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Archive for the ‘particle physics’ category: Page 591

Sep 2, 2012

Complexity decomplexified (Lifeboat Preprint)

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

Complexity decomplexified: A List of 200 Results Encountered over 55 Years

Otto E. Rossler

Faculty of Science, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

Abstract

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Aug 30, 2012

The 8 Reasons CERN Upholds for Continuing its Black-hole Onslaught

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

1) Hawking radiation — that the produced mini black holes would immediately evaporate

2) Chargedness — that they would get stuck immediately and hence as everyone can see do no harm

3) Competence — that CERN’s detectors could register them

4) Unlikeliness — that an unproven theory (string theory) was a precondition for CERN’s being successful

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Aug 22, 2012

Humanity’s Invention in the Cosmos is Kindness: I request Permission to Save your Lives

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

I know I am not authorized for doing that since you do not know me. But one third of all fundamental scientists in the world (those that deal with chaos and nonlinearity) are on my side. Two thirds (those that deal with quanta and gravitation) do not believe that a chaos theorist has the right to teach them anything. Much as in economics where nonlinearity was a taboo for many decades, in fundamental physics it still is.

So I beg the planet’s general population for mercy: please, forgive the linear community in physics for their not allowing the proof of danger that lies on the table for 4 years to be discussed: such a thing does not occur for the first time in history.

Also, everyone understands that CERN “cannot” update its safety report if doing this would involve discussing a danger that would not permit their experiment to be continued before a counterproof has been found.

All I ever requested is such a counterproof ( http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/PetitiontoCERN.pdf ); http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/07/2012759585764599.html ). “Might is might.” Politicians have to rely on might, that is, majority opinion, and Western opinion at that. Scientists’ opinions unfortunately change all the time since new discoveries arise in a point-like fashion and spread slowly.

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Aug 20, 2012

New Findings on the Antimatter Drive

Posted by in categories: business, engineering, finance, fun, particle physics, physics

Andrew Skolnick drew my attention to this great article by John Eades, a CERN senior scientist, about antimatter engines and weapons.

Antimatter Pseudoscience by John Eades in the Skeptical Inquirer http://www.csicop.org/si/show/antimatter_pseudoscience/

We, Andrew Skolnick and I, did the calculations and showed that it would cost 42,876x our 2011 World GDP to use antimatter as a propulsion fuel to get to Alpha Centauri!!

John Eades goes one better and shows that it is not technologically feasible, ever. His article is facinating reading, and shows that we cannot base our hopes to leave Earth on antimatter drives.

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Jul 30, 2012

The Cosmic-Rays-versus-White-Dwarfs Safety Argument

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

Tom Kerwick challenged my warnings by claiming that the observed longevity of white dwarfs, in spite of the constant bombardment by cosmic rays, provides a convincing safety argument regarding the currently running nuclear collisions experiment at CERN. This claim is important but, unfortunately, inconclusive as I shall try to demonstrate.

It is true that the collisions performed at CERN are relatively meager compared to cosmic-ray energies. The current, approximately 10 TeV collisions between equal-momentum particles at CERN correspond to 10.000 TeV cosmic ray protons hitting a stationary proton on earth or a white dwarf. The thousand-fold increase is a consequence of the relativistic energy-momentum law being applicable.

If 10.000 TeV (= 10 to the 16 electron volt) look like much, cosmic ray energies up to 10 to the 22 electron volt (a million times more) have been measured. However, if the latter are translated back into symmetric collisions of the CERN type, they are “only” a thousand times more energetic than CERN’s (owing to the square-root rule implicit in the mentioned law).

The fact that white dwarfs appear to be resilient to this bombardment is living proof that the cross section of CERN-generated miniature black holes (as well as their up to a thousand times more massive cosmic-ray generated analogs) must be minuscule. Specifically, their diameter must lie below that of a lepton (electron or quark). While an electron’s diameter is often supposed to be zero, neutrino absorption in solid matter yields a finite value (about ten to the negative 24 meter). In addition, the Telemach theorem guarantees a non-zero electron diameter.

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Jul 14, 2012

Jesse Bering Wrote an important Article in July’s Scientific American (“The Rat that Laughed”)

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

In it he reports on a gorilla in a cage who could be brought to phrenetic laughter by his human friend’s pretending to bite him into his toe. Quote: “If you have never seen a gorilla in a fit of laughter, I recommend searching out such a sight before you pass from this world.”

This is absolutely human behavior. If you know about the cross-caring theory, which explains how a young child interacting with his bonding partner is getting “moved” into suspecting benevolence shown towards him, then you realize that the same thing can be accomplished with a caged or non-caged gorilla.

I recently mentioned Margaret Howe, a pupil of my late friend Gregory Bateson’s. There are important insights about the mission of humankind on our planet and beyond (“galactic export”) that would make it a great pity if this “second level of human social evolution on earth and in the solar system” was going to be clipped.

