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May 19, 2011

Dark Non-Sci-Fi

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

A scientist finds a new result – black holes are uncharged – and the best defense of CERN’s against the allegation that its currently running black-hole factory endangers the planet is gone. But CERN continues in plain sunlight while pretending the result is non-existent.

This would make for a grandiose Hollywood script. It could be pepped up with the side ingredient that the planet’s International Court of Crimes Against Humanity shies away from even replying, and that in contrast a Cologne court requests a scientific safety conference before the experiment can be continued: each fact a non-topic for the media of the planet in question. Sociologists will be eager to explain how such strange global behavior could arise. Or is it because CERN has the rank of a military organization given the fact that its status of absolute immunity is only matched by that of the United Nations themselves?

Much more likely, of course, is it that the unchargedness theorem is false. This is what the Albert-Einstein Institute maintains unofficially while refusing to acknowledge the problem in public. Thus, most probably, everything is fine?

This would be the case if life-saving new results either could not exist or could be made disappear by decree. “A Nobel candidate’s results published three years ago being treated as nonexistent by the planet’s establishment” has only one possible explanation: the person in question has been declared crazy by the state.

As long as this diagnosis has not been medically demonstrated, however, the prospect of danger to the planet stands undiminished. Note that the currently un-disproved probability of the world going under in about 5 years’ time if the experiment is continued, will only be reduced from 8 to 4 percent if the originator is crazy with a probability of 50 percent. And even if he could be shown to be actually crazy, his formally flawless theorem would still deserve the benefit of the doubt.

In our strange movie script, the originator then points away from his own person asking the question of why no one listens to world-famous philosopher Paul Virilio who is on his side. Or to the outstanding people who had accepted the main paper? And if no scientist stands up and says “I take the responsibility that this is false”: Why then not try and put a body of unbiased scholars together to find out if the danger is real or not? Prince Charles was asked to head the panel 3 years ago.

You see I am being impossible with this movie script: To pretend that a single scientist had the right to insist on being proved wrong after finding evidence for a serious assault on the planet! When every reasonable person today agrees that only the highest world leader in terms of political power has the right to utter such a global warning. A scientist would never have this right, and no astronomer would ever be allowed to warn the planet in case he finds a big asteroid bent on a collision course. Yet if this indeed is the modern consensus — also with respect to the current new outbreak of Ebola? -, the whole planet has forgotten what science and rationality means. Is our planet caught in the midst of a dark age?

It would be sufficient if if Stephen Hawking or Hermann Nicolai responded, or if another big name did. For it cannot possibly be that big names have evaporated after my late friend Johnny Wheeler and his Eastern match, Jacob Zel’dovich, passed away. A fatherless planet?

Life would be easier if gravity did not reduce (and in the limit extinguish) charge. And if rationality were no longer needed for survival. However, the time when it was possible to express such claims publicly had seemed by-gone for centuries. Which scientist on the planet has the courage to prove that the “unchargedness theorem for black holes” is false? If no one is capable of doing so, why not report this fact, dear planetary media? And why not address this fact, dear wordless politicians?

I thank my large students’ audience of this morning in the town of Villingen: It was a privilege to be allowed to try and make transparent Einstein’s thinking to you. Take good care, young people of the planet.

Otto E. Rossler, chaos researcher (For J.O.R., May 18, 2011)

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Comments — comments are now closed.


  1. robomoon says:

