CERN to World on the Large Hadron Collider: "This machine will not blow up the universe."

Particle theorists are NOT Bond villains: a CERN team has released a safety report on the imminently-activating Large Hadron Collider, unequivocally stating "This machine will not create a black hole that will blow up the universe."  They presumably did so with the tone and tired expression of a mother at four AM, stating for the fortieth time that no, there are no monsters under the bed, and that little Timmy should go back to sleep.

The LHC has been plagued by doom-sayers since it entered the public eye, though "irritated" would be a more suitable word.  The volume of the fearmongers is surpassed only by their utter lack of evidence or even the most fundamental understanding of probability.

Chief among those campaigning against science, progress and common sense is Walter Wagner.  Or to give him his full title "convicted fraudster and identity thief" Walter Wagner, a little nugget that always seems to get left out of the "THOSE CRAZY SCIENTISTS WILL KILL US" headlines he generates.

These claims are always popular, but suffer from the slight flaw that the people telling you that the planet will be dissolved into a strangelet soup don't actually know what strangelets are.  The people building the LHC?  They know that they are; they discovered them, wrote the library of books on them, and you'll notice that when they have something to say it comes in the form of refereed journal papers and not tabloids that have to start with "A black hole is like a vacuum cleaner...."

That CERN have been forced to patiently explain to the scientific community equivalent of a toothless man screaming on streetcorners is tragic, but a sign of their maturity that they will address any statement as if it wasn't retarded.  But enough is enough, and the US Department of Justice itself has filed a motion that Wagner's time-wasting anti-LHC lawsuits be dismissed.

Who knows, maybe that'll give him time to find some of the million dollars he still owes his previous employers.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Related Galaxy posts:

Angels or Demons? Video of LHC's $6 Billion Journey to the Beginning of TimeBrian Cox's Video Tour of CERNs LHC & the Search for the God ParticleSource links:

 

What's wrong with Walter Wagner
CERN Patienty explain that they quite like the planet

Comments

[Romeo Vitelli]

It seems like a pretty safe guarantee. If by some incredibly freakish chance Wagner turns out to be right, he won't be in a position to say "I told you so".

[JTankers]

Dear Mr. Luke McKinney,

I would suggest you double check your facts, as Walter L. Wagner is more than just a nuclear physicist, he is also a licensed lawyer, and I would suspect he may be reviewing your blog for possible libel action.

Just a suggestion.

James Tankersley Jr
Founder and Co-Administrator of LHCFacts.org

[JTankers]

fyi, a good strategy might be to remove comments that might potentially be libelous at least until you are sure you can support your accusations or until you are sure you wish to fight that battle.

But more importantly, you can't expect a "baked into the system" particle physicist to speak out on this. It would be career suicide. So we should THANK GOD that someone of Walter Wagner's credentials is asking some smart questions on all of our behalf's.

Also, Walter Wagner has had some "high level" conversations with some particle physics "insiders" who share similar concerns and support him intellectually even though they cannot do it publicly.

And Walter Wagner has shown himself to be a person of utmost moral character. His fight is the good fight. It is not the easy fight when you have the masses at your back that requires character, it is the one where you are facing against the masses.

[Bob]

Yeah, I think my "sock puppet" flag just went up.

[W]

Zealots Playing God! - 'The World is not Enough'
Nobel Prize hungry Physicists are racing each other and stopping at nothing to try to find the supposed 'Higgs Boson'(aka 'God') Particle, among others, and are risking nothing less than the annihilation of the Earth and all Life in endless experiments to try to solve theoretical problems when urgent real problems face the planet. The European Organization for Nuclear Research(CERN) new Large Hadron Collider(LHC) is the world's most powerful atom smasher that will soon be firing subatomic particles at each other at nearly the speed of light to create Miniature Big Bangs producing clouds of Micro Black Holes, Strangelets and other potentially cataclysmic phenomena.
The CERN-LHC website Mainpage itself states quote: "There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions,..." This stunning admission is because they truly don't know what's going to happen. They are experimenting with forces they don't understand to obtain results they can't comprehend. If you think like most people do that 'They must know what they're doing.' you could not be more wrong. Some people think the same thing about medical Dr.s but consider this by way of comparison and example from JAMA: "A recent Institute of Medicine report quoted rates estimating that medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 people a year in US hospitals." The second part of the quote reads "...but what's for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator,..." A molecularly changed or Black Hole consumed Lifeless World? The end of the quote reads "as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe." These experiments to date have so far produced infinitely more questions than answers but there isn't a particle experimentalist physicist alive who wouldn't gladly trade his life to glimpse the "God particle", and sacrifice the rest of us with him.
This quote from National Geographic exactly sums this "science" up: "That's the essence of experimental particle physics: You smash stuff together and see what other stuff comes out."

[Robert I. Marsh II]

With half of the 'Standard Model' missing, shrouded within a mathematical haze, and LHC built upon these antiquated precepts; there is no telling what surprises may lie ahead for CERN! It will take the LHC experiments, in order to extricate the physics community, from their stagnated, depressing, and quagmired positions. The LSAG 'safety report' only covers lower energy 'start-up' 2008 operations, not the pre-planned decade of precision energy upgrades to come; starting in 2009! I predict a Quantum Wormhole at CERN LHC ALICE, heavy (Pb) ion collisions; caused by a quantum inverse radiation, originating from the plasmatic field during collisions.

