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I took great personal risks by finding no flaw in my 3 new implications of Einstein’s happiest thought (L,M,Ch as corollaries to his T). You can call this type of suggesting novelty “hazardeering.”

CERN seemingly did do the same thing with the Gran Sasso experiment. They announced with great fanfare having proved Einstein wrong. Now I am accusing them of hazardeering. But is not all science hazardeering?

Yes, it is in the sense that you put your own good name at stake. This is hazardering in the good sense. So CERN’s having hazardeered the Gran-Sasso experiment is something good and laudable? Absolutely so.

Whythen am I accusing them of hazardeering? So only because they did not re-work their paper after I had sent them my proposed error diagnosis. “Bending over backwards” was Feynman’s happy phrase. Finding a counterargument is in your own best interest. Hazardeering yes, but only as long as it can be upheld.

So I am not opposed to CERN’s having built their accelerator and hoped to generate black holes? Not at all. That was hazardeering in the good sense. But to refuse even to quote papers that showed that the fundamentals (especially Hawking radiation) were false made continuation under conscious suppression of the new counterarguments – and the attendant danger – “hazardeering in the bad sense.”

I do greatly admire Rolf-Dieter Heuer for his steadfastness. His refusal to check for himself – by accepting to talk to the seeming adversary or by allowing him to give a talk at CERN – was his only personal mistake. It was one too many, given the consciously incurred danger to the planet in case the demonstrated risk is real. I cordially hope Professor Heuer can be rehabilitated. But this must occur within one week’s time unless he admits the safety conference before re-starting the LHC experiment.

http://www.academicjournals.org/AJMCSR/PDF/pdf2012/Feb/9%20Feb/Rossler.pdf

Prediction on Lifeboat vindicated: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/breaking-n…aster.html

CERN retracted their hundreds-of-authors long anti-Einstein paper – and the media report on the last page if at all.

Heuer must step down immediately before he commits his second crime – upgrading last year’s assault on everyone by a factor of six starting next week.

Our possible future.

The full details of recent experiments that made a deadly flu virus more contagious will be published, probably within a few months, despite recommendations by the United States that some information be kept secret for fear that terrorists could use it to start epidemics.

The announcement, made on Friday by the World Health Organization, follows two months of heated debate about the flu research. The recommendation to publish the work in full came from a meeting of 22 experts in flu and public health from various countries who met on Thursday and Friday in Geneva at the organization’s headquarters to discuss “urgent issues” raised by the research.

Learn more.

It would be a “first” in history – that a whole profession refuses to think. That they would be so much scared by the fact that a trivial new result when taken seriously can prevent Armageddon that they would rather not believe than check it.

This sounds very unlikely indeed. The trivial result in question is the “ontological Einstein.” His relativity theory possesses additional ontological implications besides the famous twin-clocks paradox of 1905. Let me briefly state my point.

Every high-school student learns that a travelled twin is younger upon return than the brother who stayed at home. In other words he is ontologically younger. Einstein’s first example was two mechanical clocks on which the difference is objectively verifiable (one being late). “Ontological” is derived from the Greek word “on” (with a long “o”) which means “being in reality.” This is the single most intimidating result of Einstein. It has nothing to do with observation from a distance as relativity is often understood, but represents a tangible reality. No professional physicist puts it in doubt (except ideologists like the “100 Authors Against Einstein” of 1930). A second result of the same miraculous kind applies in gravity as specialists know (Frolov and Novikov’s book “Black Hole Physics” of 1998 provides helpful information on page 20, bottom). In this second twins paradox, it is the descended twin that after having been hauled back up again is ontologically younger than the one that stood put upstairs. Everybody is familiar to date with this “slower-aging effect” from the Global Positioning System (G.P.S.) whose earthbound clocks are manifestly slower than their twins in the satellites overhead.

But if this is well known – where lies the problem? It is only the implications that are ignored. It is three: the slowed-down clocks (and everything else downstairs) are,

(i) proportionally enlarged,

(ii) proportionally mass-reduced,

(iii) proportionally charge-reduced.

