Evidence that LSAG withheld revelant CERN information
Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 2:27 am
Much reliance is granted by CERN to the LSAG safety review of 2008. One might expect that this review would involve arguments that wouldn't contradict the theories or LHC research projects of CERN's own physicists. But it has recently been established that in seven different ways, the assertions relied on for claiming safety are contradicted by other CERN physicists in various theoretical papers or CERN documents.
These are atleast seven LSAG Report arguments for safety from a strangelet catastrophe:
1. likelihood of strangelet production at lhc is negligible
2. likelihood of strangelet production is lower at lhc compared with previous colliders or accelerators
3. mechanism of strangelet distillation couldn't apply at lhc
4. negatively charged strangelets are particularly unlikely
5. stable or metastable small (A<10) strangelets couldn't exist
6. existing observational data provides no indications for strangelets
7. comparability of lhc with cosmic ray collisions is necessarily reliable.
However:
claims 1. - 5. are contradicted by theories in numerous cern documents and physics papers associated with the CASTOR detector at CMS (or previously) and by statements within the ALICE Technical Proposal - or by several ALICE collaboration theorist physics papers. Infact there are specific plans for the detection of negative, neutral or positive and unstable, metastable or stable strangelets at both ALICE and CASTOR.
Claims 6. -7. are contradicted by papers by the CASTOR team. This included ackowledgement of the possibility that cosmic rays at comparable energies to LHC's may not be made of heavy ion nulcei at all.
As shown in section 1 of the report given at the link below, both M. Mangano and LSAG chair J. Ellis would have been familiar with these projects by virture of their involvements with the LHCC(ommittee). As reported by NewYorker magazine in 2007, Jos Engelen expounded a zero risk policy for statements by CERN officials from 2007 - some months before CERN'S internally undertaken lsag report. He also, is also shown to have been involved at relevant meetings before 2007 where familiarity with these projects would be clear.
Due to the ongoing and urgent need to make this information as widely available as possible to press, politicians and physicists, I doubt that I will be able to deal with questions at least until after the um, deadline, of November 11, when heavy ion collisions begin (I understand recently that a strangelet catastrophe would be much slower than if one occurred at a star, so, if worse comes to worse, that should leave some days atleast for a chat before hand).
Further detail however is available at http://www.heavyionalert.org, where the report providing relevant evidence, and the implications for the reliablity of the CERN's risk assessment is outlined. Summary evidence is given at the site.
The report includes outlines of the available critiques of the remaining safety assurances, such as that of theoretical physicist Adrian Kent in particular. See notes in report (p.16-17) for my discussion of differing views from other physicists in relation to the particular justification arguments of the LSAG report (such as relating to RHIC data interpretation).
Eric
These are atleast seven LSAG Report arguments for safety from a strangelet catastrophe:
1. likelihood of strangelet production at lhc is negligible
2. likelihood of strangelet production is lower at lhc compared with previous colliders or accelerators
3. mechanism of strangelet distillation couldn't apply at lhc
4. negatively charged strangelets are particularly unlikely
5. stable or metastable small (A<10) strangelets couldn't exist
6. existing observational data provides no indications for strangelets
7. comparability of lhc with cosmic ray collisions is necessarily reliable.
However:
claims 1. - 5. are contradicted by theories in numerous cern documents and physics papers associated with the CASTOR detector at CMS (or previously) and by statements within the ALICE Technical Proposal - or by several ALICE collaboration theorist physics papers. Infact there are specific plans for the detection of negative, neutral or positive and unstable, metastable or stable strangelets at both ALICE and CASTOR.
Claims 6. -7. are contradicted by papers by the CASTOR team. This included ackowledgement of the possibility that cosmic rays at comparable energies to LHC's may not be made of heavy ion nulcei at all.
As shown in section 1 of the report given at the link below, both M. Mangano and LSAG chair J. Ellis would have been familiar with these projects by virture of their involvements with the LHCC(ommittee). As reported by NewYorker magazine in 2007, Jos Engelen expounded a zero risk policy for statements by CERN officials from 2007 - some months before CERN'S internally undertaken lsag report. He also, is also shown to have been involved at relevant meetings before 2007 where familiarity with these projects would be clear.
Due to the ongoing and urgent need to make this information as widely available as possible to press, politicians and physicists, I doubt that I will be able to deal with questions at least until after the um, deadline, of November 11, when heavy ion collisions begin (I understand recently that a strangelet catastrophe would be much slower than if one occurred at a star, so, if worse comes to worse, that should leave some days atleast for a chat before hand).
Further detail however is available at http://www.heavyionalert.org, where the report providing relevant evidence, and the implications for the reliablity of the CERN's risk assessment is outlined. Summary evidence is given at the site.
The report includes outlines of the available critiques of the remaining safety assurances, such as that of theoretical physicist Adrian Kent in particular. See notes in report (p.16-17) for my discussion of differing views from other physicists in relation to the particular justification arguments of the LSAG report (such as relating to RHIC data interpretation).
Eric