best posts I've ever read on a forum.

I see, is it only CR they discuss in the paper he links to? (CR = Cosmic Rays) Most of the papers Luis Sancho links to don't discuss cosmic rays, but above I was discussing papers related to the Centaro detectors, after a rare event originally seen by Cosmic ray detectors. However since the project was proposed, much of the interest in this phenomenon was obliterated by reanalysis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centauro_event


I read LSAG's revised safety report (v.2008) and there they compare particle collisions with a hot furnace, and thereby claim that Strangelets are even less likelly to form at LHC than at RHIC since the higher energies makes "clustering" even less likelly to happen. Is that still a valid argument? Yes.


I'm having a hard time understanding the Ice-9 scenarios link to strangelet production in particle accelerators. If Ice-9 was possible in regards to these collisions then wouldn't the same go for CR collisions? Yes. Trivially, if stranglets could form at RHIC or LHC, and were stable and were dangerous, then all of space should be filled with a hot gas of natural dangerous strangelets and life as we know it could not exist. Some cosmic rays are heavy nuclei and sometimes they run into each other with RHIC and LHC or higher energies.


Do you mean that IF a negativelly charged strangelet were to form, there would be a limit to how big it would grow, thus making the Ice-9 scenario impossible? Almost. I mean if a stable negatively charged bound strangelet were possible, you would expect it only to be stable at low baryon number, because both the Pauli exclusion principle and electromagnetism favor adding enough protons (the lightest of all bayrons) to render the strangelet neutral. As the proton has charge +1 and is lighter than all other baryons with charges of -1, then it stands to reason that for large numbers of baryons, even very strange nuclei are most stable when positive. Conventional nuclear physics taxes our direct computing ability, but we are making a lot of progress with small nuclei. For larger nuclei, everything is a bit hand-wavey, but as they get very large, this type of reasoning gains strength from statistics.

Strange-enhanced nuclei have been around in the lab since the 1950's and they don't seem dangerous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4626-particle-experiment-produces-abundant-hypernuclei.html
http://www.particlephysics.ac.uk/news/picture-of-the-week/picture-archive/strange-nuclei.html

And since the predicted maximum binding energy is only 10-20 MeV/baryon, these objects don't appear to be stable against weak decay.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.3172
http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4227


I'm sorry for the really stupid questions here, but Goreliks and Sanchos rantings has really gotten to me. But in conclusion, is there any risk whatsoever that the heavy ion collisions could be dangerous on a global scale? Could dangerous strangelets form, if not, why do Sancho so surely claim that this will happen on his blog (the previously discussed "article")? If Sancho is ignorant (demonstrable by his position on Einstein as uber-authority, and total ignorance of what Einstein's view on black holes and strange quarks were) and mislead (which is the nice assumption of why he goes on a global media/legal crusade), Gorelik is insane.

Bleah, I can't make the mass formula (eqn 5) in that last reference due the things it is claimed to, so I can't really recommend the preprint. The notation could stand to be less muddled.

Yes. Trivially, if stranglets could form at RHIC or LHC, and were stable and were dangerous, then all of space should be filled with a hot gas of natural dangerous strangelets and life as we know it could not exist. Some cosmic rays are heavy nuclei and sometimes they run into each other with RHIC and LHC or higher energies.


This argument is only valid if strangelets are not radioactive. As has been shown in extensive theory, strangelets are predicted to be radioactive when they are small, as would be the case from Pb-Pb collisions. Thus, being radioactive, they would not accumulate in the deep reaches of space over time, as you claim in your ignorant post. This is the same type of argument that was made previously with the RHIC, and was shot down. You are resurrecting an argument that was demonstrated to be false.

The experimenters at the LHC are proclaiming that they expect to produce strangelets, without saying whether they would be negative or positive.

Other experimenters at the LHC are asserting that the LHC will produce conditions not created by cosmic ray collisions on Earth and are likely to produce "exotic phenomena" beyond the reach of the CRs. That is what CERN says, and it happens to be true.