The profession neglects these three corollaries to Einstein’s ontological reduced ticking rate downstairs. A partial excuse is that the three new points are as inaccessible locally as the clock slowdown itself. For Einstein’s principle of “general covariance” implies that any object that is freshly released into free fall is subject to the very laws that apply in free outer space where everything is normal by definition. Hence time, size, mass and charge are absolutely normal-appearing downstairs. This notwithstanding, the normal-appearing photons generated there have a reduced frequency and hence lower energy compared to above. This fact is admitted by every specialist when pressed (only Pound and Rebka who first measured the effect on earth in 1960 never subscribed to this, claiming that the normal photons downstairs had lost their energy on their way up). Yet IF photon mass-energy is counterfactually – locally unrecognizably – reduced downstairs, as Einstein saw in 1907, then the same thing automatically applies to ALL masses down there. This is because particle mass can be exchanged into the currency of photons locally as positronium annihilation and creation attest to. This counterfactual “mass-change result” carries over to the – locally mass-proportional – charge of the particles in question.

Thus if T is ontologically slowed downstairs according to Einstein, L is ontologically increased there; M is ontologically decreased there (which fact by the way re-confirms the change of L via quantum mechanics); and Ch is ontologically decreased there; all by the same factor. The full four-leafed clover (T-L-M-Ch) is called “Telemach.”

The physical profession fumes against this result – behind closed doors. For if it is true, a hundred other canonical teachings become as false as the no longer true belief in the global constancy of L and M and Ch. Every reader has probably heard of the Ur-meter, the Ur-kilogram and the unit (Ur) charge: They are all gone. Further catastrophic (or wonderful) consequences follow: The speed of light in the vacuum, c, is globally constant because the ratio L/T (unit-period length over corresponding unit-period time) equals c no longer only locally but globally; the belief in oscillatory gravitational waves based on a variable c is out; the famous Reissner-Nordström metric presupposing charge conservation is gone; the famous Kerr metric needs overhaul for denying the infinite ontological slowdown of time on the horizon; the famous Hawking radiation which presupposes that somehing (the partner in a pair of virtual particles) can reach the horizon of a black hole in finite outer time, is nonexistent; and singularities and wormholes cease to be real in finite outer time. Telemach was, by the way, independently discovered by Richard J. Cook of Colorado Springs.

It is rare that a new insight – and a trivial one at that since L-M-Ch are corollaries to Einstein’s T – entails so many revolutionary consequences. The sluggishness of the profession to come around is therefore understandable. Similar delays have happened before in the history of science. So everything is fine?

Not quite. By a quirk of fate, the outdated previous consensus is responsible for an experiment, already performed for a year, which is planned to be continued upgraded in combined energy and luminosity by a factor of five next month. The “LHC experiment” of CERN openly attempts to implant a human-made micro black hole into mother earth. The experimenters admit (in their latest “safety report” from 2008) that the micro black hole will eat the earth inside out in some 5 billion years’ time. Unfortunately, the three new corollaries L,M,Ch to Einstein’s T imply that, # 1 black holes are up to a million times more likely to be produced at CERN and, # 2 the 5-billion-year delay is shrunk to 5 years. Simultaneously, # 3, CERN’s detectors are now blind by construction to its most hoped-for product by virtue of the new absence of both Hawking radiation and charged black holes.

Stephen Hawking is if you so wish responsible for the underlying sociological catastrophe – that no public discussion took place. The silence of the greatest living personal hero of the planet encouraged the pope and the papal academy of which Hawking is a member to stick to his big-bang supporting but falsified theory in defiance of Saint Augustine’s “created eternity.” Belief in manifest miracles (despite the miraculousness of it all) is, however, only one reason for the catastrophe. Europe, currently busy destroying a one percent member state, shies away from losing clout with the rest of the planet if confessing that it refused against better reason the “safety conference” which would have spared the planet the ordeal of having to fear Armageddon for years to come.

Money can explain irrationality on a grand scale, and so can ideology. However, that la crème de la crème of the most advanced science of the planet should have disallowed public discussion of the worst conceivable danger of history, looks a bit implausible. There is bound to be a better explanation than collective feeblemindedness. I therefore retract with apologies my having given the joker to Stephen and the pope: It is all my own fault!