[Anonymous]

At least one sector of the 'Standard Model' will receive a tsunami wave of change, that will send the mathematicians and physicists scrambling wildly to install these new, much needed corrections. There is no doubt, that the future world desperate energy needs lie in LHC Technologies; however, the production course should be traveled with extreme caution!!!

[Walter L. Wagner]

Dear Mr. Luke McKinney:

Would you please email me your mailing address, so I can know where to send you the pending lawsuit. My mailing address is found at my website, and is also in the upper left hand corner of the lawsuits I've already filed.

Kind regards,

Walter L. Wagner

[Semtexas]

Screw you Walter L. Wagner fill me a lawsuit if you can, ya old prick :D

[Qev]

Considering that every object in our solar system has been under bombardment by particles of far higher energies than the LHC can -ever- achieve, for the last four-and-a-half billion years, and there don't seem to be any strange-objects or black holes orbiting the Sun (and the Sun itself is neither)... that pretty firmly places the LHC-doomsayers in woo territory.

[Anonymous]

Ohhhh - I don't know about that! Einstein had a thing about the speed of light, and curvatures in Space/Time, in that old document of General Relativity. I would just re-think that there position of yurins, real careful there, pardner! Hold on thar in regard to the Quantum Wormhole formation!!!

[Igor]

I personally don't know what is going to happen but whatever it may be I welcome it.

Say the experiment goes as planned and scientists learn a lot about particles, physics, etc... then great, science lives to kick ass another day!

Now say that the LHC dooms-dayers are right and we all die well, heck, that wouldn't be bad either. This world is turning to shit anyways. The handfull of individual who run our civilization, if it can so be called, are turning our society into a greedy one and I don't like what I see..

So let it be and stop wasting ur time with this silly debate.

[diego]

#Igor: I agree with you .

[Willow]

Luke, you totally Win at Life due to 1) this article and 2) impending internet lawsuit (of d00m). Thanks for brightening my day. Let me know if you ever actually need any legal help.

[Qev]

To be fair, though, I believe Mr. Wagner has been -indicted- on charges of fraud and identity theft. I can't seem to find any information on his (and his wife's) actually being convicted, yet, so you might want to alter that word in the article for now.

Still, it doesn't do a lot for his credibility.

[Dave]

Given Lukes obvious sense of humor, the crap posted by wanker and wagner must tickle his funny bone to no end. The world needs idiots like this if for no other reason than to amuse.

Regards
Dave

[peppersgc]

I think the general populace missed something with all this fear mongering. That is "Supporting a theory with a theory". One of the bases of science. But... Haven't we studied Black Holes and postulated with a little something called "material evidence" that they are collapsed stars? Mass so great that even light cannot escape? Doesn't the idea of a "Micro Black Hole", as in microscopic amounts of matter, or very little mass, fly in the face of what we already know about black holes? Yes, I know that some types of matter have exceptionally greater mass than others, but to the extent of a collapsed star? Really? Also, to touch on anti-matter just a little, isn't anti-matter the opposite of matter? So wouldn't its mass be exactly proportionate to matter but in the opposite direction? Negative mass is the opposite of what you would need to make a black hole... isn't it?

[Moscow never sleeps]

I think there are no reason to care about end of the world. The maximum what can happen its complite annihilation of France and Switzerland and global Ice Age after it!

For security reason I suggest to the civilians in the location of this machine to leave this place at time of experiment, and the people who do this experiments to warn those people before machine start to go on full power - for them to pray!

And this will never happen, because its stupid as a fact... Live such long time by creating such long history of human race and to reach the final step its destroying of all(except of correcting), for Nova World!??? I think God have a lot of places in his\she's hands to create New Worlds, or you think we dont like them because a lot of p0rn in internet!? OK... For example, the God is hate the p0rno, but why he is create them?

K.O. Have Nice Day, France and Switzerland! ;-)

[Marty Ferguson]

My Good Lord In Heaven!

HOW MANY MORE TIMES WILL WE HAVE TO SIT AND READ THIS NONSENSE??!! How many colliders and super-colliders are there in existence and running on this planet today (notice how I said '...ON THIS PLANET...'?)? How many tiny particles have we smashed together already? How many of those same particles are blasting through your body NOW as I write this? But we have the ability to destroy the UNIVERSE with a NEW LHC??!!

This guy is talking out the side of his neck! His favorite movie is probably Disney's "THE BLACK HOLE" because he believes it's possible to TRAVEL through one!! Shut up, get a life and find something worthwhile to fight (like 9-11-styled TERRORISM)!!!

M

M

[Marty Ferguson]

By the way,

When the LHC goe online and they discover the God particle and the universe is NOT destroyed (as if that could ever happen!), I would hope that these CERN scientists sue the hell (and money) out of these whackos just for being absolute morons!!!

M

[Dr Funfrock]

So just out of curiosity, do American lawyers ever actually do any real work, or is it all just scare mongering for publicity and threatening to sue people who said mean things about you on the internet?