This argument is only valid if strangelets are not radioactive. As has been shown in extensive theory, strangelets are predicted to be radioactive when they are small, as would be the case from Pb-Pb collisions. Thus, being radioactive, they would not accumulate in the deep reaches of space over time, as you claim in your ignorant post. This is the same type of argument that was made previously with the RHIC, and was shot down. You are resurrecting an argument that was demonstrated to be false.You are claiming (1) that no hypernuclei accessible from nuclear collision such as are found in cosmic rays are absolutely stable (which would imply that the binding of the nucleus is incrementally stronger than the decay energy of any of the hyperons than if one were substituted with its daughter baryon) and (2) that some bound but meta-stable strange nuclei have a lifetime much longer than the 0.1 ns timescale typical of strange quark decays in bare hyperons which implies (2a) that the difference in binding energy when the hyperon is substituted for its decay product (a nucleon if the hyperon is a lambda particle) is closer to 30-40 MeV than indicated by sources like Samanta or Schaffner and that (3) some of the specific meta-stable hypernuclei of (2) are more likely to be made in the life of the LHC runs than in the billions of years of showers from cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere of Earth and the surface of the Moon, and that (4) a series of hypernuclei are allowed by the same laws of physics that forbid (1) and yet allow (2) and (3) so that net strangeness grows at least to the magnitude of 10^3, despite the high momentum of first collisions of hypernucleus and nucleus.

But what is your basis for that claim?

Ultimately, the universe has a formula waiting to be discovered which gives the binding energy of the ground state of all nuclei and hypernuclei.
B(N_p,N_n,N_\Lambda,N_{\Xi^0},N_{\Xi^-}, ...) = ...
so to make this claim (either scientifically, or as an expert opinion based on reliable methodology), you would at least have to have a binding energy formula in mind that was not ruled out when compared with the available data on nuclei and hypernuclei.

Without such a empirically-tested physical theory of disaster methodology, your fears are baseless and need not be rebutted.


The experimenters at the LHC are proclaiming that they expect to produce strangelets, without saying whether they would be negative or positive.While some of the scientists advocate for hunting for stranglets, what basis do they cite for believing that they are possible? The very weakness of their description suggests that they merely anticipate classes of hypothetical exotic objects and don't want to get tied down in pre-guessing their physicality. Indeed, the detector is named first for Centauro events which were not well-understood when the detector was proposed.


Other experimenters at the LHC are asserting that the LHC will produce conditions not created by cosmic ray collisions on Earth and are likely to produce "exotic phenomena" beyond the reach of the CRs. That is what CERN says, and it happens to be true. Citation required.

Here are the quotes:

“My name is Panos Katsas. I work as an experimental physicist for the CASTOR forward calorimeter of CMS and my main area of interest is the study of exotic events in heavy ion collisions, especially the identification of strangelets, which are likely to be produced.”


“Pb-Pb collisions with the LHC will have an energy 28 times that of Au-Au collisions studied at RHIC. With this huge increase in energy a wealth of new phenomena is almost assured. Because of the much larger mass number, PB-Pb events can be expected to show exotic phenomena that is beyond the reach of cosmic rays.”

These were extracted from articles quoted by the Sancho blog (referenced above), and are by CERN researchers. You can look up the exact articles yourself in his blog.

I am making no claims. We don't know whether or not strangelets would be stable, though it appears that theory suggests they are unstable, i.e. radioactive, when they are of small mass as would be produced in head-on collisions of high-E, high-Z CRs, which would be exceptionally rare. The likelihood that they would survive a transit time to a nearby star is virtually null, if the lifetimes are on the order of seconds or less. However, that is more than sufficient time for one to begin growing if produced on planet Earth, and thereby losing its radioactive nature due to its larger mass.

as you claim in your ignorant post.Are you being deliberately ironic or do you really not see the hypocrisy in that comment of yours?

Ok, seriously this scenario is scaring the crap out of me, and people like Wagner sure isn't helping. Please note that I mean no disrespect to you Dr Wagner, it's just that I suffer from a quite severe form of OCD and haven't been able to sleep more than a few hours a night for the last couple of weeks due to that. So, if you please could keep your comments away from this thread it would be deeply appreciated (I like to be able to chose what to read and not to read)

And I know what you others think; "here's another crackpot that doesn't have any interrest in physics whatsoever and only writes here because he's scared". Well, that isn't close to correct. I have a quite profound interrest in physics, but have just recently begun learning about particle physics and quantum mechanics and to be honest still struggle with both of them (and the english language, as you might have noticed)

Rpenner has done a great job answering my questions, and I really appreciate the effort you've put into the answers. There is however some last things I still wonder about, such as:

1. Sancho claims that the unexpected amount of kaons produced in the p-p runs indicate an increased risk for strangelet production in the Pb^208 collisions. That sounds far-fetched even to me as a layman, but is there any truth to it?

