A scientist finds a new result \u2013 black holes are uncharged \u2013 and the best defense of CERN\u2019s against the allegation that its currently running black-hole factory endangers the planet is gone. But CERN continues in plain sunlight while pretending the result is non-existent. <\/p>\n
This would make for a grandiose Hollywood script. It could be pepped up with the side ingredient that the planet\u2019s International Court of Crimes Against Humanity shies away from even replying, and that in contrast a Cologne court requests a scientific safety conference before the experiment can be continued: each fact a non-topic for the media of the planet in question. Sociologists will be eager to explain how such strange global behavior could arise. Or is it because CERN has the rank of a military organization given the fact that its status of absolute immunity is only matched by that of the United Nations themselves? <\/p>\n
Much more likely, of course, is it that the unchargedness theorem is false. This is what the Albert-Einstein Institute maintains unofficially while refusing to acknowledge the problem in public. Thus, most probably, everything is fine?<\/p>\n
This would be the case if life-saving new results either could not exist or could be made disappear by decree. \u201cA Nobel candidate\u2019s results published three years ago being treated as nonexistent by the planet\u2019s establishment\u201d has only one possible explanation: the person in question has been declared crazy by the state. <\/p>\n
As long as this diagnosis has not been medically demonstrated, however, the prospect of danger to the planet stands undiminished. Note that the currently un-disproved probability of the world going under in about 5 years\u2019 time if the experiment is continued, will only be reduced from 8 to 4 percent if the originator is crazy with a probability of 50 percent. And even if he could be shown to be actually crazy, his formally flawless theorem would still deserve the benefit of the doubt. <\/p>\n
In our strange movie script, the originator then points away from his own person asking the question of why no one listens to world-famous philosopher Paul Virilio who is on his side. Or to the outstanding people who had accepted the main paper? And if no scientist stands up and says \u201cI take the responsibility that this is false\u201d: Why then not try and put a body of unbiased scholars together to find out if the danger is real or not? Prince Charles was asked to head the panel 3 years ago.<\/p>\n
You see I am being impossible with this movie script: To pretend that a single scientist had the right to insist on being proved wrong after finding evidence for a serious assault on the planet! When every reasonable person today agrees that only the highest world leader in terms of political power has the right to utter such a global warning. A scientist would never have this right, and no astronomer would ever be allowed to warn the planet in case he finds a big asteroid bent on a collision course. Yet if this indeed is the modern consensus \u2014 also with respect to the current new outbreak of Ebola? -, the whole planet has forgotten what science and rationality means. Is our planet caught in the midst of a dark age? <\/p>\n
It would be sufficient if if Stephen Hawking or Hermann Nicolai responded, or if another big name did. For it cannot possibly be that big names have evaporated after my late friend Johnny Wheeler and his Eastern match, Jacob Zel\u2019dovich, passed away. A fatherless planet?<\/p>\n
Life would be easier if gravity did not reduce (and in the limit extinguish) charge. And if rationality were no longer needed for survival. However, the time when it was possible to express such claims publicly had seemed by-gone for centuries. Which scientist on the planet has the courage to prove that the \u201cunchargedness theorem for black holes\u201d is false? If no one is capable of doing so, why not report this fact, dear planetary media? And why not address this fact, dear wordless politicians? <\/p>\n
I thank my large students\u2019 audience of this morning in the town of Villingen: It was a privilege to be allowed to try and make transparent Einstein\u2019s thinking to you. Take good care, young people of the planet. <\/p>\n
Otto E. Rossler, chaos researcher (For J.O.R., May 18, 2011) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A scientist finds a new result \u2013 black holes are uncharged \u2013 and the best defense of CERN\u2019s against the allegation that its currently running black-hole factory endangers the planet is gone. But CERN continues in plain sunlight while pretending the result is non-existent. This would make for a grandiose Hollywood script. It could be [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-existential-risks","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}