TechReckoning – The black hole of unknowing
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
Written for The Ecologist – 20/06/2008
As to global annihilation, I’m stumped. Most of us wouldn’t recognise a strangelet if it casually devoured us in the street
There’s a slim chance – about one in 50 million – that nobody will ever read this article. A physics experiment taking place under the French-Swiss border could theoretically destroy the world first. In late May 2008, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest machine, is expected to begin accelerating single atoms along a 27km-long doughnut-shaped tunnel. Those atoms will then be smashed together at almost the speed of light. The aim is to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang – albeit under European countryside rather than in the empty nothingness of space.
CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has built this giant doughnut, hopes its atom-smasher will provide glimpses of the elusive particles that make up atoms – but that might not be all. In his gloomy book, Our Final Hour, Sir Martin Rees, president of the UK’s Royal Society, offers three scenarios by which atom-smashing experiments could go badly awry. They might form tiny black holes or could destabilise empty space. They might also create theoretical quantum objects called ‘strangelets’ able to ‘transform the entire planet Earth into an inert, hyperdense sphere about 100m across’. Yikes.
Before anyone presses the panic button, however, a CERN report that weighs the chances of planetary annihilation has concluded they are too low to worry about. Fifty million to one, in fact. Even Rees admits the black holes don’t keep him awake at night. He’s a bit less sanguine about strangelets.
Nonetheless, the Large Hadron experiment raises stark questions about our relationship to technology in general. Who decides what level of technological risk is acceptable when total annihilation may be the outcome? It’s in the interests of CERN physicists to downplay the risk; the rest of us have no say. In April, Walter W. Wagner, an ex-nuclear safety officer from Hawaii, filed a private US lawsuit to restrain the Large Hadron Collider from coming online. His first hearing in mid-June might prove a bit late.
What if we did have a say? If there were a referendum on whether CERN should smash atoms or not? I suspect the public might at least ask some questions the official report overlooked. For example, should the Large Hadron Collider be gobbling up 120MW of power at a time when society needs to cut back global energy-use? This figure does not take into account the energy required for the new global computing grid that will process data from the collider. The public might question the wisdom of spending $10 billion of public funds to glimpse esoteric particles. That amount might be enough to deliver universal primary education.
As to global annihilation, I’m stumped. Most of us, after all, are not high-energy physicists and wouldn’t recognise a strangelet if it casually devoured us in the street.
That points to a bigger tragedy: that we no longer understand our technologies. Somehow we have reached the point where decisions that may weigh on our future are only intelligible to a tiny elite of scientific experts. The black holes we should worry about aren’t tiny holes in the fabric of space and time, but the yawning vacuums in our democracies over how to govern complex technology.
Jim Thomas is a research programme manager and writer with ETC group (www.etcgroup.org)
Comment left by: persephone
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:59 am
P.S. Someone read it, defying the odds. Maybe there is hope.
Comment left by: persephone
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:08 am
I think the question we have to ask ourselves is, “Do we really want to know where all the missing anti-matter is?” Think about it. Carefully. It’s kind of mind-expanding to contemplate, but maybe we should stop there. At least for now, until we know what we are doing. But these are the mere words of a rambling madwoman as Michelangelo L. Mangano explains below:
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-sci-collider13apr13,0,5535244.story
“If it were just crackpots, we could wave them away,” the physicist said in an interview at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym, CERN. “But some are real physicists.”
Crackpot = not a real physicist. Just an ordinary concerned resident of Planet Earth.
Comment left by: persephone
September 9th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
the Hadron Collider is coming online Wednesday, 9-10-08–just FYI
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/07/cerns-17-mile-long-atom-s_n_124653.html
GENEVA — It has been called an Alice in Wonderland investigation into the makeup of the universe _ or dangerous tampering with nature that could spell doomsday.
Whatever the case, the most powerful atom-smasher ever built comes online Wednesday, eagerly anticipated by scientists worldwide who have awaited this moment for two decades.
Comment left by: Neil Sorensen
September 10th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
The nearly complete lack of technological governance worldwide is just a mirror of the lack of democratic governance in general, and consequently little is being done on an international level. I often urge the reinstatement of the independent Office of Technological Assessment in my country in the United States, which did a relatively good job during its short existence (1972-1995), but even my mentors would support this initiative suggest it would be a futile waste of energy, as neither party would support it; too many people are too corrupt on too many levels. With the collider finally going online this week, the discussion isn’t about the risks or implications of the technology -it’s about the fact that the EU is pulling ahead of the rest of the world in terms of technological advancement and research into basic science.
Comment left by: Rob Mida
October 13th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I have some general comments
1. Anti-Matter is a joke. It’s a by-product of a flawed fundamental view of physics. I could go into an explanation on why, but Nassim Haramein of the Resonance Project explains it much better. He has a presentation that you can access for free via Google Video.
2. What isn’t mentioned in this article or much at all is what also will happen with the firing of the LHC. It is called the “firing of the grid” as this will coincide with web 2.0 (you may find articles that now that have www2.address.whatever). More controls are being implemented. The computer power of this system is becoming quite close to hard A.I. computing. There are other connections here such as Google and the CIA (and would you believe Al Gore?), but I’ll leave that up to you to research.
3. I happen to also study sacred symbolism in the media and corporate logos. You’d be amazed at what is hidden in plain site. Without getting into too much detail – I’d like to point out one of the main symbols used for Cern and the LHC.
(unfortunately I can’t post a picture here)
You’ll notice what looks like a large ring symbolic of the LHC itself, but there are also three tangent lines attached to three circles making up said ring.
What does this make? After I tell you it would be hard to see anything else.
666. no joke. The three circles making up the ring with three tangent lines…or perhaps it is 999. At least something to think about.