2. What does he base the assertion that the comparison with a furnace shouldn't be valid, and that there is indeed an increased risk for strangelet production at LHC on? I've read his article, but I can't put it together in a way that supports his claims. Quite the opposite actually, but then again I'm no physicist so I might be overlooking something.

As far as I know the Strangelets talked about at the CASTOR page is totaly different from the dangerous strangelets Sancho et al proposes, and there the term strangelet is used as a collective abrevation for most strange matter that clusters in one way or another (or something like that).

3. Finally, isn't it true that the scenarios in the LSAG report is cenjectural, and only supported via different kinds of equally fringe theories (except for the mBH one perhaps)? Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that the world could be destroyed, or has the whole danger been totaly overhyped by fearmongerers?

Do you trust that nothing bad will happen in neither p-p collisions nor Pb ditos?

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to read this (and hopefully reply).

I mean no disrespect to you Dr Wagner
Walter doesn't deserve any respect for his 'science'. He's not a 'doctor' so don't call him as such. He's not even got a degree in physics, it was his minor. Decades ago. And since then he's done no actual science research, even when challenged to back up his claims on this forum he's completely failed. Then of course there's the thing which made him a laughing stock of the entire theoretical physics community when he claimed, on national televisions the probability of an event is 50/50 because 'either it happens or it doesn't'. Even the interviewer pointed out that isn't how probability works. And yet Walter comes onto this forum and calls posts by someone like Rpenner 'ignorant', which is both massively hypocritical and enormously pathetic.

All of the concepts Walter mentions he has no ability to understand the physics of, he just searches for papers other people have written and reads the wordy parts of them. He then just makes claims based on his agenda, not on any science he can do. I challenged him on this forum to justify his claims about black holes and despite waiting months, occasionally reminding him, he produced nothing. Not just for me but for anyone.

He isn't interested in truth, he just wants his 15 minutes. And its people like you who suffer as he incites fear in people as a result.

He is complaining still about the kaons? Last I heard this was just an increase in kaon production over the prediction of an empirical model that was tested at lower energies. When you use models beyond the range of their validation by experiment, you run the risk that they don't work well. With models based on fundamental theory, this tells you something important. With empirical models (aka rules-of-thumb) you just learn that the old rules have a limited zone of applicability, and you need a better empirical model for that narrow area. The claim becomes almost meaningless when you find out to what the LHC measurement is considered an increase.

The LHC would indeed seem to be a hotter "furnace" and stranglets (like the original nuclei and even the bare baryons themselves) have a temperature at which they "melt."

Actually the mBH disaster scenario is "fringe" also, since TeV scale black holes are a exotic parameter choice to theories like string theory which predict hidden spacial dimensions.
Hawking radiation predicts these objects evaporate in sub-nanosecond times, so then they evoke more parameter choices to slow down Hawking radiation, and then finally add the ad hoc assertion that the objects are stable, but this makes them too dangerous (i.e. cosmic rays would be showering us with black holes all the time), so then they assert that the black holes immediately give up their electric charge somehow (another ad hoc change which seems to conflict with the assertion that there is no Hawking radiation) and without electric charge the objects become subtle and stealthy, but still not dangerous.

This preprint http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381 appeared in a respectable journal back in 2008, and it describes the efforts needed to study the class of magical objects which grow by gravitational accretion when they don't correspond to a fundamental physical theory and are composed (like fairies and unicorns) of ad hoc assertions piled upon each other. (arxiv.org is not a peer-reviewed source, so it has a percentage of poor papers and outright crackpot papers, so you need to do your own checking about the sources to get a good idea if it's "fringe" or not. Your better sources tend to have collaborations, write at least a few papers each year ( http://arxiv.org/find/hep-th/1/au:+Giddings_S/0/1/0/all/0/1 http://arxiv.org/find/hep-ph/1/au:+Mangano_M/0/1/0/all/0/1), and have a strong track record of getting those papers into actual journals of good reputation. Like here: http://prd.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v78/i3/e035009 )

Luis Sancho says a lot (which I consider nonsense) that Einstein is the only source of authority of what "true science" is. But Einstein's black holes (which he himself didn't believe in) could not form at the LHC since Einstein's space-time only has 4 dimensions. Neither did Einstein believe in strange quarks, having died about ten years before the first quark model was proposed. So Luis Sancho's own criteria on what science is (which is the viewpoint of an ignorant outsider to science) contradicts him on his fear-mongering disaster scenarios (which are the claims of an ignorant outsider to science).

interesting sockpuppet?

interesting sockpuppet?
That's a paranoid accusation without basis.

