14 08 08 Have LHC Black Holes Jumped The Shark?
By now many people in the world are aware that CERN is about to commission the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and bestest ever toy for high energy particle physics. After a problem with some of the magnet assemblies was discovered last year, the time table was pushed back a bit and some preliminary testing plans were reduced or eliminated. By late July, all the beam lime components were at their nominal operating temperature of -271°C and just last week a first test was done to work on synchronizing the injector (SPS or Super Proton Synchrotron) with the LHC. September 10th is the tentative date for the first 'live' circulating beam at 450 GeV with the goal of ramping up to 5 TeV beams for collisions at a center of mass energy of 10 TeV this fall. Fermilab and their search for the Higgs particle is now officially on the clock!Along the way though there has been considerable hand wringing in the press over the objections of a small number of people (some with physics degrees) who feel that planet earth will be be in great peril if the LHC is operated at full energy and luminosity. Many of these individuals believe that the LHC will create mini-black holes which will, so they claim, swallow the earth. Others also believe that the LHC may be able to create exotic new forms of matter called 'strangelets' which also could interact with ordinary matter on the earth resulting in our doom. Similar complaints were lodged before Brookhaven's RHIC (relativistic heavy ion collider) began operations in 2000. CERN, like BNL, caved into these outrageous speculations and produced detailed reports on the 'risks' of operation and presented them to the public.
Quite a few physics blogs (written by those who have PhD's in high energy physics or related fields) have quite thoroughly explained the issues involved. One of the better ones, generally accessible to lay readers, is by BackReaction with the following posts: one, two, and three.
So it was with befuddled amazement that we heard the LHC and black holes mentioned while listening to the NYC area sports talk radio station, WFAN. A NJ car dealership, Brad Benson Hyundai (Benson was an offensive line star of the NY Giants super bowl team of 1986/7), regulalry runs radio spots with Benson spoofing or otherwise making fun of some topic of current events while extolling the '30% off' his dealership gives on new car sales. Most of the spots make light of politicians and their problems and a few have made it onto YouTube such as this one on Bush or this one on Elliot Spitzer.
Well, Black Hole Strangelet People (BHSP's), you've jumped the shark. Benson just ran an add in which he comments on the possibility of black holes and other weirdness swallowing up the earth when they turn on the LHC this fall while promptly offering a $1,000 "End Of The World " discount so you can enjoy a new car before it is too late. Luckily, I was driving slowly in a low traffic neighborhood as there was a serious risk of my truck having a collision with another car - physics! on the radio! on WFAN!?! LHC??? Hopefully for Brad he only has to pay the discount if CERN actually creates some strangelets or black holes which start eating the earth. (PS - Brad, its pronounced haa-drons, not hey-drons)
Fonzie where are you?
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