Has anyone but me seen this? Does anyone know what to make of it?
Doesn't it seem obvious that a machine designed to recreate the Big Bang could cause some problems?
Don't these guys watch Star Trek movies?
Please, someone, tell me this is a hoax.
The Sunday Times of London
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/99/07/18/stinwenws02029.html?999
July 18 1999
BRITAIN
Big Bang machine could destroy Earth
by Jonathan Leake Science Editor
A NUCLEAR accelerator designed to replicate the Big Bang is under
investigation by international physicists because of fears that it might
cause "perturbations of the universe" that could destroy the Earth. One
theory even suggests that it could create a black hole.
Brookhaven National Laboratories (BNL), one of the American government's
foremost research bodies, has spent eight years building its Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island in New York state. A successful
test-firing was held on Friday and the first nuclear collisions will take
place in the autumn, building up to full power around the time of the
millennium.
Last week, however, John Marburger, Brookhaven's director, set up a
committee of physicists to investigate whether the project could go
disastrously wrong. It followed warnings by other physicists that there was
a tiny but real risk that the machine, the most powerful of its kind in the
world, had the power to create "strangelets" - a new type of matter made up
of sub-atomic particles called "strange quarks".
The committee is to examine the possibility that, once formed, strangelets
might start an uncontrollable chain reaction that could convert anything
they touched into more strange matter. The committee will also consider an
alternative, although less likely, possibility that the colliding particles
could achieve such a high density that they would form a mini black hole.
In space, black holes are believed to generate intense gravitational fields
that suck in all surrounding matter. The creation of one on Earth could be
disastrous.
Professor Bob Jaffe, director of the Centre for Theoretical Physics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on the committee, said he
believed the risk was tiny but could not be ruled out. "There have been
fears that strange matter could alter the structure of anything nearby. The
risk is exceedingly small but the probability of something unusual
happening is not zero."
Construction of the #350m RHIC machine started eight years ago and is
almost complete. On Friday scientists sent the first beam of particles
around the machine - but without attempting any collisions.
Inside the collider, atoms of gold will be stripped of their outer
electrons and pumped into one of two 2.4-mile circular tubes where powerful
magnets will accelerate them to 99.9% of the speed of light.
The ions in the two tubes will travel in opposite directions to increase
the power of the collisions. When they smash into each other, at one of
several intersections between the tubes, they will generate minuscule
fireballs of superdense matter with temperatures of about a trillion
degrees - 10,000 times hotter than the sun. Such conditions are thought not
to have existed - except possibly in the heart of some dense stars - since
the Big Bang that formed the universe between 12 billion and 15 billion
years ago.
Under such conditions atomic nuclei "evaporate" into a plasma of even
smaller particles called quarks and gluons. Theoretical and experimental
evidence predicts that such a plasma would then emit a shower of other,
different particles as it cooled down.
Among the particles predicted to appear during this cooling are strange
quarks. These have been detected in other accelerators but always attached
to other particles. RHIC, the most powerful such machine yet built, has the
ability to create solitary strange quarks for the first time since the
universe began.
John Nelson, professor of nuclear physics at Birmingham University who is
leading the British scientific team at RHIC, said the chances of an
accident were infinitesimally small - but Brookhaven had a duty to assess
them. "The big question is whether the planet will disappear in the
twinkling of an eye. It is astonishingly unlikely that there is any risk -
but I could not prove it," he said.
_ _ _ _ _
[ Note: At the end of this page there are two Appendices:
(1) a note from a British colleague verifying that the
Sunday Times is a respectable paper in England and
(2) a further description of the ion accelerator project
at RHIC. - Tom ]
_ _ _ _ _
So now for a bit of reflection.
I see two issues here. The short-term issue is: Should this experiment
even be tried? To me the clear answer is NO. If you agree with me, please
share your thinking with government officials and any representatives,
media, colleagues, friends and family who might care about how all this
proceeds. I don't know where the leverage is in this, but if we all do the
best we can, perhaps in the next few months our views will reach someone
who can have a real effect.
But there's a longer-term issue here, as well. If the world doesn't
disappear into a black hole, this other issue will come up over and over,
louder and louder, until we deal with it or destroy ourselves. That
question is: What is the appropriate way to make scientific and technical
decisions that effect the broader welfare of society and the planet?
