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About This Blog
Unless you're just blithely cruising through life, you'll notice there's a lot going on in this macrocosm of existence. This means there's a lot going on in the microcosm of my brain. Not that there's anything "micro" about my brain. Anyway--here, I will share my thoughts, ruminations, suggestions, complaints and epiphanies where these "cosms" are concerned. Wear a helmet.
Support the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
The mindless regurgitation of these contestants sickens me. Most of these are stunning examples of the ignorance that still prevails in this country. Evolution is NOT a theory, in the colloquial sense. Scientific "theory" is not the same as the common definition of "theory." That's why i wish the scientific community would permanently change their references to it in some way, to clear up the misunderstanding. Since colloquial understanding usually RULES among the average person, we must begin to use terminology that leaves no room for erroneous interpretation. It is my contention that you are not entitled to respect or admiration if your opinions are based on ideas you were fed, which have no basis in fact. We should permanently append the word "unfounded" to the word "opinion" in this case. And any contest that bestows the title "Miss USA" should not allow ignorance to represent our country. "I was never taught evolution in school" --that's the problem. Their opinions against it, are based on NOT KNOWING the facts. It's easy to just swallow. Perhaps more people should refuse to stand in front of the hose.
My friend Em posted this video to my Facebook wall, and I found that I had more to say about it than would lend itself to a short comment, so my response is below.
I applaudAngryLittleGirl's effort to encourage logical thinking, and she reveals her balanced perspective by using both scientific claims as well as religious ones. She's right: all results and statements of fact put into some claim on a label, or an official announcement should be checked; and that this one should be too. The statistic cited ("98% of Americans are scientifically illiterate") was based on outdated (but accurate) data and while the numbers are still high, it is not 98% anymore. I'm sure her professor was trying to communicate the fact that scientific knowledge is sorely lacking, but he did so by citing an outdated though not-inaccurate resource. And because a statement can be true in some cases and false in another, he should have checked new data, and used specific examples in the way he phrased that statement. Like, "49% of Americans don't know that the Earth revolves around the sun." There are many versions and disciplines of scientific knowledge, and blanket statements like the one her Professor made, are, indeed, counterproductive, and do nothing to advance the very real benefits of understanding science and the knowledge we have gleaned from it.
The New York Times interviewed Dr. Jon D. Miller, "political scientist who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at the medical school," and who "studies how much Americans know about science and what they think about it."
His findings are not encouraging....
While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process..
...Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century..."
Dr. Miller also said, "seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun ONCE A DAY." Considering that we now know what the facts are regarding the movement and position of planets in our solar system, this statistic is disturbing in its own right. According to Literacy News,
"64 per cent of people questioned for a recent poll said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution in schools
38 per cent favored replacing evolution with creationism.
80 per cent of Americans surveyed by the CNN TV news network believe that their government is hiding evidence of the existence of space aliens.
70 per cent believe it likely that Saddam Hussein was involved personally in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
40 per cent of Americans believe in the “endtimes”, according to a survey carried out in 2002. Of those believers, almost half thought this would occur in their lifetime with a return of Jesus from heaven.
The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy
55% of Americans believed they’ve been assisted by “guardian angels”
is America really #1…or is that just propaganda?"[1]
Kudos to AngryLittleGirl for pointing out the things she did in her video, as I am a strong proponent of truth, and a strong opponent of the falsehoods so often found in mainstream culture, to include medicine, general science and religiosity.
Even when science clarifies our understanding, it is often rejected by the American public. The American Dialect Society chose "Plutoed" a neologism, as their word of the year in 2006. "I was plutoed" became a colloquialism springing from the retraction of Pluto's status as the 9th planet in our solar system. It rendered the mobiles above our baby cribs outdated, and parents everywhere were then charged with snapping Pluto from the danglous collection. [2]Some mobiles ceased to hang properly and became lopsided, and this was simply unacceptable. Underlying this sarcasm is the point that when science recognizes an erroneous conclusion, they adjust the data accordingly, and we should not become so overly attached to ideas that when new information contradicts it, we come unglued and seek to protest it in favor of maintaining the beloved status quo.