I know I am being impossible, but finding outrageous things that tickle everyone in her or his heart so as to be moved is the real mission of science. I fantasize talking with a gorilla – or orangutan – about the long-stretched “toe” of the visualized Schwarzschild metric of a black hole, both of us laughing.

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Jul 13, 2012

I Thank the Planet for Tolerating my Warnings without Panicking

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/07/2012759585764599.html (at minutes 09:00–10:10, 11:00–12:03, 12:35–13:25, 16:08–17:13) gave me a world-wide forum again. The rest of the media and all colleagues of mine keep their mouths shut.

There is logic behind this schizophrenic world-wide attitude: In case the outlaw is right, one can later always claim that not the whole planet was part of the conspiracy of silence since one high-ranking international outlet reported. However, this strategy is not logical. For if I am right and the worst case materializes, the fig leaf will go under as well.

My class yesterday in which this riddle was touched upon in passing helped me see the mechanism: My results on black holes are too much advanced from the planet-wide accepted lore to be understandable to any colleague.

Imagine the “generic 3-pseudosphere.” Its lower-dimensional analog in ordinary 3-space, the 2-pseudosphere (the so-called Newton pseudosphere) looks like two trumpets with infinitely long, infinitely thinned-out mouth pieces, glued together head-on with their bells ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Pseudosphere.jpg ). This smooth monster has the same volume as a sphere of the same (maximal) diameter, and also the same surface area and the same (if negative) curvature: a kind of miracle. Hence the name “pseudo-sphere.”

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Jul 8, 2012

Three Manifest Miracles in Physics: Qualia, the Now and the Higgs Field

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

The whole within which we find ourselves at every conscious moment is a miraculous gift that we take for granted in our culture. Everything can be understood inside the world, so we believe in science – except for the qualia (like color) and also for the Now which both are non-existent in physics (although this is almost never mentioned).

For 4 days now, something that unlike the qualia and the Now exists within rather than outside the scope of science is just as baffling: the Higgs field. As Matt Strassler explained two years ago, the everywhere constant Higgs field is responsible for the masses of all elementary particles – without an exchange of particles being involved — provided it will be discovered experimentally via the signature of a first field-specific particle. Thus an immutable constant influence makes itself felt inside creation for 4 days. The freshly discovered Higgs particle can be called the first unmistakable miracle found in nature, because it reflects the presence of an everywhere constant field of unknown origin.

The discovery comes with a price tag which is none of its own fault. The machine made to find it was designed so as to also generate a second totally new animal in the hope that at least one of the two would be found: miniature black holes. The latter have eluded finding so far we are told, but this is not certain: a double success cannot be excluded.

This is because a trivial new implication of Einstein’s “happiest thought” of 1907 revealed that black holes possess radically new properties. The latter cause black holes to arise much more readily and make them invisible to CERN’s detectors. In addition they grow exponentially inside matter. Therefore if one specimen gets stuck inside earth, the planet will be eaten inside out after an asymptomatic period of a few years, so as to assume the size of a chestnut while retaining its gravitational influence on the moon.

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Jul 4, 2012

CERN Found 2 out of 3 Needed Pieces of Evidence for the Higgs – A Bargain?

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

I congratulate Peter Higgs. And I ask him to forgive me that I raised the “cost” issue in my Aljazeera interview of to date. Not the financial cost, but the cost incurred by humankind: The fact that the doubling of data planned for the rest of the year (up to the scheduled pause for upgrading) will once more double the risk that the planet will be shrunk into a 2-cm black hole after a few years’ delay.

This risk is presently at about 4 percent already. Doubling it is a nightmare – unless a counterproof can be found. Until this aim has been achieved, I herewith ask Peter Higgs to join me in bequeathing CERN for a brief stop until the “doubling of the danger” has been shown to be inconsequential: because the black holes, to which CERN’s sensors are blind by design according to the published proof, have been shown to be absent since the proof has been punctured. The best scientist of the planet may need only hours if we are all lucky.

So far, CERN refuses to address the 4-year-old issue that only grew in strength – by admitting a safety conference. No citizen of the planet understands this ostrich policy. Dear Peter Higgs: will you help us all? No one else on the planet can.

Jun 30, 2012

CERN Refuses to Update Its Safety Report for 4 Years

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

I feel that this easy-to-verify fact is worth reporting by the media.

I admit I am biased because I found a so far un-refuted proof of a concrete danger of unimaginable proportions. So if I publicly ask CERN to update, everyone can say: “He writes this to get his will at last.”

Therefore I apologize for this partisanship of mine and ask other, less personally engaged persons to ask the neutral question of whether or not it is desirable to have an update on CERN’s safety report from early 2008.