LHC Safety and the Law

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by rpenner, Sep 23, 2008.

  1. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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  3. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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  5. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    I saw a talk by John Ellis about the first LHC data earlier in the week. He's the guy who was on The Daily Show with Walter and who said 1.5K is 'fuckin' cold'. Big grey beard and a messy office.

    He joked "Here's the first analysis of the collisions..... and no black holes!". Everyone in the room laughed, a fair few probably thinking of Walter since the clip of The Daily Show got emailed around the department when it was on.
     
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  7. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    John Ellis is also one of the authors of one of the few papers I found online attempting to model violations of quantum physics. (Y'know -- that unevidenced thing which has to be added to similarly unevidenced GR violations to begin the work to model long-lived TeV-scale black holes which no physics based on empirical observations suggests could be dangerous.) I get the idea that some people once thought neutral kaons were such violators, but I guess the consensus might be that flavor and mass eigenstates aren't the same, which would be confirmed by neutrino experiments.
     
  8. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    February 2010 dates have been set in the appellate court and still no sign of Wagner's appeal going forward. (Wagner currently has a Feb. 8 data in Hawaiian State Court, so right now it doesn't look like he'll have to be in two courtrooms at the same time.) But even if he wins, the most he asked for was a trip back to District Court.

    No sign of anyone with relevant expertise that would survive voir dire chiming in on Wagner's side. No sign of a physics argument. No sign of an evidence-based argument.

    Finally, LHC is in standby, ready to resume in Feb. 2010.

    http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2009/PR20.09E.html
     
  9. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    That is a rather silly comment. The LHC was operating at about 110% of the Tevatron energy. Most of the theories that suggest a possibility of mbhs from proton-proton collisions occur at a minimum of some 350% of the Tevatron, which might not be reached for some 2 years. Most theories of mbh production suggest it would have to be beyond the 700% design maximum. And, the theories of trouble simply show that mbhs can't be detected; only the evaporating ones would be detectable. Of course, one psychological way to face one's justifiable fears is to laugh at them or poke fun at them.

    Here's a good link to John Ellis doing just that:

    http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1229427

    One can only hope that their physics is better than their acting.
     
  10. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    I love how you're trying to come off as the informed voice of reason when you're nothing by a fraudulent hack. It's quite funny.
     
  11. Seeking Truth Registered Senior Member

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    Well Wagner since you have completly FAILED to answer or show any physics of your own on the subject (still waiting for those answers btw), it's fair to say his physics is indeed better than yours, and come to think of it so is his acting...

    Why wont you answer the questions? why wont you show us the theories that say 350%, why dont u tell us your real credentials and what you are a doctor in???
     
  12. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry, you're just wasting your efforts - really. He will never answer ANY questions regarding his credentials for one very simple reason - he has NO credentials.

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    He's nothing more than a glory-seeker that likes to see his name in the news, a lot like the couple that crashed the White House dinner. In truth, he's nothing but a waste of an individual AND wastes the government's money (yours and mine) on court actions that can't go anywhere.
     
  13. lucio Registered Member

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    Dear all,
    I am not a lawyer and I also have some difficulties understanding the american processes, but I would like to understand if the process against LHC is now over or not, and whether it is who "won".
    I tried reading this thread, but I didn't understand.
    Thanks
     
  14. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Winning in US court is not final until the US Supreme Court is given the chance to weigh in on every argument or the opposing side gives up. That being said, there are no victories for the Wagner side, but a couple times where the judge said both sides should follow the court rules. Wagner lost at least 1) the claim that certain European documents and laws governed the behavior of the US 2) the claim that the US law covered US behavior in the funding of LHC 3) the demand for an order preventing the US from paying science teams.

    Here is how it is supposed to go:

    [Team A makes (written) claims and demands]->[Team B makes reply]->[Team A responds to the reply and argues it should still get its demands]->[Hearing of both sides in court]->[Written order of the court granting or denying demands]

    Then either side can appeal on any issue and we try again, potentially repeating until the Supreme Court.

    March 21, 2008 Sancho and Wagner advance many arguments and claims. But it is not until April 25, 2008 that Sancho and Wagner bother to tell the US Government that it is being sued. On June 24, 2008, the US Government moves to dismiss the case against the US Government based on things like the law does not say what Wagner says it does, and that the facts are not what Wagner says they are, and that suing the US over monies already spent can have no effect on what happens on the French-Swiss border.