Let me explain. When Germany had introduced new obedience laws for university professors after her re-unification, I made the mistake of making this fact public by requesting the dishonorable retroactive discharge of a female professor (my wife) to be stopped along with the expulsion of her family from the inherited house. Both acts being punishments for her not having accepted an involuntary out-of-field medical professorship with annulment of her lifetime call in her own field and her award for 25 years of excellent service.

I mention this because I realized only today what a big mistake it was on my part to defend the privileges of the most pampered profession of the planet (to be allowed to treat patients and teach students with honesty): the globe knows worse violations of human rights. My making wind against the destruction of the German universities was the stupidest act of my life because I now have to pay for it by not being taken seriously with an infinitely more important cause. Everybody in the planetary media can be told that I practiced hysterical exaggeration for having thought I could stop discriminatory expulsion from honor and home by the state. My not giving up where everyone else would have resigned was ill-advised. Poet Goethe said that the individual has not the right to blame the state – a European rule against which I sinned.

So the planet “knows” I am a trouble-maker (I stopped my public demonstration only the day the Iraq war broke out in view of the smallness of my own cause in comparison). The fact that I had proposed “Lampsacus” 18 years ago as a human right (“hometown of all human beings on the Internet”) as the best economic engine for the planet – with young genius Mark Zuckerberg now earning an iota of that revolution – got erased by my unsuccessful demonstration for academic freedom – a consequence which I had risked. But the fact that my current begging for the benefit of the doubt is being met with a shrug is too big a price: “He is making empty waves again by misusing Einstein’s name!”

A judge working at a nearby courthouse once took the trouble to approach me during one of my (work-) daily 7-year long demonstrations before the Tubingen jailhouse, to tell me that it was to no avail so I should stop. I thanked him for his kindness. When he insisted on my explaining to him why I did not give up, I replied spontaneously with a phrase that surprised me: “I am still a child, you know.” He walked away without a word. I realized only when calling on you here today that this spontaneous confession of mine can be taken to imply that I am an “autist” as Paul Dirac (whom I once met) allegedly was according to Graham Farmelo’s famous biography. The fact that 44 years ago, I had proposed a causal therapy for autism, appears in a new light too, so it occurs to me – including the fact that the therapy was never tried out by a member of the therapeutic profession (only a mother once unknowingly used it successfully in a TV-documented case).

Now, both you and I suddenly understand why it is that, when I say “please, take my word that I understand Einstein better than previous consensus had it,” the physics community shrugs: When this impossible person insists on being given a reason why we do not believe him, he does not deserve the benefit of an answer! The physical profession would rather hold another meeting behind CERN’s closed doors, to afterwards ask the waiting journalists please not be upset that CERN cannot give a single scientist’s name as support for their unanimous decision not to admit a safety conference. For otherwise “this lunatic” would have a pretext to respond in his own jargon and show to his private satisfaction that this colleague’s answer was false. Everybody must understand that an organization as big as CERN, with billions of dollars at stake, cannot afford taking such a risk. The world media comply by not reporting on the extant proof of danger – including the fact that the Cologne Administrative Court requested a “safety conference” on January 27, 2011.

What you, my dear reader, and I realize at this moment is that my past fight for the human right of students and patients to have professors who need not fear telling the truth, fits-in in proving my lack of social competence, as I found out today: I am bound to be an autist who is unable to realize when becoming unbearably tactless. In primary school I was called “Herr Brotfresser” (Mister bread-eater) which sounds like “professor” – an ominous sign.

But: should the world really go under only because it is an Asperger-type human being who insists there is reason for a bomb alarm before flights can be resumed on airport CERN?

Forgive me that I saw the most convincing excuse of my adversaries only today: the fact that everybody at CERN can tell the media and the politicians and the courts, under the seal of not giving away their name, that “if this impossible person says he wants disproof, this is his own problem, not ours.” Germany declared me insane in 1996 for having revealed the new law in my lecture hall in response to a student’s question. I had to flee to Switzerland, being made a convicted person in absentia the next morning rather than being put into a mental institution as the state had ordered. The media know about this. What you will have difficulty believing is only that I did not fully realize before the striking logic behind CERN’s pointing to my fearless=tactless= insane character, as a safety argument sufficient for a planet. But:

DO I REALLY NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE TOLD WHERE THE ERROR LIES IN MY PRESENTED PROOF?

