Otto E. Rossler, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, F.R.G.
Resumé
There are new developments in gravitation theory beginning in 2005. They have changed the previously accepted scientific picture of black holes. On the basis of these results, a currently running experiment, designed to produce artificial black holes of very low velocity, has ceased to be innocuous. The experimentally hoped-for “mini black holes,” (1) become more likely to arise, (2) do not evaporate, (3) are undetectable by the machine, (4) will in part get stuck inside earth and (5) will grow there exponentially so as to shrink the earth to 2 cm in perhaps 5 years’ time. Hence a re-appraisal of the experiment is necessary before it can be allowed to go on. Please, rule so, dear Council.
(July 30, 2011)
A previously overlooked new fact in gravitation theory is the reason for my turning to you. It looks simple enough: the rest mass-energy of a particle decreases with increasing gravity. To witness, on a neutron star on which gravity is so high that clocks tick almost twice as slow, every particle has only half the outside rest mass without this fact being locally detectable. This mass-change result, implicit in a dissertation of a co-worker submitted in 2005, represents the main content of a 2007 paper accepted for publication by the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals [1]. The same result was independently derived two years later by Richard J. Cook of the Air Force Academy [2]. It finally was obtained on the highest level of technical sophistication by a specialist who wants to remain anonymous while insisting that all credit go to the late Arthur Komar [3]. A maximally simple derivation finally is the “Telemach theorem” [4].
Many predictions pertinent to particle collisions are overthrown as a consequence of the mass-change result. Designing new tailor-made experiments will take several years. All of this is nothing but ordinary scientific progress, taking its due time to be tested and become mainstream wisdom.
By a twist of fate, the new result happens to possess more than just academic interest. A machine that was designed to produce miniature black holes — the Large Hadron Collider of CERN — suddenly becomes the most dangerous endeavor of humankind. As familiar from similar examples in the past, the scientific community is sluggish in recognizing the significance of the situation.
Science sometimes transcends its usual boundaries by spilling over into everyday life and politics. This happens to be the case here. An experiment thought to be purely academic (except for some theoretically unexplored features of quark-gluon plasmas drawn attention to by my colleague Walter Wagner) acquires a menacing character because the most hoped-for experimental outcome suddenly possesses radically new features: black holes.
“Black holes” were so named by John Wheeler in 1968 [5] who had inherited his impishness from his mentor, Einstein. Three years later, Johnny (as his friends sometimes called him) joked that “a black hole has no hair” (in apparent allusion to a Berlin pop song from the 1920s, “Say is it true that the frog at the butt has no hair?”) — “except for three.” The remaining three hairs were: mass, angular momentum and charge [6]. Only three years later, Stephen Hawking [7] described a fourth hair brought-in by quantum mechanics (Hawking evaporation). The latter property would – he argued – drain away mass-energy, slowly emaciating every black hole until it would eventually explode (“evaporate”) on having grown maximally small – as small as the tiny black holes hoped-for at CERN.
Now, almost 4 decades later, two of the remaining four hairs prove to be clipped (charge and evaporation). This fundamentally altered situation logically requires a re-evaluation of the safety equation of the LHC experiment, since the most looked-forward-to fruits of the experiment (mini black holes [8]) have become undetectable by detectors designed on the basis of the overhauled theory. This situation represents a drawback for a lovingly set-up world-class experiment which also is the most expensive of history. Some resistance shown by the scientific community is predictably preprogrammed.
This new situation would not represent a sufficient reason to bother the world’s Security Council – were it not for the fact that the experiment has become unsafe. The undetectable miniature black holes hoped to be generated at a rate of one per second [8] will now do new things which, unfortunately, are not innocuous.
To evaluate the totally changed situation, a “scientific safety conference” was proposed in 2008, with Prince Charles who is widely esteemed for his “green thumb” as the chair. The whole issue was approached in a hope-inspired light tone [9].
But the harsh logic of real-life constraints struck. Would a public safety assessment not cause unnecessary delays and, what is more, drain away valuable public confidence? One member state of CERN’s – Austria — even announced to leave CERN, to reluctantly return after closed-door admonitions.
It goes without saying that the most awesome experiment of history — with its thousands of physicists, the cream of creams, and with all influential governments of the globe participating either as members or as accredited observers who have to contribute too — cannot easily change course. Should it really do so only because a new chapter of future textbook results has been opened up?
Any safety assessment is a double-edged endeavor. What it achieves in terms of added rationality, it jeopardizes in terms of lost planning security. So it is no wonder that there has been little enthusiasm to comply with such a request. Pascal’s logic – a very big risk deserves absolute priority – is predictably hard to enforce in the reality of a tight-budget multinational endeavor.
Does this mean that everything is in perfect order? From the point of view of bureaucracy, the answer is yes, from the point of view of safety, the answer is no. For the risk that our earth will be eaten inside out by the first sufficiently slow artificial mini black hole (anticipated to be produced in a matter of ten days [8]) can be estimated to be roughly 1:6 — a “Russian roulette” — with the added feature of the remaining time for the planet being of the order of 5 years [10]. The low estimate for the remaining time stems from the fact that an independent physical theory – chaos theory – conspires predicting that every resident miniature black hole will be turned into an exponentially growing “miniquasar” [10]. Thirdly, the final safety argument offered by CERN to the world before the new results were brought to its knowledge in early 2008 – the continued existence of neutron stars in the sky – was evaporated by another independent physical theory, quantum mechanics [11]. Thus, three totally disjoint sciences (relativity, chaos and quantum) conspire by each refusing to give the all-clear signal to be expected from at least one of them on the basis of common sense: A “trap” put to humankind by nature as it were.