AlphaNumeric is a well-known poster both here and at physforum.com where he was active on the threads you posted your self-aggrandizing posts back in 2007. Likewise, it is known to frequent readers of physics posts on those boards that he has a recent Ph.D. in String Theory and is therefore up-to-date on types of calculations used in TeV-scale black hole questions and QCD (strange quark matter) that weren't anywhere in the literature when you did your physics minor in the 1970's. Sadly he's taken private employment by a Scottish super-villain intent on reestablishing the British Empire with Glasgow as its capital, and this has really cut down on his publishing stats.

Spica is a troubled sufferer of OCD who dislikes baseless posturing and information-free scare tactics. As heir to the Tokugawa family fortune, he funds a variety of medical research institutions and private commando squads (don't call them ninja!).

Not only is it laughable to assert that either is a sock puppet, but doing so may encourage Spica to combine forces with AlphaNumeric's employer.

As for me, you know I'm real. We met in Honolulu in June.

Vintage Walter Wagner:
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=927&view=findpost&p=256375
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=5684&view=findpost&p=256388 (Why, look! There's AlphaNumeric right there on the same page)
http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4640&view=findpost&p=256948

Vintage (sworn) response to Walter Wagner's self-promotion:
http://www.archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.hid.78717/gov.uscourts.hid.78717.66.0.pdf

// Added in edit: Other responses to Wagner's baseless claims about himself and physics.

http://www.hotchicksdigsmartmen.com/2008/09/tard-of-week-walter-wagner-alarmist.html
http://refugeesfromthecity.blogspot.com/2008/10/response.html
http://kayara.blogspot.com/2008/10/summary-of-debunking-of-crank.html
http://www.stonekettle.com/2008/10/walter-l-wagner-pitifully-insane.html
http://shouldersofgiantmidgets.blogspot.com/2008/10/return-of-radiation-man.html
http://www.hotchicksdigsmartmen.com/2008/12/suing-scientific-method.html
http://www.hotchicksdigsmartmen.com/2009/01/tard-of-week-james-tankersley.html
http://www.hotchicksdigsmartmen.com/2009/03/conversations-with-karma-walter-wagner.html
http://www.hotchicksdigsmartmen.com/2009/05/walter-l-wagner-pwnd-by-daily-show.html
http://www.hotchicksdigsmartmen.com/2010/08/suck-it-wagner.html

interesting sockpuppet?Walter, you crossed paths with Rpenner and I long ago and you have seen us on PhysOrg and here. We have different posting styles and different posting habits, clearly we aren't the same person. Ask a mod to check our IPs if you wish.

I know its hard for you to accept but its possible for more than one person to think you're a deceptive hack. Hell, you have even see my university home page, as you specifically mentioned the name of my then supervisor over in Paul Dixon's thread when I challenged you to back up your claim Hawking radiation puts as much into a black hole as it pulls out and provided you with a link to a set of black hole lecture notes as an illustration of the level of detail I wanted you to go into. As I mentioned in my last post, you failed to reply at all to that.

Do you not remember these things or are you just trying to come up with a response which allows you to not address anything anyone has said about you and your BS? Even if every single person on this forum other than you were a sock puppet of mine it doesn't negate anything which has been said about you. You have a terrible grasp of physics. You aren't 'Dr Wagner'. You engage in scaremongering. The fact Rpenner and I have similarly low opinions of you and that unlike you we're able to demonstrate we have read some science doesn't suggest one is a sock puppet of the other, it instead suggests that those who didn't sleep through high school physics class tend to reach the same unflattering opinion of you.

I wasn't suggesting that rpenner or alphanumeric are sock puppets of each other. I know you two aren't. I was questioning whether you developed a sockpuppet ("spica") because of the newness of the name, and his tailoring of his questions along your lines.

And you still have a terrible grasp of physics. CERN has through their propaganda media advised journalists and others that they are only doing what is done in nature by the cosmic rays, when in truth they know that is not true, and they expect to create "exotic phenomena beyond the reach of CRs" as per the quote above, and which is what I have been consistenly saying for the past decade+. Isn't that duplicity on CERN's part?

I presume that rpenner somehow has some personal information about "spica" as per his post?

I presume that rpenner somehow has some personal information about "spica" as per his post?
A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.