According to Authors Chris Mooney and Sheril Kitshenbaum, in their book "UnscientificAmerica: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future,"
"The problem isn't merely the dramatic cultural gap between scientists and the broader American public. It's the way this disconnect becomes self-reinforcing, even magnified, when it resurfaces in key sectors of society that powerfully shape the way we think, and where science ought to have far more influence than it actually does—in politics, in the news media, in the entertainment industry, and in the religious community. Consider:
In the political arena from 2001 through 2008, we saw the United States governed by an administration widely denounced for a disdain of science literally unprecedented in modern American history. Judged next to this staggering low, the Obama administration gives reason for hope. But science continues to occupy a ghettoized section of the political arena, one that few elected officials really understand or prioritize. Too many politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, fail to see the underlying role of science in most of the issues they address, even though it is nearly always present. In fact, politicians tend to be leery of seeming too scientifically savvy: There's the danger of coming off as an Adlai Stevenson egghead.
We're still struggling with the problem that historian Richard Hofstadter outlined in his classic 1962 work, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which documented how the disdain of intellectuals had become such a powerful fixture of American culture. The problem is particularly acute when it comes to scientists, and has been to varying degrees since our nation's inception: We've even rewritten the biography of one of our most cherished founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, to recast him as a tinkering everyman, rather than a deep-thinking scientist of the first rank. Alexis De Tocqueville similarly remarked upon Americans' interest in the practical, but not so much the theoretical, side of science—the goods delivered at the end, rather than the intellectual challenges and questioning encountered along the way. For a very, very long time, American scientists have found themselves pitted against our businesslike, can-do attitudes as well as our piety. When John McCain and Sarah Palin made fun of research on fruit flies and grizzly bears on the 2008 campaign trail, they were appealing to precisely this anti-intellectual strand in the American character. They thought they'd score points that way, and probably they did.
And if you think politicians are bad, let's turn to the traditional news media, where attention to science is in steep decline. A 2008 analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that if you sit down to watch five hours of cable news, you will probably only see one minute's worth of coverage devoted to science and technology—compared with 10 minutes of celebrity and entertainment content, 12 minutes of accidents and disasters, and “26 minutes or more” of crime. From 1989 to 2005, meanwhile, the number of newspapers featuring weekly science or science-related sections shrank by nearly two-thirds, from 95 to 34. And since then both trends have continued or perhaps even accelerated: In 2008 the esteemed Washington Post killed its science page and CNN laid off its entire science, technology, and environment unit.
As a result of this upheaval, what we might broadly call science communication—the always problematic bridge between the experts and everybody else—is in a state of crisis. For even as business-driven cutbacks the “old” media are killing science content, the “new” media are probably hurting science as much as helping it. The Internet has simultaneously become the best and also the worst source of science information. Yes, you can find great science on the web; and yet you can also find the most stunning misrepresentations and distortions. Without the Internet, the modern anti-vaccination movement probably wouldn't exist, at least not in its current form. Jenny McCarthy, celebrity vaccine critic extraordinaire, is proud of her degree from the “University of Google.”
More generally, thanks to the Internet and ongoing changes in the traditional news industry, we increasingly live in an oversaturated media environment in which citizens happily pick and chose their own sources of information. This means they can simply avoid learning (or even hearing) anything meaningful about science unless they're already inclined to go looking for it—and most won't be. And they can shop online for “expertise” as easily as they can for Christmas gifts.