- CERN’s annual meeting to fix LHC schedules in Chamonix: Increasing energies. No external and multi-disciplinary risk assessment so far. Future plans targeting at costly LHC upgrade in 2013 and Mega-LHC in 2022.

- COMMUNICATION to CERN – For a neutral and multi-disciplinary risk assessment before any LHC upgrade

According to CERN’s Chamonix workshop (Feb. 6–10 2012) and a press release from today: In 2012 the collision energies of the world’s biggest particle collider LHC should be increased from 3.5 to 4 TeV per beam and the luminosity is planned to be increased by a factor of 3. This means much more particle collisions at higher energies.

CERN plans to shut down the LHC in 2013 for about 20 months to do a very costly upgrade (for CHF 1 Billion?) to run the LHC at double the present energies (7 TeV per beam) afterwards.

Future plans: A High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) is planned, “tentatively scheduled to start operating around 2022” — with a beam energy increased from 7 to 16.5 TeV(!):
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2012/06/News%20Articles/1423292?ln=en

One might really ask where this should lead to – sooner or later – without the risks being properly investigated. Many critics from different fields are severely alarmed.

For comparison: The AMS 2 experiment for directly measuring cosmic rays in the atmosphere operates on a scale around 1.5 TeV. Very high energetic cosmic rays have only been measured indirectly (their impulse). Sort, velocity, mass and origin of these particles are unknown. In any way, the number of collisions under the extreme and unprecedented artificial conditions at the LHC is of astronomical magnitudes higher than anywhere else in the nearer cosmos.

There were many talks on machine safety at the Chamonix meeting. The safety of humans and environment obviously were not an official topic. That’s why critics turned to CERN in an open letter:

———————————————————–
Communication on LHC Safety directed to CERN

For a neutral and multidisciplinary risk assessment to be done before any LHC upgrade

—————————-
Communiqué to CERN
—————————-

Dear management and scientists at CERN,

Astronomer and Leonardo-publisher Roger Malina recently emphasized that the main problem in research is that “curiosity is not neutral”. And he concluded: “There are certain problems where we cannot cloister the scientific activity in the scientific world, and I think we really need to break the model. I wish CERN, when they had been discussing the risks, had done that in an open societal context, and not just within the CERN context.”

Video of Roger Malina’s presentation at Ars Electronica, following prominent philosopher and leading constructivist Humberto Maturana’s remarkable lecture on science and “certainy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOZS2qJrVkU

In the eyes of many critics a number of questions related to LHC safety are not ruled out and some of them have concrete and severe concerns. Also the comparability of the cosmic ray argument is challenged.

Australian risk researcher and ethicist Mark Leggett concludes in a paper that CERN meets less than a fifth of the criteria of a modern risk assessment:
http://lhc-concern.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/leggett_r…_1__09.pdf

Without getting into details of the LHC safety discussion – this article in the well-recognized Physics arXiv Blog (MIT’s Technology Review) states: “Black Holes, Safety, and the LHC Upgrade — If the LHC is to be upgraded, safety should be a central part of the plans.”

Similar to pragmatic critics, the author claims in his closing remarks: “What’s needed, of course, is for the safety of the LHC to be investigated by an independent team of scientists with a strong background in risk analysis but with no professional or financial links to CERN.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27319/

The renowned Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) in Karlsruhe and other risk researchers have already signalized interest in cooperation. We think, in such a process, naturally also CERN and critics should be constructively involved.

Please act in favour of such a neutral and multi-disciplinary assessment, maybe already following the present Chamonix meeting. Even if you feel sure that there are no reasons for any concerns, this must be in your interest, while also being of scientific and public concern.

In the name of many others:
[…]
————————–
LHC-Kritik / LHC-Critique
www.LHC-concern.info

Direct link to this Communication to CERN:
http://lhc-concern.info/?page_id=139
Also published in “oekonews”: http://www.oekonews.at/index.php?mdoc_id=1067776

CERN press release from Feb 13 2012:
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR01.12E.html

“Badly designed to understand the Universe — CERN’s LHC in critical Reflection by great Philosopher H. Maturana and Astrophysicist R. Malina”:
https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/02/badly-designed-to-understa…t-r-malina

“LHC-Kritik/LHC-Critique – Network for Safety at experimental sub-nuclear Reactors”, is a platform articulating the risks related to particle colliders and experimental high energy physics. LHC-Critique has conducted a number of detailed papers demonstrating the insufficiency of the present safety measures under well understandable perspectives and has still got a law suit pending at the European Court of Human Rights.