The first sentence is entirely derived from Spica's self-posted information.
The Tokugawa Shogunate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokugawa_shogunate) ruled Japan (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-1819.1995.tb01854.x/abstract) for centuries. Currently. the family name is licensed (among other things) to sell premium coffee. (http://shogun-yashiki.blogspot.com/2009/10/shogun-coffee.html) Spica, is also known in Japanese as the "Pearl Star" which is to say 真珠星, and upon this rests the inference that 徳川真珠さん is the oldest grandchild of 徳川慶朝さん, 4th head of the 徳川慶喜家, established in 1902.

Or, I could be having sport at your expense, predicting that you find all novel claims equally likely. Whatever. Did you even read what I wrote about AlphaNumeric's employer?

// Added.
Also, your claimed quote of Panos Katsas (a Ph.D. student and therefore expected to be somewhat junior) saying "they expect to create 'exotic phenomena beyond the reach of CRs'" is not even cited as the legitimate opinion of CERN. Panos Katsas has a profile in the December 3, 2007 issue of CMS Times (http://cms.web.cern.ch/cms/Media/Publications/CMStimes/2007/12_03/index.html), which is based on an informal impromtu interview between two non-native English speakers. http://cms.web.cern.ch/cms/Resources/Website/Media/Videos/Interviews/PanagiotisKatsas_small.mp4

You are playing chinese whispers with your sources, with the result you have no basis for your claimed quote. Further, you feel no need to support your claims with cited sources and want to shift the entire burden of proving your claim baseless on your opposition. That bogus tactic is why you lose in court and lose in science.

I wasn't suggesting that rpenner or alphanumeric are sock puppets of each other. I know you two aren't. I was questioning whether you developed a sockpuppet ("spica") because of the newness of the name, and his tailoring of his questions along your lines.

And you still have a terrible grasp of physics. CERN has through their propaganda media advised journalists and others that they are only doing what is done in nature by the cosmic rays, when in truth they know that is not true, and they expect to create "exotic phenomena beyond the reach of CRs" as per the quote above, and which is what I have been consistenly saying for the past decade+. Isn't that duplicity on CERN's part?

I presume that rpenner somehow has some personal information about "spica" as per his post?

What part of "please don't post anymore of your nonsense in this thread" didn't you understand? I know it must be quite a delight for a person like you to actually be able to scare someone seriously, since most people just simply ignore you (rightfully it would seem). And nice of you do accuse me of being a sockpuppet of rpenner or alpha numeric just because I'm afraid of this crap. I have to say that even I, a layman in psychology, am able to see that you clearly must be a person suffering from Messiah complex (judging by the way you constantly put yourself above everyone else, even though you have no merit in particle physics).

Since you have neglected my wishes I'll simply have to stop paying attention to you just as everyone else (what a loss)

By the way, thank you for even thinking that I'm an American citizen, that means my grammar isn't as bad as I thought.

And you are correct, CERN are going to do stuff that CR doesn't let them do. Do you know what? Observe heavy ion collisions. I know, you're going to come dragging with the same quote as always but that simply do not prove you right. I choose to trust that brilliant scientists such as Ellis knows what he is doing, even if they by some off chance were to achieve something not achieved in nature.

And to rpenner and alpha numeric, thank you so much for your answers, you guys have really saved me from a lot of sleepless nights. From now on I'll try to choose my sources of information a little more wisely, and stay away from Sancho, Wagner, Gorelik and the other f*****s.

One final conclusive question though; do you guys think that there is any global threatening danger involved in these experiments? That is all I need to know. If you think it's safe then I'm going to assume it is too, since I really trust your oppinions in this matter. Once again, thank you so much for taking the time to adress my fears, you guys have no idea how much I appreciate it.

do you guys think that there is any global threatening danger involved in these experiments?

Absolutely not. I have never been given a basis to think that there is a danger which reaches outside the tunnels and some buildings of CERN. I'm reasonably sure that standing next to some of the high-voltage equipment or in the tunnels with the beam on could kill a person, but the ordinary safety plan vetted by French and Swiss safety officials ensures that steps will be taken to protect those lives.

Specifically for black holes, I have no basis to think that TeV-scale black holes are possible in this universe. For stranglets, I have no basis to think that strange quark matter is the ground state of QCD -- if fact, if it were true, it's awfully strange that Earth, Moon, Mars, Venus, and every space rock seen avoided the transition for so many billion years. For more bizarre claims, they are more bizarre.

In all cases, scientists hypothesize and explore the consequences of their hypotheses, so that testable predications may be found. In trivial cases, the predictions falsify what was already known. But sloppy reading of literature and a ulterior motive may be used to create a show to confuse the outsiders. That's creationist denialism of evolution in a nutshell; many of the same tactics of mis-paraphrasing the literature and misattributing quotes in false claims of authority.