When we shift our gaze to another extremely powerful source of information about science—the entertainment media—we find the situation more complex but still dismaying. From Grey's Anatomy to CSI to The Day The Earth Stood Still (the Keanu Reeves version), science and technology provide fodder for many popular television and film plotlines. In fact, there appears to be a growing trend of basing stories on scientific themes, especially in the case of primetime medical dramas. But whether such entertainment depictions contribute to a science-friendly culture is less clear. Often we see little effort devoted to achieving basic scientific plausibility or getting the details right; and we simultaneously find Hollywood obsessed with paranormalist UFO and “fringe science” narratives and recurrent stories of “mad scientists” playing God. Scientists in film and television tend to be depicted as villains, geeks, or jerks. Rare indeed is the Hollywood film or scripted drama that tells a story about science that's both serious and also entertaining. That strongly affects how we think.
And then there's religion, the source of perhaps the single deepest fissure in the science-society relationship. Surveys overwhelmingly show that Americans care a great deal about faith; many scientists, by contrast, couldn't care less. There's nothing wrong with that, except that some scientists and science supporters have been driven to the point of outright combativeness by the so-called New Atheist movement, led by Sam Harris, Oxford's Richard Dawkins, and others. Meanwhile, many U.S. religious believers are just as extreme: They reject bedrock scientific findings—an entire field, evolutionary biology—because they wrongly consider such knowledge incompatible with faith. The zealots on both sides generate unending polarization, squeeze out the middle, and leave all too many Americans convinced that science poses a threat to their values and the upbringing of their children.
For all these reasons, the rift between science and mainstream American culture is growing wider and wider. Nearly a decade into the 21st century, we have strong reason to worry that the serious appreciation of science could become confined to a small group of already dedicated elites—something like eating caviar, rather than a value we all share."
Other points AngryLittleGirl made...
"Gullible is not in the dictionary" (title of her video, and statement within). This is (I can only assume and hope) a sarcasm based on the fact that you have to be gullible to believe the statement. Gullible is, of course, in the dictionary. Still another example of an erroneous statement that people believe without checking the facts. So while some pick this point out of the content and argue that she must be "retarded" as one commenter posted about her video, they are showing their own GULLIBILITY. She was making another point, lost on some of her critics.
"Airborne is not regulated by the FDA" - hopefully she was again being sarcastic, because herbal products are regulated by the FDA. It gets complicated and often convoluted, however, when the details are considered. The FDA regulates products considered drugs; the herbal supplements are marketed and labeled as "dietary supplements" which makes them a FOOD product. The criteria for the labeling and sale of these items is not the same as that for drugs. So general claims such as "glucosamine chondroitin is important for joint health" is a factual claim. However there are variables like the purity of the raw material used to make that supplement, and whether or not any particular supplement will function as well taken as a dietary supplement, as it would when garnered naturally through foods ingested. An article in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology contended, "adulteration, inappropriate formulation, or lack of understanding of plant and drug interactions have led to adverse reactions that are sometimes life threatening or lethal." [3] Certain species of echinacea (the main active ingredient in Airborne) are medicinally beneficial, but this is where non-regulation by the FDA plays a role--they do not control whether or not a manufacturer uses the medicinal version, nor whether or not the preparation is handled properly to maintain those beneficial properties. And of course there are conflicting results in the way of clinical studies of the effectiveness of echinacea as a beneficial health supplement, or if it is merely useless, or even that it acts only as a placebo. Until there is more conclusive scientific evidence, either could be true.
Additionally, even if the FDA were to regulate herbs such as echinacea as closely as a drug, I don't trust everything the FDA says either, because (a) the FDA has proven itself biased by the usual political maneuvering, (case in point: their alliance with big tobacco, who is trying to block the mainstream integration of use of Electronic Cigarettes as a way to help 50 million Americans get away from tobacco. There is a lie campaign going on as we speak by the FDA and the World Health Organization. This much is clear if you look at the details of this issue. So FDA as paragon of honesty? Notsamuch. --and (b) there are many ways to mince words and use euphemistic phrasing to say something that is true, but misleading. Politicians and pundits do it all the time.