    On September 2, 2008 a judge held a hearing and orders both sides to follow the rules of the court better.

    Separately, on May 28, 2008 Wagner tries to legally tell CERN that they are being sued in US Court, but chooses to hide this from the court until June 30, 2008 when Wagner produces documentation (including an opinion that the service was not legal) and ask the court for a finding of default against CERN. On September 5, 2008, the US Government argues that a finding of default against CERN would not be proper. On September 9, 2008, the Judge thinks that Wagner has skipped a step and requests that Sancho and Wagner address the Hague convention which governs aspects of international lawsuits.
    http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=4830&view=findpost&p=374248
    Wagner requests (and gets) a timeout (continuance) to read up on the subject and move from Hawaii to Utah. This slows down Wagner's pursuit of a default judgement against CERN, which I argue is doomed.
    This is where we stood as of page one of this thread.

    But the court never gets around to addressing the issue since it ruled on the US motion to dismiss first.
    http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2029021#post2029021

    The court said as a matter of U.S. law Sancho and Wagner had no right to bring this suit against any party. (The only law that might have applied does not apply when the US Government is not at least a 10% funder of the project.) The Court did not address two other arguments made by the US Government (that the claims of being hurt by the LHC were purely "conjectural [and] hypothetical” dreaming and not “concrete and particularized” and that the US does not control what happens outside of the US with monies long since spent.

    So says the US District Court.

    So when Wagner (some say Sancho and Wagner) appealed this to the US Circuit Court, they were arguing against this dismissal. The US Government called them on a number of points, including reiterating claims made to but not considered by the District court as additional reasons to uphold the decision to throw out the case. (Sancho and Wagner, not being actual lawyers looked surprised by this tactic, though it seems spelled out plainly in the rules of the court.) So again we had the pattern of:

    [I should be allowed to continue my case]->[No you shouldn't, here's why]->[Argh! That's not what I want to hear!]->....

    The next steps are a hearing and a court order. But right now no hearing is scheduled. It is the duty of the court clerks (who are expected to also be lawyers, and have authority to rule on some motions) of the appellate court to read the papers, research the case and laws cited, determine how much time is needed for a hearing, and to schedule it. Wagner's filings have been a little weird (at times he marks up the papers of others with a pen that does not photocopy well and files that as an exhibit and he advanced the argument that US Dollars are the only funding source that US law cares about, without citation) and he never asked for an expedited appeal, so we have waited since June 29, 2009 for the court to schedule a hearing in regards to the appeal of throwing out Wagner's case.

    If Wagner wins, he gets to go back to the District court (who could throw out the case again on as yet unaddressed grounds). So a "Win" in this appeal case just cancels out a previous "Loss."

    I am not a lawyer. (IANAL)

    I'm pro-LHC, but not affiliated (even indirectly) with any plaintiff, defendant, affidavit submitter, funding source, press agency, law school, etc, and know of no basis where I might be a potential witness, jurist or added party to the covered case. Nor do I have academic or equivalent credentials which would relate to any facet of this case as a first-rank expert witness. (Some physics and math Ph.D. students think I'm well-versed for a layman, but a layman I am.) Nor am I a member of the Union of Collaborating Founders (UCF), a group which some anti-LHC websites describe as a pro-LHC think tank, a depiction which I feel is unfair.

    I've been replying to scare stories about the LHC since about March 29, 2006 and got my interest peaked in legal proceedings by being a regular reader on groklaw.net -- which focused largely on one Unix/Linux vendor's suits against the Linux-using world and eventual Chapter 11 bankruptcy. I think I first became aware of Walter L. Wagner with his posts of September 3, 2007, and attempted to engage him in plain physics discussion. Until 2008 television coverage, I have never seen his face or heard his voice. And if there is any organized opposition to him, I have never met with them either.
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2009
  15. lucio Registered Member

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    Thanks rpenner, very kind of you.
    Still, it's hard to me to understand what is now the request by Wagner, hasn't he had time to review the LSAG report? At least the Scientific Community had. I read the reply to the LSAG by Sancho, but I can't believe they are still working on those points, that's crazy.
    Thanks again
     
  16. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    An interesting legal analysis of the case can be found at:
    76 Tenn. Law Review 819 (2009)

    For those who do not have ready access to a law library, the author (Assistant Professor of Law, University of North Dakota School of Law. B.A.,
    University of Texas at Austin, Plan II Honors Program; J.D., Harvard Law School.) also posted it on arXiv at:

    http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0912/0912.5480.pdf
     
  17. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Often repeated in Professor Eric Johnson's analysis is this sentiment that mischaracterizes science.