Walter L Wagner

"You raised some interesting points.

CERN expects to make "exotic phenomena" beyond the reach of what nature makes from CRs striking earth. I have been saying that for the past 10+ years (I worked in high-energy cosmic ray physics at UC Berkeley circa 1973-1975).

CERN has proclaimed to the public that what they are doing is simply what nature does, but in a controlled environment. Not true, as per the quote in my recent post.

It is also true that many researchers plan to make strangelets of some type. No one knows what types those would be. Some of those theories show dangerous strangelets that would slowly grow larger over the course of decades to millennia.

The Sancho argument that increasing the energy does not increase the temperature (once beyond a certain point) but instead increases the strange-quark production (energy-to-mass conversion) appears valid, which is why some researchers are expecting strangelet production at CERN, when none were found at RHIC"


rpenner What do you make of that? Does it make any sense whatsoever that the temperature shouldn't increase further?

Absolutely not. I have never been given a basis to think that there is a danger which reaches outside the tunnels and some buildings of CERN. I'm reasonably sure that standing next to some of the high-voltage equipment or in the tunnels with the beam on could kill a person, but the ordinary safety plan vetted by French and Swiss safety officials ensures that steps will be taken to protect those lives.

Specifically for black holes, I have no basis to think that TeV-scale black holes are possible in this universe. For stranglets, I have no basis to think that strange quark matter is the ground state of QCD -- if fact, if it were true, it's awfully strange that Earth, Moon, Mars, Venus, and every space rock seen avoided the transition for so many billion years. For more bizarre claims, they are more bizarre.

In all cases, scientists hypothesize and explore the consequences of their hypotheses, so that testable predications may be found. In trivial cases, the predictions falsify what was already known. But sloppy reading of literature and a ulterior motive may be used to create a show to confuse the outsiders. That's creationist denialism of evolution in a nutshell; many of the same tactics of mis-paraphrasing the literature and misattributing quotes in false claims of authority.

Thank you so much rpenner, that was really all I needed to know. I'll stop bothering you guys now, but once again, thank you so much for taking the time to adress my fears of this (as unrational they may be). I really, really appreciate it=)

Not to me it doesn't. If the quarks are deconfined (Quark-gluon plasma) then you can't force all of the heat into pair-production of strange quarks. A good portion of that energy will show up (via equipartition of energies) into all the quarks' kinetic energy, so you get a very hot cloud of Lambdas and Kaons (etc, etc). Further, they are hot in their respective rest frames and probably too hot to form nuclei of any appreciable size. Finally, even if they clumped a small bunch of hyperons together, it's still not bound very strongly by intra-baryon forces -- it will simply travel into the next normal nucleus and fall apart, as indicated by this pre-print http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4901 or back of envelope comparison of nuclear physics. If you are shooting negative or neutral hypernuclei at positive normal nuclei, there is nothing to put breaks on the collision, and you easily splash nucleons far and wide.

My advice, wait for the fearmongers to actually articulate one of their claims in the journals, let them be the ones staying up late at night putting together a case which is based on solid math and not hyperbole and misreading of technical journals.

Spica, is also known in Japanese as the "Pearl Star" which is to say 真珠星, and upon this rests the inference that 徳川真珠さん is the oldest grandchild of 徳川慶朝さん, 4th head of the 徳川慶喜家, established in 1902.

Forgive me for not knowing that "spica" is Japanese for Pearl Star, etc. Since spica does not deny your inferences, then I presume it is likely true.

As to spica, please note that this is a public forum, and one should not go around requesting others to not post, unless there is valid reason. Also, I did not infer that I believed you are American. I do not usually address a person's nationality in any of my posts, unless that is an issue (which it has not been to-date).

My assertions have still not been answered by either rpenner or alphanumeric. Specifically, even though rpenner does not believe that strangelets can form, theorists with more physics knowledge than he have expressed their opinion that they might. And that fact (physics opinions) is what drives the research quest to create strangelets or other exotic phenomena. And the other assertion, that CERN has been engaged in duplicity in telling the general public that they are only doing what is done in nature, while on the other hand researchers within CERN know that they expect to make conditions that could create "exotic phenomena" that are "beyond the reach of cosmic rays", has also not been addressed by rpenner or alphanumeric in their posts following my assertions.

Since spica does not deny your inferences, then I presume it is likely true.