Thus, when a particular statement is circulated, one must always check the facts and variables behind it to see if it is an HONEST statement through implication or suggestion--whether or not it is actually "factual."
Regarding her comments on religion, she is also correct in her assessment, as historicity and research has shown.
A 2007 study by Michigan State University determined that just 28 percent of American adults could be considered scientifically literate. In February, the California Academy of Sciences released the findings of a survey which found that most Americans couldn’t pass a basic scientific literacy test. The findings:
* Just 53% of adults knew how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
* Just 59% knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.
* Only 47% of adults could provide a rough estimate of the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water. (The Academy decided that the correct answer range for this question was anything between 65% and 75%.)
* A mere 21% were able to answer those three questions correctly.
In July, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released the results of a survey of 2,001 adult Americans regarding science issues. Among the findings: just 46% knew that electrons are smaller than atoms.
Those findings shouldn’t be surprising. Ignorance of the sciences and the natural world has plagued the world for centuries. This centuries-long suspicion of science,
which continues today with regular attacks on Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, was recognized by British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow in the 1950s when he delivered a famous lecture called “The Two Cultures.” Snow argued that there was a growing disconnect between the culture of the sciences and the culture of the humanities, and that bridging that gap in understanding was critical to understanding and addressing the world’s problems. Snow placed “Literary intellectuals at one pole – at the other scientists…Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.” Snow then laid out a critical point about the general public’s lack of understanding of energy and thermodynamics. As Snow put it:
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?
Indeed, while most moderately cultured people will be familiar with the Bard’s A Comedy of Errors or The Merchant of Venice, the laws of thermodynamics -- the rules that ruthlessly police the world of energy -- are considered by most people to be the domain of nerds and wonks. Thus, the first law of thermodynamics: energy is neither created nor destroyed; and the second law: energy tends to become more random and less available -- are relegated to the realm of too much information. For most people, basic physics is seen as nerdy, beyond their ken, too troublesome to learn.
This apathy – or perhaps it’s antipathy -- towards science makes it laughably easy for the public to be deceived. Alas, this apathy toward science in America is matched – or perhaps even exceeded – by the lack of interest in mathematics. Over the past few years, the US has been inundated with depressing data about the state of our country’s mathematical skills. A 2008 study published by the American Mathematical Society put it bluntly: “it is deemed uncool within the social context of USA middle and high schools to do mathematics.” It went on to explain that “Very few USA high schools teach the advanced mathematical skills, such as writing rigorous essay-style proofs, needed to excel.” Another report issued in 2008, this one from the Department of Education’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel declared that math education in the U.S. “is broken and must be fixed.” The report found “that 27% of eighth-graders could not correctly shade 1/3 of a rectangle and 45% could not solve a word problem that required dividing fractions.” The report also found poor math skills among adults:
* 78% of adults could not explain how to compute the interest paid on a loan.
* 71% couldn’t calculate miles per gallon on a trip.
* 58% were unable to calculate a 10% tip for a lunch bill.
Given these disheartening numbers, there’s little reason to be surprised that so many Americans are ready to embrace fallacious claims by the many energy charlatans who insist that the US could quit using hydrocarbons if only there were more political will to do so. Those claims ignore the vast scale of US energy consumption. On an average day, the US consumes about 41 million barrels of oil equivalent in the form of oil, natural gas, and coal. That’s nearly five times as much energy as is produced by Saudi Arabia in the form of oil on an average day. (Since 1973 the Saudis have pumped an average of about 8.3 million barrels per day).
It has taken the US more than a century to build a $14 trillion economy – an economy that is based almost entirely on abundant supplies of oil, coal, and natural gas. No matter what energy technologies come along in the near future – electric cars, solar panels, wind turbines, etc. -- moving the US and world economies away from hydrocarbons will take most of the 21st century.