    Thanks for continuing with your effort of trying the best to release information about increasing danger of an accident inside a risk level of massive planetary annihilation that can be caused by humans. So you are making great strides while most of the other experts are quietly beginning to stir. The LONGECITY forum section http://www.longecity.org/forum/forum/360-global-risks/ contains some information to look at the general opinion about great catastrophic disasters. When comparing the newest entries in that section to current programs from the Lifeboat Foundation, you see that not many discussions about currently upcoming events of a massive planetary annihilation that can be caused by humans are going on. The rapid tempo in which scientific research is changing has only a little influence on people’s opinion about its great danger. Still, even for many scientists and pro-science engineering experts, the greatest catastrophic disasters that can be caused by humans mostly seem to be global warming, nuclear war, bio-terrorism, poisoning effects on the delicate ecosystems, and unfriendly AI/nanotech”. Except bio-terrorism and unfriendly AI/nanotech, all those risks have been overly observed as a failure in resource distribution or sometimes the notion of Overpopulation. The problem: sites where the event of unfriendly AI/nanotech is being assessed are not much valued by others but only the software engineering experts. Many people can actually not see the rapid advancements in science together with engineering, so it resides in their imagination that an increasingly unfriendly AI/nanotech may not be much possible. Software development looks harmless in comparison to global warming, but unfriendly AI is getting dangerous. No offense, but your concern fits nicely into online resources like http://transhumanistwiki.com/wiki/Small_steps_that_can_make_…tastrophes which have not gained the necessary popularity. But do not hesitate to think about a new way to describe the problem. New experiments in particle physics are quite different from commercial strategies in AI/nanotech or biotech. There can be a different strategy than molecular manufacturing of computer hardware, but new experiments particle physics should be described as a risk in nanotech. There is currently no other category left to explain this experiment to a great public. I am not in the league of philosophers, but in their absence, I must give your question a try: Is our planet caught in the midst of a dark age? Not in any other field but mental health because unintelligence is always hard to repair. So there are no educational resources left to create a new category now. Stephen Hawking or Hermann Nicolai would certainly be alright without the naming of nanotech, but for others who are less sufficiently informed about physics, the risk should be better understandable when described as an accidental creation of a time-bomb in the field of nanotech. As already explained in here, most people have no idea about the rapidness in which scientific research on particles is changing. Thus, you got to choose the right wording.

  2. Anything that can go wrong goes wrong — I agree. But so only if one does not think of it in time. In the present case, we do have a chance.

    “Thinking helps” was once a slogan of HP. Thank you for thinking.

  3. Hnasel says:

    Gravity doesn’t reduce charge. And there is no single example for a real correlation of charge and mass. In contrast there are many sample of the contrary. For a example, a proton has a mcuh bigger mass than an electron, but both carry the same charge.

    To my knowledge xou have not a single argument against this facts to rescue your ‘theory’, which is in fact onyl a very good example for the work of a real crackpot

  4. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Thank you, dear Collega anonymus:

    You are right that SO FAR, it was never known that gravity reduces charge (or, for that matter, mass). Only Telemach says so. If you are able to prove my Telemach theorem wrong, the traditional state of knowledge will be resurrected.

    You seem to confound “proportional change of mass and charge” with “proportionality between mass and charge.”

  5. robomoon says:

    Most people are becoming crackpots when they are being brought into talking about mass. Once there is mass, its being Sub-Atomic Mass, Relativistic Mass, Fixed Mass, Associated Mass, Kinetic Mass, Negative Mass, Rest Mass, Invariant Mass, Total Mass, Inertial Mass, Gravitational Mass, Stable Mass, Odd Mass, Accelerated Mass, Magnetic Mass, Weighted Mass, Constant Mass, Conserved Mass, Near-Quark Mass, Near-Photon Mass, Black Mass, White Mass, Charged Mass, Mass of Antimatter, Changed Mass, Lost Mass, Bound Mass, Momentum Limiting-Mass, Schwarzschild-Curvatured Mass, Lorentz-Corrected Mass, Einsteinian Mass, Newtonian Mass, Abrahamian Mass, Passive Mass, Particle Mass, Massive Particles, Mass Range, Mass Density, and Mass Energy or Mass-Magnitude probably incl. Mass Interaction of long-lived particles without the Field Mass, Zero Rest Mass, Body Mass, etc. What and how is this mass or the difference if there is more than one mass? This makes anyone gonna mad like some scientists or is this only a massive propaganda for mass hysteria? This might be explained by Max Abraham.

  6. riskalert says:

    The probability of this being an existential event is higher than indicated by an analysis purely of the physics. The reason is the great silence. The great silence means there is a heightened probability that *something* tends to destroy technological species. That conditions the probabilities of all existential risks with a condition that makes them all more risky than they would otherwise be.