It's not Spica's job to deny my inferences, since they are an example of entirely specious reasoning. Being specious reasoning, there is no rational basis for you to change your initial opinion that Spica is a sock-puppet (but no basis for it, either).

From Spica's one-word medical history and chosen screen name and reasonably good non-native English (I wish the baseline at American colleges was at least this good), do you think it's likely that I deduced exactly what Spica's name is?

The hypothesis that Spica is Japanese is free-association based on a novel I half-remember about a woman with OCD cleaning a stone floor, and Japanese temples may have stone floors. I am not familiar with the country-by-country prevalence of OCD so I picked Japan because I have nearly a 3rd-grade reading level in Japanese.
The hypothesis that Spica the star and a real human being share the same name (in Japanese) is baseless.
The hypothesis that the family name is a famous one in Japan, is also baseless.
The hypothesis that the person is privilege is baseless.
The hypothesis that the person of famous decent and privilege is in control of vast wealth, commandos and research laboratories is free-association based on the character Shutaro Mendou from the long-running anime series (English people say sequence?) Urusei Yatsura.

Having described the sequence of "reasoning" as specious and baseless, in your world Wagner, does not make me "wrong" by your definitions -- it puts the burden on you to get the Tokugawa official family tree or to get Spica to offer a proof of identity. But as Spica can see, my methodology is non-existent, my use of facts is specious, my shifting the burden of proof on you is without merit, and I have stolen all these tactics from creationists and you. Thus when you raise a paper (or a less reputable source) that mentions "black hole" and assume it means "dangerous black hole" or when you raise a paper (or a less reputable source) that mentions "strangelet" and you assume it means "dangerous strangelet" you rest upon a dubious chain of free-association and non-scientific methodology.

Now how likely is it that AlphaNumeric is in the employ of a super-villian? According to Walter Wagner, 50-50.

It's not Spica's job to deny my inferences, since they are an example of entirely specious reasoning. Being specious reasoning, there is no rational basis for you to change your initial opinion that Spica is a sock-puppet (but no basis for it, either).

From Spica's one-word medical history and chosen screen name and reasonably good non-native English (I wish the baseline at American colleges was at least this good), do you think it's likely that I deduced exactly what Spica's name is?

The hypothesis that Spica is Japanese is free-association based on a novel I half-remember about a woman with OCD cleaning a stone floor, and Japanese temples may have stone floors. I am not familiar with the country-by-country prevalence of OCD so I picked Japan because I have nearly a 3rd-grade reading level in Japanese.
The hypothesis that Spica the star and a real human being share the same name (in Japanese) is baseless.
The hypothesis that the family name is a famous one in Japan, is also baseless.
The hypothesis that the person is privilege is baseless.
The hypothesis that the person of famous decent and privilege is in control of vast wealth, commandos and research laboratories is free-association based on the character Shutaro Mendou from the long-running anime series (English people say sequence?) Urusei Yatsura.

Having described the sequence of "reasoning" as specious and baseless, in your world Wagner, does not make me "wrong" by your definitions -- it puts the burden on you to get the Tokugawa official family tree or to get Spica to offer a proof of identity. But as Spica can see, my methodology is non-existent, my use of facts is specious, my shifting the burden of proof on you is without merit, and I have stolen all these tactics from creationists and you. Thus when you raise a paper (or a less reputable source) that mentions "black hole" and assume it means "dangerous black hole" or when you raise a paper (or a less reputable source) that mentions "strangelet" and you assume it means "dangerous strangelet" you rest upon a dubious chain of free-association and non-scientific methodology.

Now how likely is it that AlphaNumeric is in the employ of a super-villian? According to Walter Wagner, 50-50.

It sounds like you've flipped.

I am familiar with AlphaNumeric's 'employer'. Do you have one?

I am familiar with AlphaNumeric's 'employer'. Do you have one?No, you aren't. And there's no need for the quotation marks, my 'employer' is as valid an employer as anyone else's. Or does receiving pay for doing work for a commercial entity not count as 'employment' these days?

Or maybe you just like to use quotation marks a lot, just like you're 'Doctor' Wagner. In that case the quotation marks are needed else you'd be misrepresenting yourself. Ain't that right Mr Wagner?

No, you aren't. And there's no need for the quotation marks, my 'employer' is as valid an employer as anyone else's.
It's a sign of insecurity. Given no avenue for genuine, well-thought out criticism of an opponent, an idiot will often resort to the use of quotation marks in an attempt to denigrate the attributes and/or accomplishments of others.