More info at LHC-Kritik / LHC-Critique:
www.LHC-concern.info
[email protected]
+43 650 629 627 5

Info on the outcomes of CERN’s annual meeting in Chamonix this week (Feb. 6–10 2012):

In 2012 LHC collision energies should be increased from 3.5 to 4 TeV per beam and the luminosity is planned to be highly increased. This means much more particle collisions at higher energies.

CERN plans to shut down the LHC in 2013 for about 20 months to do a very costly upgrade (CHF 1 Billion?) to run the LHC at 7 TeV per beam afterwards.

Future plans: A High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) is planned, “tentatively scheduled to start operating around 2022” — with a beam energy increased from 7 to 16.5 TeV(!).

One might really ask where this should lead to – sooner or later – without the risks being properly investigated.

For comparison: The AMS experiment for directly measuring cosmic rays in the atmosphere operates on a scale around 1.5 TeV. Very high energetic cosmic rays have only been measured indirectly (their impulse). Sort, velocity, mass and origin of these particles are unknown. In any way, the number of collisions under the extreme and unprecedented artificial conditions at the LHC is of astronomical magnitudes higher than anywhere else in the nearer cosmos.

There were many talks on machine safety at the Chamonix meeting. The safety of humans and environment obviously were not an official topic. No reaction on the recent claim for a really neutral, external and multi-disciplinary risk assessment by now.

Official reports from the LHC performance workshop by CERN Bulletin:

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2012/06/News%20Articles/?ln=de

LHC Performance Workshop — Chamonix 2012:

https://indico.cern.ch/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=164089

Feb 10 2012: COMMUNICATION directed to CERN for a neutral and multidisciplinary risk assessment to be done before any LHC upgrade:

http://lhc-concern.info/?page_id=139

More info at LHC-Kritik / LHC-Critique: Network for Safety at experimental sub-nuclear Reactors:

www.LHC-concern.info

Famous Chilean philosopher Humberto Maturana describes “certainty” in science as subjective emotional opinion and astonishes the physicists’ prominence. French astronomer and “Leonardo” publisher Roger Malina hopes that the LHC safety issue would be discussed in a broader social context and not only in the closer scientific framework of CERN.

(Article published in “oekonews”: http://oekonews.at/index.php?mdoc_id=1067777 )

The latest renowned “Ars Electronica Festival” in Linz (Austria) was dedicated in part to an uncritical worship of the gigantic particle accelerator LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at the European Nuclear Research Center CERN located at the Franco-Swiss border. CERN in turn promoted an art prize with the idea to “cooperate closely” with the arts. This time the objections were of a philosophical nature – and they had what it takes.

In a thought provoking presentation Maturana addressed the limits of our knowledge and the intersubjective foundations of what we call “objective” and “reality.” His talk was spiked with excellent remarks and witty asides that contributed much to the accessibility of these fundamental philosophical problems: “Be realistic, be objective!” Maturana pointed out, simply means that we want others to adopt our point of view. The great constructivist and founder of the concept of autopoiesis clearly distinguished his approach from a solipsistic position.

Given Ars Electronica’s spotlight on CERN and its experimental sub-nuclear research reactor, Maturana’s explanations were especially important, which to the assembled CERN celebrities may have come in a mixture of an unpleasant surprise and a lack of relation to them.

During the question-and-answer period, Markus Goritschnig asked Maturana whether it wasn’t problematic that CERN is basically controlling itself and discarding a number of existential risks discussed related to the LHC — including hypothetical but mathematically demonstrable risks also raised — and later downplayed — by physicists like Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek, and whether he thought it necessary to integrate in the LHC safety assessment process other sciences aside from physics such as risk search. In response Maturana replied (in the video from about 1:17): “We human beings can always reflect on what we are doing and choose. And choose to do it or not to do it. And so the question is, how are we scientists reflecting upon what we do? Are we taking seriously our responsibility of what we do? […] We are always in the danger of thinking that, ‘Oh, I have the truth’, I mean — in a culture of truth, in a culture of certainty — because truth and certainty are not as we think — I mean certainty is an emotion. ‘I am certain that something is the case’ means: ‘I do not know’. […] We cannot pretend to impose anything on others; we have to create domains of interrogativity.”