That’s the reality – and it doesn’t take a calculator to confirm it. " [4]
The need here, is for more and better science education. The problem with meeting that need is that scientific concepts are often prohibitively complicated and the average American has neither the patience nor the education to understand those concepts, and so the issue becomes one of inaccessibility. In order to change this paradigm, science must cultivate spokespersons capable of communicating difficult concepts in a clear, concise (and though I hate to suggest it) more colloquial and simplified ways. (we should be thankful for the legacy of people like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson in this regard). The challenge is about insuring that this simplified version of teaching does not venture over into misleading conclusions, or the watering down of facts, and continues to be accurate and truthful while still communicating the necessary information.
[1] "'1 in 5 adult Americans think the sun revolves around the earth' ...how is that possible?" http://www.literacynews.com/2010/03/1-in-5-adult-americans-think-the-sun-revolves-around-the-earth-how-is-that-possible/
[2] (oh look: i just invented another neologism. danglous [adj.]--something with the characteristic of dangling. Sort of like one of my other neologisms: Protuberous--adjective version of the noun, protuberance.) [3] Elvin-Lewis M., "Should we be concerned about herbal remedies,"Journal of Ethnopharmacology 75 (2001) 141-164.) also Refer to the US Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. [4] Posted on Aug. 21, 2009. By Robert Bryce. Scientifically Illiterate and Innumerate: Why Americans Are So Easily Bamboozled About Energy. http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2210)
Did you know that date was almost the end of the world?
We narrowly missed annihilation in 2003, and few knew about it.
A comet called NEAT not so neatly came close to impacting the sun. This comet was over twice the size of jupiter. A well-timed solar flare blasted it out of its trajectory orbit and so disaster was avoided.
NASA's SOHO satellite camera caught it all on video. Go here to see the video.
For perspective, the thick dark line at the left bottom is the arm of a mechanism on the camera that holds a plate in front of the sun, to block glare, so that other objects surrounding the sun can be seen. The white circle in the center of that plate represents the size of the sun.
Now, note the large white object entering at the top-right and moving down the screen on the right. This is the NEAT comet. Compare its size to the size of the sun, and you have some idea what it means to say it's over twice the size of Jupiter. The comet narrowly escaped impact with the sun due to that solar flare--or as the scientists call it, CME (Coronal Mass Ejection).
There are at least a thousand comets that orbit the sun, 160 of those that are near enough to be seen via telescope.
So. In 2003, we were all facing the end of the world, and most of us didn't even know.
France is building a "doomsday machine" according to Internet Whistle-blowers. For an overview of these fears, refer to Misunderstood Universe website.
CERN, or European Center for Nuclear Research (which makes no sense, unless the name was Center, European, of Research, Nuclear...but whatever) is the home of the most powerful particle accelerator...with the ability to create (though minuscule) black holes. The fearful public say that a created black hole could gravitate to center of the earth, and swallow us up in a matter of years.
There are always questionable sources for information. Two, perhaps would be Nostradamus and Yahoo Answers.
From answers.yahoo, which I normally find to be a completely useless resource, since anyone can answer whether they are qualified or not, nonetheless, this is an answer and requires some investigation, and some insight from qualified persons:
"Is it safe for CERN to create a black hole on earth? I have heard recent news about CERN creating a black hole on earth to explain how the universe began. As in accordance with what we knmow about black holes does creation of a black hole on earth pose potential threat to mankind?
Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
(I hope these aren't the same voters who will be going to the poles in November).
No danger at all. Black holes are not dangerous as such, its is massive black holes that could pause a threat, those with a mass that would be at least that of a mountain. Any micro black hole produced experimentally would have a mass comparable to that of an atom, and could not even have enough gravity to move another atom in close proximity. Further, it would be highly unstable and would stop be in a black hole in a period of time that is so short, you can't measure accurately, billionth of a second. Even if it could attract something -- and again it can't -- that something would not have had time to move before the black hole stops being a black hole."