    To this end, it clearly mischaracterizes the progressive nature of science and the ascribes unevidenced motives to every single scientist who does not subscribe to the theories of Roessler and Plaga. As Plaga does not subscribe to the theories of Roessler and vice versa, this is clearly a false dichotomy.

    As first seen on his website, http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2008/10/planet-eating-b.html , which in many ways is a preview of this article, we also see Johnson is hung up on confirmation of scientific theory and not the actual role of experimentation in invalidating them.

    What, really? I thought Motl was on noone's side but his own.

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    I'm pretty sure 4+1 was ruled out experimentally, and only large dimensionalitys of 6..11 were still being considered.

    Mischaracterizes which theory is being discussed. It's not generic string theory, or a generic theory of extra dimensions, but a class of theories of extra large dimensions tuned to be just barely touched upon by the TeV scale.

    This is the same 1916-1974 classical account of black holes which does not allow them to be created at any collider. By changing the theory, you change the object you are talking about in theoretical physics. What follows is a correct summary of Hawking evaporation. (Beauty is now usually called the bottom quark.) He then pooh-poohs it as "never been observed or experimentally confirmed" and throws in a paper by Adam D. Helfer, who appearantly had Penrose as an advisor at Oxford. "But few did take it seriously."

    http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf
    Nothing like a reviewable basis for calculation was presented, however, so there is nothing to support the claim that "Rössler ran some numbers" through anything like a reasonable physical theory. Indeed, his misunderstandings of even 1916-era black holes are those of a man out of his depth.

    What, really? When was this the criteria?

    How many large hidden dimensions.

    Only when the new hypothetical embellishment that such black holes have no electric charge is added on top of the other hypotheses. For charged black holes, the Earth and Moon stop them just fine.

    Despite this, Prof. Johnson seems to have a much more comfortable relationship with the idea of "confirming" theories.

    But they fail to rise to the level of scientific theories in most cases, such as the claimed calculation of 50 months without basis.

    But Prof. Johnson correctly rejects that position for the current issue. The correct method is obviously is for both sides to educate the judge as was done in the Dover school board case where both sides raised the question of whether ID was science or "junk."

    Prof. Johnson takes it that the relevant standard should be peer review of any outcome and publication even if not conditioned on positive peer review. The tone seems frankly hysterical in trying to bend over backwards to not heavily favor CERN's experts and particle physicists of good reputation not associated with CERN over Roessler and Plaga.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2010
  18. Seeking Truth Registered Senior Member

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    I personally did feel an uneasy bias in this paper, but curiously, (unless i missed this), did he not note that not one of the 7000 ppl that dont directly work for cern are concerned enough to feel a paper is required?.

    I mean didnt the LSAG report regardless of who made it get approved by every scientific council on earth?

    Or are those respected institutions omitted for drama's sake?

    Not to dis Prof. Johnson but it seems only logical you would include such approvals for the legal council?

    note i may have missed it if he did include remarks for this, i just couldnt find them
     
  19. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    No news in US Federal Appellate Court. 08-17389 has no trial before March 15.
    In Hawaii State Court, Criminal Case 3PC08-1-000097 continues.
    Jan 19 Court starts to consider Wagner's motion to put a leash on some "inflammatory" and/or "misleading" evidence, State asked to delay trial, more time was asked for.
    Jan 22 Court considers the two motions. Wagner's motion denied. State's motion granted. Trial moved to Feb 16
    Feb 2 Mrs. Wagner's attorney requests a transcript; perhaps an appeal or request for reconsideration is being written.
     