It has been said that democracy is people having a voice in the decisions
that affect their lives. The decision to proceed with this experiment
could affect everyone. To the extent we live in a democracy, we should
have a voice in that decision. And yet we find that science and technology
seem to be operating in a different world, far beyond the reach of
democracy, with no way for our voices and interests to be heard.
This isn't new. We've been climbing out on this limb for years. The
Brookhaven Big Bang experiment just gives us another warning about how far
out we have climbed. Science and technology have outstripped democracy in
so many realms -- from global warming to genetic engineering, from
telecommunications to nanotechnology, from Y2K to antibiotic resistance,
from weapons technology to an endless array of other highly technical
social problems.
Many of these problems are hidden in shades of grey, making them hard to
think about. The Brookhaven Big Bang experiment presents us with a starker
vision. If it produces the "wrong" results it could eradicate not only
life on earth, but transform the planet itself into a super-dense black
hole.
We are seriously out of our league here. We're not dealing with a leaky
roof, a sick grandmother or a war with a neighboring tribe. Such things
are native to the level of reality that we're all familiar with -- the
realm in which we've evolved to operate -- the realm of things we can see
and hear and touch, things that please us or get our adrenaline running...
things that we can handle with chamomile tea, hatchets, a friendly hug or a
primal scream.
When I say we're seriously out of our league, I mean we're dealing with
things we can't see or hear or feel because they are too tiny or too large
or too subtle for ordinary people to grasp. I mean scientists are cracking
genes and atoms in the lab -- and industries are pouring 75,000 barely
tested chemicals into our environment -- while we walk through our lives as
if everything is normal. It seems to me that things are getting profoundly
less "normal" every day. We are in a very different era now.
How is democracy supposed to work in this new environment? What does
citizenship mean, when most of us don't even know that most of these
problems exist, or how to think clearly about them, or have forums for
meaningful dialogue about them? What does responsibility mean, given this
new world we're living in?
The hour is late. It is time to face these questions. The potential
consequences of ignoring them are growing daily.
As we try to deal with this issue, one pair of facts stands out:
(a) We human beings are able to create immensely powerful collective
effects outside of the realm of our everyday awareness and
activities. Scientific progress, computers, telecommunications, technical
mastery, mass culture, overpopulation and oceans of money are cranking up
our ability to generate phenomena never before seen on earth, either in the
lab in or the real world.
(b) We aren't yet very good at collectively perceiving, reflecting on, and
responding to the consequences of that immense power. The best we've got is
an endless battle among interest groups and among experts, which generates
precious little wisdom. If we don't improve our ability to track and
wisely modify our collective power -- especially in the realm of science
and technology -- I doubt we'll last much longer. What I don't doubt is
the competence or ambition of those who are currently tapping into the
physical and biological fundamentals of life.
Even if it doesn't all unravel in an experiment gone awry, our expanding
technological power is becoming increasingly available to the dark side of
humanity, empowering them to destroy the rest. It is also empowering all of
us who impact the world without even knowing it, simply by living our
lives... driving our cars.. sending chemicals into the air, water, and
soil... supporting increasingly toxic wars....
It doesn't have to be like this. We do not have to continue this insane
state of affairs.
A number of brilliant approaches to this problem are in use today and more
are being developed. For example, in Denmark, quasi-official citizen
panels review technical issues to advise their government on what
technology policy should be. They have proven that ordinary citizens,
given adequate information and facilitation, are fully capable of coming to
wise judgments about how to handle complex technical issues. Experts play
a role in this process, but (as Frances Moore Lappe says) they are on tap,
not on top. Wouldn't it make sense for every technological society to adopt
similar practices?
For more information about the Danish model, you can check out
http://www.co-intelligence.org/S-ordinaryfolksLOKA.html. It describes the
Loka Institute ( http://www.loka.org ), a group in Amherst, MA, who are
trying to bring democracy and sanity to our scientific and technological
decision-making. Their work is part of a broader vision, an exciting set
of possibilities for making democracy strong, resilient and wise enough to
carry us safely into our challenging future. For more on this vision, I
invite you to read "Creating a Culture of Dialogue"
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_CultrOfDialog.html and other articles
listed on http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html.