Disregarding these reflections, Sergio Bertolucci (CERN) found the peer review system among the physicists’ community a sufficient scholarly control. He refuted all the disputed risks with the “cosmic ray argument,” arguing that much more energetic collisions are naturally taking place in the atmosphere without any adverse effect. This safety argument by CERN on the LHC, however, can also be criticized under different perspectives, for example: Very high energetic collisions could be measured only indirectly — and the collision frequency under the unprecedented artificial and extreme conditions at the LHC is of astronomical magnitudes higher than in the Earth’s atmosphere and anywhere else in the nearer cosmos.

The second presentation of the “Origin” Symposium III was held by Roger Malina, an astrophysicist and the editor of “Leonardo” (MIT Press), a leading academic journal for the arts, sciences and technology.

Malina opened with a disturbing fact: “95% of the universe is of an unknown nature, dark matter and dark energy. We sort of know how it behaves. But we don’t have a clue of what it is. It does not emit light, it does not reflect light. As an astronomer this is a little bit humbling. We have been looking at the sky for millions of years trying to explain what is going on. And after all of that and all those instruments, we understand only 3% of it. A really humbling thought. […] We are the decoration in the universe. […] And so the conclusion that I’d like to draw is that: We are really badly designed to understand the universe.”

The main problem in research is: “curiosity is not neutral.” When astrophysics reaches its limits, cooperation between arts and science may indeed be fruitful for various reasons and could perhaps lead to better science in the end. In a later communication Roger Malina confirmed that the same can be demonstrated for the relation between natural sciences and humanities or social sciences.

However, the astronomer emphasized that an “art-science collaboration can lead to better science in some cases. It also leads to different science, because by embedding science in the larger society, I think the answer was wrong this morning about scientists peer-reviewing themselves. I think society needs to peer-review itself and to do that you need to embed science differently in society at large, and that means cultural embedding and appropriation. Helga Nowotny at the European Research Council calls this ‘socially robust science’. The fact that CERN did not lead to a black hole that ended the world was not due to peer-review by scientists. It was not due to that process.”

One of Malina’s main arguments focused on differences in “the ethics of curiosity”. The best ethics in (natural) science include notions like: intellectual honesty, integrity, organized scepticism, dis-interestedness, impersonality, universality. “Those are the believe systems of most scientists. And there is a fundamental flaw to that. And Humberto this morning really expanded on some of that. The problem is: Curiosity is embodied. You cannot make it into a neutral ideal of scientific curiosity. And here I got a quote of Humberto’s colleague Varela: “All knowledge is conditioned by the structure of the knower.”

In conclusion, a better co-operation of various sciences and skills is urgently necessary, because: “Artists asks questions that scientists would not normally ask. Finally, why we want more art-science interaction is because we don’t have a choice. There are certain problems in our society today that are so tough we need to change our culture to resolve them. Climate change: we’ve got to couple the science and technology to the way we live. That’s a cultural problem, and we need artists working on that with the scientists every day of the next decade, the next century, if we survive it.

Then Roger Malina directly turned to the LHC safety discussion and articulated an open contradiction to the safety assurance pointed out before: He would generally hope for a much more open process concerning the LHC safety debate, rather than discussing this only in a narrow field of particle physics, concrete: “There are certain problems where we cannot cloister the scientific activity in the scientific world, and I think we really need to break the model. I wish CERN, when they had been discussing the risks, had done that in an open societal context, and not just within the CERN context.”