  20. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    The below copied from an email I received:

    CERN / LHC recent news: “Science Insider”:February 2, 2010 “Europe’s LHC to Run at Half-Energy, Tightening Race for Higgs The world’s highest energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will run at half its maximum energy through 2011 and likely not at all in 2012. Officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, had previously planned to run the gargantuan accelerator at 70% of maximum energy this year. […]” http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/02/european-atomsm.html Short explanation: This means that the new phase of operation planned to start mid February 2010 with energy increase up to 3.5 TeV per beam (resulting in 7 TeV centre of mass energy) - which would 3.5 times exceed the highest energies of other colliders – is planned to be expanded through 2011. The reasons given are technical concerns and problems. Obviously further adjustment and replacement of elements for higher energies are complex and costly. Critics claim that the LHC should not start operating at all before completion of properly constituted neutral and multidisciplinary safety studies including newest theoretical and empirical research. “Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes” in: “Science NOW”, 22 January 2010http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2010/122/1 ”Does that mean the LHC will make black holes? Not necessarily, Choptuik says. The Planck energy is a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum. So the only way the LHC might make black holes is if, instead of being three dimensional, space actually has more dimensions that are curled into little loops too small to be detected except in a high-energy particle collision. Predicted by certain theories, those extra dimensions might effectively lower the Planck energy by a huge factor.” Thus, the computer simulation gives another evidence that black holes could be produced at the LHC according to widely respected theories. This newest experiment cannot show that black holes produced at the LHC would be harmless or short lived. Prof. Eric E. Johnson’s recent paper is in continuous discussion: “The law and the Large Hadron Collider: who should have jurisdiction?”By Lena | Published: February 4, 2010 “After court cases seeking to halt the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) were thrown out of Swiss and Hawaiian law courts, one US lawyer is arguing that it and other hypothetically destructive experiments should not expect to be beyond the rule of law.In February’s Physics World, journalist Edwin Cartlidge looks at the argument put forward by lawyer Eric E Johnson in the Tennessee Law Review that courts must assert their jurisdiction over these large experiments — or face rendering the rule of law obsolete.[…]”http://iopblog.org/law-large-hadron-collider-jurisdiction/———– “Physics World”IOP - A website from the Institute of Physics “Law and the end of the world”Feb 2, 2010 “Edwin Cartlidge examines the case of a US lawyer who believes that the courts must step in if required to halt experiments like the Large Hadron Collider”http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/41564 Pdf. see attachement.
     
  21. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, Eric E Johnson has a bee in his bonnet about bugaboos, but his position is contradictory. This he should have realized himself once he started manipulating infinity as if it were a number.

    US courts cannot require person X to do task Y -- that is tantamount to slavery or indentured servitude. In the absence of law, you cannot require X to do Y before doing Z when Z is something not even controlled by law. Indeed Congress is ordered by the US Constitution to help do Z. (Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 8)

    US civil courts decide on the basis of a preponderance of the evidence and criminal courts decide on the basis of reasonable doubt. These are impossible burdens for someone who doesn't know the state of the frontiers of physics to overcome. Neither Wanger, Sancho, nor Roessler is anywhere near that frontier, and the proof is in the lack of maths. Wagner, in his most visible public calculation misapplied Bayesian statistics and admitted his own personal complete ignorance of if the LHC poses a threat or not. Sancho has never presented a calculation. Roessler makes freshman physics mistakes and doesn't show his work.

    There is no such thing as a permanent injunction of lawful activity. You might apply for a temporary injunction on the basis of a balance of harms and the likelihood of winning. And since in the absence of being anywhere near the frontier of physics, all the doom saying in the world is physically equivalent to claiming in court that the LHC will produce miniature pink unicorns which will magically cause loss of life.

    While Choptuik and Pretorius don't add much evidence, they just restate long-assumed and argued-for results computed numerically on a machine. They reconfirm with automated arithmetic what had been long the status quo of math-educated intuition. Because they did no further work, their work likewise adds no evidence that black holes, even if they formed, would be dangerous. Notably, they don't discuss any quantum effects, fermions, or even cases with finite net angular momentum and/or charge. http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1780
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2010
  22. prometheus viva voce! Registered Senior Member

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    You do realise that extra dimensions large enough to enable the LHC to create black holes would have been experimentally accessible for a long time at other colliders don't you?
     
  23. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    How large do those extra dimensions have to be Prometheus?
     

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