After the experiment inadvertently got shrunk in half energy-wise, following an early technical accident in September 2008, the probability of earth’s being transformed into a 2-cm mini-quasar got cut in half too – from 16 to 8 percent. This still dreadful level will be reached once the experiment has attained its maximum luminosity or cumulative number of collisions.
Currently, CERN has reached one ninth of the originally planned luminosity while scheduling to reach one third by the end of the next three months [12]. If the already incurred risk thus is 0.8 percent (8÷9 = 0.8), this means that more than a quarter of the danger of 8 percent to be reckoned with will be realized by the end of October 2011. It goes without saying that every single day that the experiment is halted earlier for re-evaluation purposes is worthwhile. The single eventually lethal collision event could happen on the last day before the conference starts.
Nothing more is being asked than to have a second look. A court in Germany — the “Cologne Administrative Court” – before whom CERN was standing as a defendant on January 27, 2011 – concluded its ruling after stating that it could not override an earlier ruling by the German supreme court, on the following sentence which for some reason went unreported in the media:
THE COURT EXPRESSES THAT IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO LET THE VARIOUS SAFETY ASPECTS, WHICH ALSO WERE THE SUBJECT OF THE TWO SAFETY REPORTS FROM THE YEARS 2003 AND 2008, BE DISCUSSED WITHIN THE SCOPE OF A “SAFETY CONFERENCE” [13].
I am aware that I have no right to contact you owing to my being an ordinary person only. But I stand here representing the whole scientific community and every citizen and country of the planet when I say: Please, dear Highest Delegates of Planet Earth, do endorse the request made by the Cologne Administrative Court by declaring: LET US HAVE A SECOND LOOK IMMEDIATELY.
For J.O.R.
References
[1] O.E. Rossler, “Abraham-like return to constant c in general relativity: ‘gothic-R-theorem’ demonstrated in Schwarzschild metric,” 2007, http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/ottoroesslerminiblackhole.pdf (second paper there). Revised version: http://ww.wissensnavigator.com/documents/Chaos.pdf
[2] R.J. Cook, “Gravitational space dilation”, 2009, http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.2811
[3] A. Komar, “Covariant conservation laws in general relativity.” Phys. Rev. 113, 934-936 (1959), http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/23/24/L01/pdf/cqg6_24_l01.pdf
[4] O.E. Rossler, “Einstein’s equivalence principle has three further implications besides affecting time: T-L-M-Ch Theorem,” 2011,
http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/einsteins-equivalence-principle-has-three-further-implications-besides-affecting-time_t-l-m-.pdf
[5] J.A. Wheeler , “Our universe, the known and the unknowns.” The American Scholar 37, No.2, 248 (1968).
[6] J.A. Wheeler 1971, quoted in: K.S. Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, New York: W.W. Norton 1994, p. 275.
[7] S.W. Hawking, “Black hole explosions.” Nature 245, 30–31 (1974).
[8] B. Giddings and S. Thomas, “High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics.” Phys. Rev. D, Vol. 65. 10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010 (2002).
[9] O.E. Rossler, “A petition to CERN,” April 2008,
http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/PetitiontoCERN.pdf
[10] O.E. Rossler, “Abraham solution to Schwarzschild metric implies that CERN miniblack holes pose a planetary risk.” In: Vernetzte Wissenschaften – Crosslinks in Natural and DSocial Sciences (P.J. Plath and E.C. Haas, eds.), Berlin: Logos Verlag 2009 (July), pp. 263-270 (submitted September 2007), http://ww.wissensnavigator.com/documents/ottoroesslerminiblackhole.pdf (first paper there).
[11] O.E. Rossler, “A rational and moral and spiritual dilemma.” In: Personal and Spiritual Development in the World of Cultural Diversity (G.E. Lasker and K. Hiwaki, eds.), Vol. 5, Tecumseh: The International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics 2008 (July), pp. 61–66,
http://ww.wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf
[12] A. Rydd and M. Ferro-Luzzi, “Experiment’s desiderata,” slide No. 8, http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?contribId=1&sessionId=0&resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=144632
[13] Original German ending of the Cologne Administrative Court’s ruling: “Das Gericht gibt seiner Meinung Ausdruck, dass es möglich sein sollte, die unterschiedlichen Sicherheitsaspekte, die auch Gegenstand der beiden Sicherheitsberichte aus den Jahren 2003 und 2008 waren, im Rahmen einer ‘Sicherheitskonferenz‘ diskutieren zu lassen“,
http://www.juris.de/jportal/portal/page/homerl.psml?cmsuri=/juris/de/nachrichten/zeigenachricht.jsp&feed=juna&wt_mc=rss.juna&nid=jnachr-JUNA110100233