- a écrit :
> http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=11520991
>
>
> International Herald Tribune
> Try this headline: Black Hole Eats Earth
> By Dennis Overbye
> Saturday, March 29, 2008
>
>
> More strife in Iraq. U.S. financial system in crisis. Rice prices soar.
>
> None of these headlines will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a
> lawsuit in a court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant
particle
> accelerator that will begin sma****ng protons together outside Geneva
this
> summer might produce a black hole that will spell the end of the Earth -
and
> maybe the universe.
>
> Scientists say that is very unlikely - though they have done some
checking
> just to make sure.
>
> The world's physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the
Large
> Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies
and
> conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Researchers
> will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the
nature
> of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.
>
> But Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the
European
> Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that
the
> collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which,
they
> say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a
"strangelet"
> that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something
> called "strange matter." Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide
an
> environmental impact statement as required under the U.S. National
> Environmental Policy Act.
>
> Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has
> bothered scholars and scientists in recent years - namely how to
estimate the
> risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or
not
> to go ahead.
>
> The lawsuit, filed March 21 in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, seeks a
> tem****ary restraining order prohibiting CERN from proceeding with the
> accelerator until it has produced a safety re****t and an environmental
> assessment. It names the U.S. Department of Energy, the Fermi National
> Accelerator Laboratory, the National Science Foundation and CERN as
> defendants.
>
> According to a spokesman for the Justice Department, which is
representing the
> Department of Energy, a scheduling meeting has been set for June 16.
>
> Why should CERN, an organization of European nations based in
Switzerland,
> even show up in a Hawaiian courtroom?
>
> In an interview, Wagner said, "I don't know if they're going to show
up." CERN
> would have to voluntarily submit to the court's jurisdiction, he said,
adding
> that he and Sancho could have sued in France or Switzerland, but to save
> expenses they had added CERN to the docket here. He claimed that a
restraining
> order on Fermilab and the Energy Department, which helps to supply and
> maintain the accelerator's massive superconducting magnets, would shut
down
> the project anyway.
>
> James Gillies, head of communications at CERN, said the laboratory as of
yet
> had no comment on the suit. "It's hard to see how a district court in
Hawaii
> has jurisdiction over an intergovernmental organization in Europe,"
Gillies
> said.
>
> "There is nothing new to suggest that the LHC is unsafe," he said,
adding that
> its safety had been confirmed by two re****ts, with a third on the way,
and
> would be the subject of a discussion during an open house at the lab on
April
> 6.
>
> "Scientifically, we're not hiding away," he said.
>
> But Wagner is not mollified. "They've got a lot of propaganda saying
it's
> safe," he said in an interview, "but basically it's propaganda."
>
> In an e-mail message, Wagner called the CERN safety review
"fundamentally
> flawed" and said it had been initiated too late. The review process
violates
> the European Commission's standards for adhering to the "Precautionary
> Principle," he wrote, "and has not been done by 'arms length'
scientists."
>
> Physicists in and out of CERN say a variety of studies, including an
official
> CERN re****t in 2003, have concluded there is no problem. But just to be
sure,
> last year the anonymous Safety Assessment Group was set up to do the
review
> again.
>
> "The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a
threat
> to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots," said Michelangelo
> Mangano, a CERN theorist who said he was part of the group. The others
prefer
> to remain anonymous, Mangano said, for various reasons. Their re****t was
due
> in January.
>
> This is not the first time around for Wagner. He filed similar suits in
1999
> and 2000 to prevent the Brookhaven National Laboratory from operating
the
> Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. That suit was dismissed in 2001. The
> collider, which smashes together gold ions in the hopes of creating what
is
> called a "quark-gluon plasma," has been operating without incident since
2000.
>
> Wagner, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, studied physics and did
cosmic
> ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a
> doctorate in law from what is now known as the University of Northern
> California in Sacramento. He subsequently worked as a radiation safety
officer
> for the Veterans Administration.
>
> Sancho, who describes himself as an author and researcher on time
theory,
> lives in Spain, probably in Barcelona, Wagner said.
>
> Doomsday fears have a long, if not distinguished, pedigree in the
history of
> physics. At Los Alamos before the first nuclear bomb was tested, Emil
> Konopinski was given the job of calculating whether or not the explosion
would
> set the atmosphere on fire.
>
> Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist whose work helped fuel the speculation
about
> black holes at the collider, pointed out in a paper last year that black
holes
> would not be produced at the collider after all, although other effects
of
> so-called quantum gravity might appear.
>
> As part of the safety assessment re****t, Mangano and Steve Giddings of
the
> University of California, Santa Barbara, have been working intensely for
the
> last few months on a paper exploring the possibilities of black holes.
They
> think there are no problems but are reluctant to talk about their
findings
> until they have been reviewed, Mangano said.
>
>
>
>
> 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
>
Nice try :) Happy 1st of april!
Eric
|
