This recent post noted a paper (by credible physicists) indicating that mini black holes that might be created at the LHC might live for minutes, rather than the previously popular suggestion of minuscule fractions of a second. They still did not think that there could be danger from such micro black holes (they still could not start serious accretion).
I see that the authors of the paper appear to have revised it to make it sound more emphatically safe than the wording used in first version indicated. (One suspects on the suggestion of physicists at CERN?)
This led me to wondering what Rainer Plaga was up to, given that he had defended his early "danger warning" paper from criticism that he had made a fundamental mistake in the formula he had applied.
So, I emailed him. (Gotta love the internet.)
He responded saying that he is working on a further appendix to his paper, which will refer to the Casadio/Fabi/Harms paper about the minute-long black holes. He says they use basically the same approach as him, and he notes that the Mangano/Giddings safety paper did not refer to this approach at all. (Remember Casadio and co acknowledge discussions with Plaga in their paper, indicating that he definitely has credibility.)
So, more to come yet on the issue.
1 comment:
Thanks for keeping on this, Steve - and noting the things others don't, such as the possibility of CERN influencing the second version of the Casadio et al paper. I note, however, that the second version still concludes that “Nonetheless, it remains true that the expected decay times are significantly longer than is typically predicted by other models…” To me, there is still a touch of a watch-out signal there.
On the topic of groupthink in organisations, and such organisations isolating themselves from the rest of reality – I am stuck by the similarities between CERN and AIG in the bonus case. For AIG, after multiple signals from the zeitgeist, what do you do – the same again – the bonuses. For CERN, even as there is a steady further build-up of fresh lines of evidence from the physics – btw, Mangano and Giddings have not replied to Plaga’s reply to them – too hard? – and re issues of jurisprudence in Eric Johnson’s brilliant articles - http://www.eejlaw.com/lhc/index.html – CERN just keeps on its same feedback-free track. Also similar to Madoff – certain entities get on a track, and even if there are inklings of disaster – it’s too late to change course now.
Post a Comment