You should interpret such attacks as compliments. The author has been unable to form a intelligent criticism and is reduced to the quotation-mark-game.

'Congratulations'. ;)

"thank you" (http://atomicgator.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/dr_evil_laser.jpg)

...and he's more of a doctor than Walter ;)

And there's no need for the quotation marks, my 'employer' is as valid an employer as anyone else's. Or does receiving pay for doing work for a commercial entity not count as 'employment' these days?

You certainly do attempt to read into things that which was never meant to be there. Those aren't quotation marks, either. Using 'employer' was meant to show that it might not be standard hourly employment, and might instead be salaried employment, and many persons distinguish that. No denigration meant by it whatsoever.

I won't even begin to go into why you feel that was meant to be denigrating.

You certainly do attempt to read into things that which was never meant to be there. Those aren't quotation marks, either. Using 'employer' was meant to show that it might not be standard hourly employment, and might instead be salaried employment, and many persons distinguish that. No denigration meant by it whatsoever.
Ahem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark)...

This forum seems to provide you with a never ending stream of education, Walter Wagner. Lucky you!

Those aren't quotation marks, either. Using 'employer' was meant to show that it might not be standard hourly employment, and might instead be salaried employment, and many persons distinguish that. I have never seen anyone use ' ' in that way, it must be a regional thing for you. Whether someone is paid by their place of work by the hour or by the month they are still employed by an employer. As it happens I'm paid via a salary, not by the number of hours.


I won't even begin to go into why you feel that was meant to be denigrating.Given your track record I just assumed the worst. You called Rpenner ignorant, implying I'm not doing a real job would be a step up in terms of your negative comments about people.

Like I said, you aren't familiar with my employer.

Ahem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark)...

"though double quotation marks are preferred in the United States"

Isn't it nice to know there are regional differences. Some places don't use decimal points, but decimal commas, etc. We use quotation marks (" ") for the actual quote, and (' ') marks for non-exact 'quotes', or similar meanings.

"though double quotation marks are preferred in the United States"
Did your brain become too tired after reading only the first few paragraphs? Let me, once again, help you out:

Another common use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words:

He shared his “wisdom” with me.
The lunch lady plopped a glob of “food” onto my tray.
She attempted to use her “strength” to lift the weight.

To avoid the potential for confusion between ironic quotes and direct quotations, some style guides specify single quotation marks for this usage, and double quotation marks for verbatim speech.

Come on Walter Wagner. Surely there's at least a 50% chance that you think that ' ' constitute quotation marks. I mean, they either do, or they don't, right?

Anyhoo - I've had my fun. Please, Walter Wagner, continue with your detailed physics calculations.

He shared his “wisdom” with me.
The lunch lady plopped a glob of “food” onto my tray.
She attempted to use her “strength” to lift the weight.



Preferred in our region, since they are not exact quotes:

He shared his 'wisdom' with me.
The lunch lady plopped a glob of 'food' onto my tray.
She attempted to use her 'strength' to lift the weight.

But of course, I know you believe Wikipedia to be the source of all knowledge.

Meh, it's gotta be 50/50 anyway...

Preferred in our region, since they are not exact quotes:

He shared his 'wisdom' with me.
The lunch lady plopped a glob of 'food' onto my tray.
She attempted to use her 'strength' to lift the weight.
But Walter, they are still quotation marks! Did you not realise this? Is this yet another lesson in the educating-Walter-Wagner saga?

And you didn't even comment on the 50/50 remark! Come on, I thought it was at least a little funny.

Come on, I thought it was at least a little funny.

This whole thread is very 'funny!' (see what I did there?)

PS, could someone upload the Jon Stewart vs. Walter Wagner video to youtube or such like so that the whole world can enjoy it?

If http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-30-2009/large-hadron-collider doesn't work, does this:

<embed style='display:block' src='http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:225921' width='360' height='301' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' wmode='window' allowFullscreen='true' flashvars='autoPlay=false' allowscriptaccess='always' allownetworking='all' bgcolor='#000000'></embed>

//edit: A website that does the above: http://sixcrazyminutes.com/forums/index.php?topic=34562.0

On my Mac, I can also go straight to the flash video clip:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:item:comedycentral.com:225921

Unfortunately, I can't view it because I get the message "this content is not available in your country," which happens with all of your links. The only thing that would definitely work would be to connect through a proxy, but I haven't been able to get that to work either, due mostly to my computer ineptitude.