LHC Doomsday Claims: Debunking an Alleged Catastrophe

[Galteeth]

Ok, so most of us are probably familiar with the micro-black hole fears that were pretty baseless. There is a new angle on the LCH doomsday scenario, involving the production of strangelets, which will allegedly produce a catastrophic "ice-9" reaction, flipping all the quarks on Earth or some such. My money is on this being bogus, but I'm not familiar enough with the science to do a thorough debunking. Any help?

http://www.cerntruth.com/?p=125

 

[Galteeth]

From wikipedia:

Strangelets
Main article: Strangelets

Strangelets are small fragments of strange matter—a hypothetical form of quark matter—that contain roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks and that are more stable than ordinary nuclei (strangelets would range in size from a few femtometers to a few meters across).[5] If strangelets can actually exist, and if they were produced at the LHC, they could conceivably initiate a runaway fusion process in which all the nuclei in the planet would be converted to strange matter, similar to a strange star.[5]

The probability of the creation of strangelets decreases at higher energies.[5] As the LHC operates at higher energies than the RHIC or the heavy ion programs of the 1980s and 1990s, the LHC is less likely to produce strangelets than its predecessors.[5] Furthermore, models indicate that strangelets are only stable or long-lived at low temperatures. Strangelets are bound at low energies (in the range of 1–10 MeV), while the collisions in the LHC release energies in the range of 14 TeV. The second law of thermodynamics precludes the formation of a cold condensate that is an order of magnitude cooler than the surrounding medium. This can be illustrated by the example of trying to form an ice cube in boiling water.[5]

I was hoping someone could address the specific claims in the "cerntruth" guy's article.

 

[ZapperZ]

Oy vey!

The issue with strangelets have been sufficiently addressed when the brouhaha surrounding RHIC was going on.

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910333

I believe the analysis done there is applicable to the LHC as well. One only needs to look at the fact that the moon still exists.

Zz.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Actually, considering that the LHC has been running since March, one only needs to look at the fact that the earth still exists.

 

[Galteeth]

Oy vey!

The issue with strangelets have been sufficiently addressed when the brouhaha surrounding RHIC was going on.

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910333

I believe the analysis done there is applicable to the LHC as well. One only needs to look at the fact that the moon still exists.

Zz.

thanks