And as far as Nostradamus is concerned, someone, of course, found a reference to this in one of his quatrains, and notes that as the population of the world reached 6.66 billion, CERN went online, and this event coincides (maybe) with not only the ominous numbner 666, but with a Nostradamus prophesy:
9:44--"All should leave Geneva. Saturn turns from gold to iron. The contrary Positive ray (RAYPOZ) will exterminate everything, there will be signs in the sky before this."
Which caused rumblings about that Mayan Calender thing, of time as we know it, ending on December 22, 2012.
"Are storage vendors going to help send us down a black hole? February 6th, 2008 by Beth Pariseau
I’m sure any number of you can come up with witty figurative responses to that, but I actually mean it literally.
Back in August I did a case study on CERN, the world’s largest physics laboratory, in Switzerland, and the petabytes of data storage that are going to support research on its Large Hadron Collider (LHC). LHC is a 12-story-high, 10-mile-wide underground system of tunnels, magnets and sensors that’s designed to do no less than recreate atomic conditions at the creation of the universe and capture particles that until now have been only theoretical.
Having spoken with CERN about their research and the way the whole system is set up, I was surprised when I logged in to my personal email this morning and got a friend request from a profile titled STOP CERN. According to the profile:
This space has been set up to spread awareness of the risks a project due to be launched at CERN next year poses to our planet. For the first time in many decades someone has built a machine that exceeds all our powers of prediction, and although they estimate the possibility of accidentally destroying the planet as extremely low, the LHC propaganda machine that ‘everything is safe’ is well funded by your tax dollars, paying large salaries to thousands of people who have much to lose financially should the LHC be unable to prove its safety. As most of them perceive the risk to be small, they are willing to take that ’small risk’ at our expense. The actual risk cannot presently be calculated, and a Large Hadron Collider [LHC] legal defense fund has even been set up to challenge CERN on the project.
I don’t have any kind of physics background, so I don’t know if the criticisms are legit, but I was doubly surprised to find that the MySpace profile is only the tip of the iceberg of people questioning CERN. In addition to some other critical websites, an LHC Legal Defense Fund has been started with the goal of legally intervening to stop CERN from turning on LHC this May, creating a black hole within the collider and accidentally destroying the planet.
By the way, isn’t that really every geek’s dream? To be working on a machine that even theoretically could accidentally destroy the planet?
Anyway, the debate seems to be whether or not something called “Hawking evaporation” (presumably named after physicist Stephen Hawking) will neutralize the microscopic black holes that could be created by the particle collisions in LHC, or if they’ll continue to grow and, well, eat France.
According to another anti-CERN site:
If MBH’s [microscopic black holes] are created, there is a likelyhood [sic] that some could fall unimpeded to the centre of the Earth under gravity…Scientists have estimated that a stable black hole at the center of the earth could consume not only France but the whole planet in the very short time span of between 4 minutes and 30 seconds and 7 minutes.
I’m a little more inclined to believe the multiple accredited physics organizations around the world involved in the LHC project know what they’re doing than I am to believe some people I’ve never heard of from the Internet, but what do I know? The criticism has at least been strong enough to prompt CERN to post a kind of FAQ page about black holes, strangelets, and all manner of interesting potential doomsday scenarios that have been envisioned for LHC.
Despite the impressive power of the LHC in comparison with other accelerators, the energies produced in its collisions are greatly exceeded by those found in some cosmic rays. Since the much higher-energy collisions provided by Nature for billions of years have not harmed the Earth, there is no reason to think that any phenomenon produced by the LHC will do so.
Wouldn’t it just be something, though, if after centuries of war and pollution and all the other things mankind has done to compromise the planet, Armageddon was actually brought about by a bunch of guys in a physics lab?"
But According to MSNBC there is no cause for concern.
Good news! Black hole won't destroy Earth Fears raised collider would create black holes that could swallow planet By Charles Q. Choi LiveScience updated 12:42 p.m. CT, Wed., Sept. 20, 2006
Scientists could generate a black hole as often as every second when the world's most powerful particle accelerator comes online in 2007.