There's a story about frogs. It says that if you put them in a hot pan,
they'll jump out, but if you set them in a pan of water and slowly raise
the heat, they'll just sit there until they boil.
I suggest that it's time to jump out of the pot.
_ _ _ _ _
APPENDIX I
>From Paul Swann
22 Jul 1999
Hello Tom,
You wrote:
>Isn't the Sunday Times a respectable paper like the New York Times?
>Or is it a tabloid rag?
Yes, it's considered respectable...though like The Times it's owned by
Murdoch's News International Corporation.
To give both the Times & Sunday Times credit, they're the only British
newspapers who've given consistent, and often thoughtful coverage to y2k.
_ _ _ _ _ _
APPENDIX II
More on the RHIC, dug up out of the Web:
http://rsgi01.rhic.bnl.gov/html2/guardian599.html
The Guardian London, England April 29, 1999
Ions in the fire
Particle physicists are on collision course to recreate conditions at the
birth of the universe, reports Frank Close.
Hearts of gold will have an intimate reunion next month, their first for 15
thousand million years. The event will take place in the underground tunnel
of the new 'relativistic heavy ion collider' (or RHIC) at the Brookhaven
National Laboratory on Long Island, New York.
Experiments will begin that may give us the first glimpse of what it is
like inside a neutron star or a supernova and even what the matter that we
are made of was like in the first ten-millionths of a second of the
universe's existence. Physicists from around the world, including a team
from Birmingham University, have been preparing for this moment for years.
What is it all about? Strip an atom of its electrons and you have what is
known as an ion. Do this to atoms of heavy elements such as gold or lead
and you have a 'heavy ion'. Then hurtle beams of these ions together in
head on collision and you have a heavy ion collider.
It is all high speed where relativity rules; hence 'RHIC'. At least the
name makes sense; but what is a collider like and what is its purpose? RHIC
is a circular ring of magnets over a mile long, which is small compared to
the 17 mile long LEP (large electron positron collider) at Cern, the
European nuclear research laboratory in Geneva. While LEP is designed to
whirl beams of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, the
novel feature of RHIC is that it can control heavy ions.
The magnets surround a narrow tube, a few centimetres in diameter, within
which the beams are whirled around the ring, one beam clockwise and the
other anticlockwise. At various points around the circle the two beams
cross one another and here the collisions occur.
The beams are like diffuse swarms of gnats, whose individual members are so
small that the chances are that the two swarms pass clean through one
another. The trick is to concentrate so many gnats (ions) into the beams
that occasionally two meet head on. The ions in the beams are moving at
near to the speed of light and whirl around the ring over 10 thousand times
each second.
With billions of ions in each beam, collisions actually occur many times a
second. By surrounding the collision points with sophisticated electronics,
it is possible to record the cataclysm as debris hurls across the
electrical sensors. The resulting trails are like hieroglyphs that experts
decode.
What is RHIC hoping to reveal about the nature of matter? Matter on Earth
consists of atoms whose electrons whirl remotely around a massive central
nucleus. They cluster together to make liquids, solids or gases. Inside the
sun, things are different. The temperature is millions of degrees and the
atoms cannot survive intact; the electrons escape from their atomic prisons
and swarm independent of the protons. This is often called 'the fourth
state of matter', or 'plasma'.
Although a temperature of a million degrees disrupts atoms, it is still
cool on the nuclear scale. Protons and neutrons, the pieces of atomic
nuclei, still retain their identities.
In the searing heat of the Big Bang the fundamental quarks and gluons,
which in today's cold universe are trapped inside protons and neutrons,
would have been too hot to stick together.
The sun consists of an electrical plasma: by analogy we suspect that in the
aftermath of the Big Bang matter consisted of a 'quark gluon plasma' or QGP
for short. Physicists believe that QGP might still exist today in the
hearts of neutron stars which are so dense that a piece the size of a
pinhead would weigh more than the Eiffel Tower. Even if QGP does survive,
we cannot access it and so have to recreate it in the laboratory.
This is done by smashing heavy ions into one another at high energies,
squeezing the protons and neutrons together in the hope of making them
'melt'. The quarks and gluons will then flow freely instead of being frozen
into individual identifiable neutrons and protons.