Presently CERN is holding its annual meeting in Chamonix to fix LHC’s 2012 schedules in order to increase luminosity by a factor of four for maybe finally finding the Higgs Boson – against a 100-Dollar bet of Stephen Hawking who is convinced of Micro Black Holes being observed instead, immediately decaying by hypothetical “Hawking Radiation” — with God Particle’s blessing. Then it would be himself gaining the Nobel Prize Hawking pointed out. Quite ironically, at Ars Electronica official T-Shirts were sold with the “typical signature” of a micro black hole decaying at the LHC – by a totally hypothetical process involving a bunch of unproven assumptions.

In 2013 CERN plans to adapt the LHC due to construction failures for up to CHF 1 Billion to run the “Big Bang Machine” at double the present energies. A neutral and multi-disciplinary risk assessment is still lacking, while a couple of scientists insist that their theories pointing at even global risks have not been invalidated. CERN’s last safety assurance comparing natural cosmic rays hitting the Earth with the LHC experiment is only valid under rather narrow viewpoints. The relatively young analyses of high energetic cosmic rays are based on indirect measurements and calculations. Sort, velocity, mass and origin of these particles are unknown. But, taking the relations for granted and calculating with the “assuring” figures given by CERN PR, within ten years of operation, the LHC under extreme and unprecedented artificial circumstances would produce as many high energetic particle collisions as occur in about 100.000 years in the entire atmosphere of the Earth. Just to illustrate the energetic potential of the gigantic facility: One LHC-beam, thinner than a hair, consisting of billions of protons, has got the power of an aircraft carrier moving at 12 knots.

This article in the Physics arXiv Blog (MIT’s Technology Review) reads: “Black Holes, Safety, and the LHC Upgrade — If the LHC is to be upgraded, safety should be a central part of the plans.”, closing with the claim: “What’s needed, of course, is for the safety of the LHC to be investigated by an independent team of scientists with a strong background in risk analysis but with no professional or financial links to CERN.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27319/

Australian ethicist and risk researcher Mark Leggett concluded in a paper that CERN’s LSAG safety report on the LHC meets less than a fifth of the criteria of a modern risk assessment. There but for the grace of a goddamn particle? Probably not. Before pushing the LHC to its limits, CERN must be challenged by a really neutral, external and multi-disciplinary risk assessment.

Video recordings of the “Origin III” symposium at Ars Electronica:
Presentation Humberto Maturana:

Presentation Roger Malina:

“Origin” Symposia at Ars Electronica:
http://www.aec.at/origin/category/conferences/

Communication on LHC Safety directed to CERN
Feb 10 2012
For a neutral and multidisciplinary risk assessment to be done before any LHC upgrade
http://lhc-concern.info/?page_id=139

More info, links and transcripts of lectures at “LHC-Critique — Network for Safety at experimental sub-nuclear Reactors”:

www.LHC-concern.info

It is of course widely accepted that the Greenland icesheet is melting at an alarming rate, accelerating, and is an irreversible process, and when it finally does melt will contribute to a rise in sea levels globally by 7 meters. This is discounting the contribution of any melt from the West Antarctic ice sheet which could contribute a further 5 meters, and the more long term risk of East Antarctic ice sheet melt, which is losing mass at a rate of 57 billion tonnes per year, and if melted in entirety would see sea levels rise by a further 60 meters.

In this light it is rather ‘cute’ that the site here dedicated to existential risks to society is called the Lifeboat Foundation when one of our less discussed risks is that of world-wide flooding of a massive scale to major coastal cities/ports & industries right across the world.

Why do we still continue to grow our cities below a safe limit of say 10 meters above sea level when cities are built to last thousands of years, but could now be flooded within hundreds. How many times do we have to witness disaster scenarios such as the Oklahoma City floods before we contemplate this occurring irreversibly to hundreds of cities across the world in the future. Is it feasible to take the approach of building large dams to preserve these cities, or is it a case of eventually evacuating and starting all over again? In the latter case, how do we safely contain chemical & nuclear plants that would need to be abandoned in a responsible and non-environmentally damaging procedure?

Let’s be optimistic here — the Antarctic ice sheets are unlikely to disappear in time scales we need to worry about today — but the Greenland ice sheet is topical. Can it be considered an existential risk if the process takes hundreds of years and we can slowly step out of the way though so much of the infrastructure we rely on is being relinquished? Will we just gradually abandon our cities to higher ground as insurance companies refuse to cover properties in coastal flooding areas? Or will we rise to a challenge and take first steps to create eco-bubbles & ever larger dams to protect cities?