This potential "black hole factory" has raised fears that a stray black hole could devour our planet whole. The Lifeboat Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence, has stated that artificial black holes could "threaten all life on Earth" and so it proposes to set up "self-sustaining colonies elsewhere."
But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.
The accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is under construction in an underground circular tunnel nearly 17 miles long at the world's largest physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva.
At its maximum, each particle beam the collider fires will pack as much energy as a 400-ton train traveling at 120 mph. By smashing particles together and investigating the debris, scientists hope to help solve mysteries such as the origin of mass and why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
If theories about the universe containing extra dimensions other than those of space and time are correct, the accelerator might also generate black holes, Landsberg and his colleague Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University in California calculated in 2001. Physicists Steve Giddings at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Scott Thomas at Stanford University in California reached similar conclusions.
Black holes possess gravitational fields so strong that nothing can escape them, not even light. They normally form when the remains of a dead star collapse under their own gravity, squeezing their mass together. Although black holes can't be seen, astronomers infer their existence by the gravitational effects they have on gas and stars around them.
Making black holes A number of models of the universe suggest extra dimensions of reality exist that are each folded up into sizes ranging from as tiny as a proton, or roughly a millionth of a billionth of a meter, to as big as a fraction of a millimeter. At distances comparable to the size of these extra dimensions, gravity becomes far stronger, these models suggest. If this is true, the collider will cram enough energy together to initiate gravitational collapses that produce black holes.
If any of the models are right, the accelerator should create a black hole anywhere from every second to every day, each roughly possessing 5,000 times the mass of a proton and each a thousandth of a proton in size or smaller, Landsberg said.
Still, any fears that such black holes will consume the Earth are groundless, Landsberg said.
For one thing, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking calculated all black holes should emit radiation, and that tiny black holes should lose more mass than they absorb, evaporating within a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, "before they could gobble up any significant amount of matter," Landsberg said.
Not destroyed yet CERN spokesman and former research physicist James Gillies also pointed out that Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn't been destroyed yet.
"Still, let's assume that even if Hawking is a genius, he's wrong, and that such black holes are more stable," Landsberg said. Nearly all of the black holes will be traveling fast enough from the accelerator to escape Earth's gravity. "Even if you produced 10 million black holes a year, only 10 would basically get trapped, orbiting around its center," Landsberg said.
However, such trapped black holes are so tiny, they could pass through a block of iron the distance from the Earth to the Moon and not hit anything. They would each take about 100 hours to gobble up one proton.
At that rate, even if one did not take into account the fact that each black hole would slow down every time it gobbled up a proton, and thus suck down matter at an even slower rate, "about 100 protons would be destroyed every year by such a black hole, so it would take much more than the age of universe to destroy even one milligram of Earth material," Landsberg concluded. "It's quite hard to destroy the Earth."
A few non-scientists have been worried that physicists are getting a little too close to god for comfort. They're worried that this experiment could destroy the Earth, because one possibility is that the machine will make miniature black holes. De Rujula describes miniature black holes as particles of extraordinary density compared to usual objects.
He says black holes would certainly be interesting, because they would be evidence for extra tiny dimensions of space-time. But he doesn't think they are likely to appear. And if they do, they'll be harmless.
"Those black holes will not be dangerous ones of science fiction that eat up everything," De Rujula promises. "Being so small they sort of break into pieces."
More discussion on this can be found on Future Pundit. Fascinating, terrifying, slightly encouraging, confusing, highly technical, highly stupid and partially ambiguous.
A poster named Andrew said,
"Having read these pages, I contacted Professor George Ellis - one of the most eminent physicists who worked on Black Holes theory with Stephen Hawking, as well as a highly reputable philosopher of science and receiver of the Temperton Prize. In his reply, Professor Ellis wrote (E-mail of 22-9-06): "I don't think there is any risk. The theories quoted are highly speculative and have no experimental basis. And higher energy particles already exist in the universe - they are in cosmic rays. I don't think it is anything to get worried about."