Although the huge LEP accelerator at Cern is not yet able to control heavy
ions, a smaller accelerator at Cern can. For several years physicists
working have been smashing heavy ions in the hope of determining the
conditions for QGP to form. But they have been aiming the beams at
stationary targets. RHIC's head-on collisions will be far more violent.
Cern can heat the ions to temperatures of a million million degrees and has
seen tantalising but inconclusive hints of QGP being formed. RHIC will
increase this by a factor of 10 and should take us into the weird world of
the quark gluon plasma.
The challenge for physicists is not simply to make QGP but to record the
fact. There is an analogy between particles escaping from the heart of QGP
and those escaping from a more conventional plasma, such as is found in the
centre of the sun. Neutrinos are impervious to the solar plasma and fly out
from the heart of the sun; both neutrinos and also electrons and their
anti-matter counterparts, positrons, can escape from within a QGP. So by
detecting electrons and positrons we are effectively looking into the heart
of the QGP by analogy with the way that by detecting neutrinos we can look
into the heart of the sun.
There are other tests that can be made. So-called 'strange' particles are
expected to increase while production of the charmed 'psi' particles should
become rarer. The measurements at Cern do show such behaviours but the
energy of the collisions appears to be just on the threshold for making
QGP. These discoveries are suggestive and raise excitement as to what the
higher energy experiments at RHIC will reveal.
About six years from now the huge LEP accelerator at Cern will have been
modified into a new form known as the large hadron collider, or LHC. In
this new form it will be able to accelerate lead ions and to collide them
head on at energies far higher even than those accessible to RHIC. At these
extreme energies, akin to those that would have been the norm in the
universe when it was less than a trillionth of a second old, it is expected
that QGP will be common, enabling its properties to be studied in detail.
That is for the future. For the moment, in the race to produce QGP, it is
RHIC that has the lead chance to strike gold.
Frank Close is head of theoretical physics at Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory in Oxfordshire, currently on leave as head of communications at
Cern. His next book, Lucifer's Legacy, will be published by Oxford
University Press next year.
Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * Oakland, CA
http://www.co-intelligence.org
http://www.co-intelligence.org/Y2K.html
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"There are only two ways to live your life:
as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle."
--Albert Einstein
Sheri Nakken
Coordinator - Western Nevada County Y2K Preparedness Network
**VISIT OUR NEW BOOKSTORE ONLINE***
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/wncy2k.htm
PO Box 1563, Nevada City, California 95959
Phone 530-346-9325
Business Owner - Well Within & Earth Mysteries & Sacred Site Tours
Broadcaster/DJ/Reporter - KVMR FM, Nevada City, CA, 89.5, 99.3 Sacramento,
103.7 FM, Auburn - Host: The Y2k Forum, 1st & 3rd Wednesdays 12 Noon - 1 P.M.
Moderator of Y2K Prepare List on one.list.com
----------------------- Headers --------------------------------
Return-Path:
Received: from rly-yb01.mx.aol.com (rly-yb01.mail.aol.com [172.18.146.1]) by air-yb05.mail.aol.com (v60.18) with ESMTP; Thu, 05 Aug 1999 03:57:45 -0400
Received: from onelist.com (pop.onelist.com [209.207.164.13]) by rly-yb01.mx.aol.com (v60.18) with ESMTP; Thu, 05 Aug 1999 03:57:30 -0400
Received: (qmail 9224 invoked by alias); 5 Aug 1999 07:56:39 -0000
Received: (qmail 14109 invoked from network); 5 Aug 1999 07:38:40 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO hawk.prod.itd.earthlink.net) (207.217.120.22) by pop.onelist.com with SMTP; 5 Aug 1999 07:38:40 -0000
Received: from earthlink.net (pool0081.cvx8-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net [209.178.170.81]) by hawk.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA10458; Thu, 5 Aug 1999 00:38:35 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <37A93F54.5A0E5579@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 00:37:56 -0700
From: Shandi
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I)
To: Gazebo Girls
Mailing-List: list gazebo_girls@onelist.com; contact gazebo_girls-owner@onelist.com
Delivered-To: mailing list gazebo_girls@onelist.com
Precedence: bulk
List-Unsubscribe:
Reply-to: gazebo_girls@onelist.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------3151E77FA0C07C81F570FB84"
Subject: [Gazebo_Girls] Now you see it...now you don't...
-- R (riversoma@aol.com), August 05, 1999