I would like to hear others thoughts on this topic of discussion here - particularly if anyone feels that the Greenland ice sheet situation is reversible…

Once upon a time there was a cute little planet in the vast recesses of the sky. It was rich in water and mountains and was blessed – with good parents. The kids were allowed to play all day, and their coaches were able to lay the connections into the impending adult life in a way that did not hurt.

So the planet could have gone on forever. But, as in every serious fairy tale, there was a single bad sorcerer who had caused many kids to fall into holes from which they had great difficulty escaping – a sly activity which seemed to amuse him. The doting parents had to learn how to warn their children, and from then on his influence faded.

This fact caused the bad sorcerer to change his evil tactics: by confusing the parents ahead of the kids. This is where our hero – Farwinner – enters the tale. He asked his father: what does the sorcerer’s public slogan “Caution is stupid” mean? The father said it means that cars need no brakes. But this is not true!, Farwinner complained. Not even if it makes the cars very much cheaper?, his father replied. Of course not, said Farwinner: would you drive with us in a car without brakes? His father had to promise him with a slap on the hand to give up on the idea.

The sorcerer learned about this event and got furious: “This little Telemach” (he referred to Farwinner in a foreign language) is becoming a nuisance. I need to immunize everyone else against his influence.

But Farwinner had asked his father a second question: Is it true that your friends, the scientists, are trying to make the tiniest hole ever by using the biggest machine ever, and that the hole will then double in size every Sunday? His father replied he believes it is Mondays, not Sundays. To his amazement, Farwinner began to cry bitterly. His father was unable to understand and therefore could not console his son – until Telemach-Farwinner explained:

If the hole doubles in size every week, and is as small as the tiniest measurable particle (his father knew they are called “quarks” but did not want to interrupt), how long will it take until we are eaten?

His father remembered the story of the famous Persian king who was asked for a very cheap present: one rice grain on the first square of a checkerboard’s 64 fields, two on the next, 4 on the third, and so forth. In the same harmless-looking way, the tiny hole would double every week, remaining very very small for many months in a row. Only to – not very much later – devour the whole beautiful sky-blue little planet. But he did not want to upset young Telemach.

This is almost the end of the fairy tale. How do you think it continues? Did anyone on the little skyblue planet succeed in quelling young Telemach’s tears?

— To the best answer, sent in to this blog on the Internet, Telemach’s father will reply in person. Since he was told the story by an old friend himself, he still wavers a little bit how to answer properly. The youngest reader will no doubt give the most surprising and – therefore – most lifesaving answer.

As we all know, Venus’s atmosphere & temperature makes it too hostile for colonization: 450°C temperatures and an average surface pressure almost 100 times that of Earth. Both problems are due to the size of its atmosphere — massive — and 95% of which is CO2.

The general consensus is that Venus was more like that of the Earth several billion years ago, with liquid water on the surface, but a runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water and subsequent rise of greenhouse gases.

It poses not just a harsh warning of the prospects of global warming on Earth, but also a case study for how to counter such effects — reversing the runaway greenhouse effect.

I have wondered if anyone has given serious thought to chemical processes which could be set in motion on Venus to extract the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The most common gas in the Universe is of course hydrogen, and if sufficient quantities could be introduced to the Venusian atmosphere, with the appropriate catalysts, could the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be eventually reversed back into solid carbon compounds, water vapor and oxygen? The effect of this would of course not only bring down the temperature, but return the surface pressure, with 95% of its atmosphere removed, to one more similar to that of Earth. Perhaps in adding other aerosols the temperatures could be reduced further and avoid a re-runaway effect.

I’d like to hear others thoughts on this. It would be a long term project — but would perhaps make our closest planet our most habitable one in the future — one we could turn into a habitat that would be very accessible, with ample oxygen, water and mineral resources… The study of such a process would also greatly benefit Earth in the event that theorized runaway greenhouse effects start to occur on our own planet, the strategies learned could save it. Other issues to address regarding Venus: lack of magnetic field and its slow rotation would have to be considered, though hardly off-putting, and 150ppm sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere would need to be cleansed — surely not insurmountable.