  7. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Sweet. I am very modest talking only about the local rest mass valid with respect to the world far outside (sometines also called Komar mass after Arthur Komar of Yeshiva university).

    You are right: nothing is easy. But in principle, everything is easy once it has been understood. It IS possible to find simple new things which then are of relevance. Telemach is an example until shown otherwise. Please, help me dismantle it.

  8. robomoon says:

    Somewhere there is also a great silence with a heightened probability that reviewers of the Telemach black-hole theorem get silently away and never raise their voice again after showing fairly questionable conclusions in terms of philosophy while not really having done the necessary calculations to prove the thesis wrong. The probability gets also heightened in terms of scientists who are silently doing some experiments in research institutes the public has not been sufficiently informed about the increasing danger and they might be rather busy in calculating investment frequencies for new lab equipment. What is 10 percent of a chance that the Earth will be annihilated compared to 90 percent of a chance of having some fun, enough money, and prestige from one and another useless research project?

  9. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Can this really be? Is there no way to alert the elected officials to do their duty?

  10. robomoon says:

    So far your appeal to the President has occurred and the recent response to Prof. Tottoli’s comment http://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/05/dear-mr-president#comments by Ed Sweet on May 21, 2011, may not be insuring enough to abandon further measures. Nevertheless, the President has responsibility for counteraction in terms of danger an institute with the rank of a military organization in the US could be causing. So he has not been elected to prevent a global disaster from something that might be caused outside the US. So he was not even elected by the majority of voters among the human race or their representative officials. Who got elected by them for taking over the required responsibility?

  11. Otto E. Rossler says:

    You are right. Many elected persons are equally called upon by definition, one for each country. But you see, there is one country with an especially charismatic president, and it happens to be the one with the largest competent constituency at the time being. Even foreigners try to use its language and be understood by its caring citizens.

    Most of my scientific friends live in the US where my son was born. So I apologize meekly for having turned to your president as the most promising candidate to speak up in defense of the life of every earthling.

  12. robomoon says:

    Sorry, who is receiving your apology? Just do not bother if I was or was not interested in any kind of appraisal for communications the President could be expecting. It is not my concern to question his responsibility, but an authority of global leadership has to be elected by voters in any capable country. Saying that one politician is especially charismatic and one with the largest competent constituency does not mean he got elected by voters or their representative officials in any capable country. One who rules the US is not the leader of many other countries on this planet as far as they are capable of timely action in terms of the important human right for global security. Please establish a contact with a higher institution who got elected by voters or their representative officials in any capable country. There has to be a higher institution for worldwide security in all the countries, authorities, international societies, and organizations on Earth. If you cannot find this one, we are a highly endangered species.

  13. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Thank you for your advice.

  14. Geoffrey Card says:

    To my understanding, even if the LHC produces (a) black hole(s), they will not be of sufficient size or energy to threaten the Earth and will likely dissipate into Hawking radiation and/or pass through the Earth.
    In addition, if such were likely, it should have already happened in our atmosphere where cosmic rays collide with particles at energies much higher than that of the LHC.

  15. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Dear Mr. Card:

    Thank you for maximally concisely repeating the status of knowledge before my papers disproving each of the points you mentioned had either appeared in print (in July 2008) or appeared on the Internet, staying undisproved to the best of my knowledge up tothis day.

    I apologize for my undignified insisting that CRN stop its politics of pretending not to know these results and acting accordingly. Why ignore the request for a scientific safety conference, made last January by a court?

    I will cherish your advice.

  16. robomoon says:

    There should be no need to apologize. Better not exposing too much losses of dignity from being held up by those repetitions. Please only tolerate something if Hawking personally told them or from those who are in the position of falsifying his results on their own. It makes me happy to find your points and the previously discussed epilog are very important for being presented before a higher political institution.

  17. Otto E. Rossler says:

    Thank you for waiting to see with me what Congress will do to protect the citizens.