I can't help but notice that the qualified response to this includes the phrase "I don't think it is anything to get worried about." You DON'T THINK? Meaning, you're not sure? Meaning, there is still some risk we don't know about, or we do know about, but are willing to chance? It almost seems that we must have some official investigation or interview with some trusted authority who has no conflict of interest in telling us all the truth. I think that ultimately, ANY danger is too much danger in this case. The only situation I can see wherein this would not be true, is if we were insured certain global destruction if we DIDN'T do this. Calculated risk is a sensible method of discerning decisions, but we must always consider worst-case-scenarios. If the worst case scenario is the ultimate annihilation of everything on the planet, then the small risk becomes a moot consideration, and the activities of CERN or any other scientific entity must be prohibited.
I will continue to search for cogent answers to this gargantuan issue. And I welcome anyone who can provide reputable input on it, or direct me toward that in some way.
Here is a link to a pdf document offered by CERN on this topic. I do not, however, trust the word of those who are being accused of doing something dangerous. An obvious conflict of interest.
After about the 3rd century B.C., no one really thought the earth was flat. that idea became popular with the publication of The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving.
There is, however, a Flat Earth Society, which sprang from interpretations of biblical passages by one Samuel Rowbotham, who took part in public debates with the scientists during much of the 19th Century. The debacle was reminiscent of the flack Charles Darwin endured for his Origin of Species. While Rowbotham's legacy dwindled into obscurity in the mid-20th century, Darwin's legacy, as we all know, lives on with the support of empirical data from scientific research.
Now, it seems Samuel Rowbotham missed the mark on a cosmic level. Scientists now say that while the Earth is obviously not flat, the universe IS.
Astronomically, this "flatness" refers to geometrical constants existing in the cosmos--namely, that light travels in straight lines. Einstein suggested the universe was curved, and it most likely was for a short time after the Big Bang, but now scientists have proven to within a couple of percentage points of certainty, that the expansion of the universe is a very real event, and is expected to continue indefinitely, since there isn't enough matter to make it collapse again into a repeat performance of the great Singularity AKA the Big Bang scientists speak of.
To say that the universe we see is all the universe that IS, however, would be a cosmic understatement. The geometrical "flatness" to which this discovery refers is based on Euclidean geometry and in the context of the "observable" universe. If you're small enough, on a big enough surface, it will always look flat. Thus, we exist in a dimension of time, but time does not exist outside the purview of this universe. Time exists completely in the whole of our universe, so things a billion light years away from us is in a sense "the future"--but it's more complicated than that. Just like when you drive your car down the highway, your final destination exists, even if you haven't reached it yet, and it might take a long period of time to get there. Time, in other words, exists all at once, even when we can't fathom it, nor have any experience of it outside our own past or present. The future is still there. We know that when the universe was formed from a gas cloud that began to rotate, it was easier for matter to collect on the poles, since centripetal force would push them away at the center belt around the spinning cloud. Thus, this spherical cloud would eventually collapse and expand outward, exponentially, to create our solar system. This is the "flatness" of the Universe. It just means that it's not folded up on itself as it would be if it were spherical, and not flat like a compact disc, but flat like something round that has been mashed down. But parallel lines remain parallel, and triangles always have 180 degrees.
Remember making a round ball with Silly Putty, when you were a kid? And how you'd flatten it with your palm? The universe is sort of like that. What once was curved, now is flat. Now, with your hands, you can pull this squished ball of Silly Putty in all directions, stretching it--that's like the expansion of the universe.
And that's not necessarily suggesting any supreme entity had a "hand" in it. The laws of nature and science took care of that as a matter of course. Just like they did in evolution. Who says the Big Bang wasn't God Himself exploding in a Swan Song of Ultimate creation?
So, FlatHeads rejoice. You have the universe on your side, now.
