For distribution:
Press Release LHC-Kritik / LHC-Critique - Network for safety at experimental subnuclear reactors
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CERN/LHC-Critics: CERN has not improved LHC safety and thus accepts possible existential risks while doubling the energy.
LHC-restart is a scandal for mankind and science!
CERN’s main contradiction can be put in easy words. CERN says: We are producing conditions matter like it has existed fractions of a second after the Big Bang. We got no clue about the outcomes. But we are sure that nothing dangerous will happen.
In effect, CERN simply accepts residual (?) existential risks to planet Earth and mankind, pretending to the public that everything is pretty safe.
During the upgrade of the LHC that cost hundreds of millions, CERN has not conducted a single safety measure proposed by critics.
The main safety measures would be:
Conducting an interdisciplinary safety assessment of the LHC - independent from CERN and involving the sciences of risk research and sociology of science.
At least a step by step increase of the collision energies eventually could show warning signs of unexpected and dangerous collision products.
Without taking any of these safety measures, CERN plans to smash particles at double the energies of before. This poses, one would hope, certain eventually small (?), but fundamentally unpredictable catastrophic risks to planet Earth.
Further explenation:
Basically the same group of critics, including Professors and Doctors, that had previously filed a law suit against CERN in the US and Europe, still opposes the restart for basically the same reasons. Dangers of: (“Micro”-)Black Holes, Strangelets, Vacuum Bubbles, etc., etc. are of course and maybe will forever be - still in discussion. No specific improvements concerning the safety assessment of the LHC have been conducted by CERN or anybody meanwhile. There is still no proper and really independent risk assessment (the 'LSAG-report' has been done by CERN itself) - and the science of risk research is still not really involved in the issue. This is a scientific and political scandal and that’s why the restart is a sad day for science and humanity.
High energy experiments like the LHC at the nuclear research centre CERN are extreme energy consumers (needing the power of a nuclear plant). Their construction is extremely costly (presently 7 Billion Euros) and practical benefits are not in sight. The experiments eventually pose existential risks and these risks have not been properly investigated.
There are countless evidences for the necessity of an external and multidisciplinary safety assessment of the LHC. According to a pre-study in risk research, CERN fits less than a fifth of the criteria for a modern risk assessment (see the press release below). It is not acceptable that the clueless member states point at the operator CERN itself, while this regards its self-set security measures as sufficient, in spite of critique from risk researchers, continuous debates and the publication of further papers pointing at concrete dangers eventually arising from the experiments. Presently science has to admit that the risk is disputed and basically unknown.
It will not be possible to keep up this ostrich policy much longer. Especially facing further planned upgrades of the LHC and the possible construction of further particle accelerators, CERN, the community of physicists and the involved member states will be confronted with increasing critique from scientific and civil side that the most powerful particle collider has yet not been challenged in a neutral and multidisciplinary safety assessment. CERN has yet not answered to pragmatic proposals for such a process that also should constructively involve critics and CERN. Also further legal steps from different sides are possible.
The member states that are financing the CERN budget, the UN or private funds are addressed to provide resources to finally initiate a neutral and multidisciplinary risk assessment on giant particle accelerator risks. Without that, “Big Bang Machines” like the LHC actually should not operate at all. Also, CERN critics oppose any public funding of this research.
The next billions of years will be hard enough without CERN.
Articles:
- „LHC-Kritik“-press release:
http://www.oekonews.at/index.php?mdoc_id=1098014
- Press release by our partner "Risk Evaluation Forum":
http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/newsbg.pdf
- Background Documents, provided by our partner “LHC Safety Review”:
http://www.lhcsafetyreview.org/
- Study proclaiming the possibility of Micro Black Holes at the LHC:
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-mini-black ... allel.html
- New paper by Dr. Thomas B. Kerwick, pointing at shortcomings in CERN’s safety report:
http://vixra.org/abs/1503.0066
- Prof Otto E. Roessler: “No one knows at what likelihood Black Holes will be produced in June at CERN”:
https://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/05/no-on ... ne-at-cern
- New Paper by our partner “Heavy Ion Alert“:
http://www.heavyionalert.org/:
“Finally, we call upon both the Federal Assembly and the Federal Council to establish a robust regulatory framework for the LHC. It is of no benefit to the Swiss people or the rest of humanity to say that Switzerland is not liable for any damage caused by CERN. Switzerland retains an undeniable obligation to ensure that experiments at CERN do not endanger its citizens or the planet. That obligation cannot be fulfilled without first addressing the documented flaws [6] in the current safety report for the LHC. We strongly urge the Federal Assembly and the Federal Council to commission a truly independent and interdisciplinary panel of experts [39] which, along with a remit to consider LHC safety critical submissions from the public, would closely examine the existing safety arguments that support operation of the LHC. The LHC programme of high-energy collisions should only recommence if this panel finds that those arguments are rigorous and reliable.”
All info at our website
http://www.LHC-concern.info merely has not lost any relevance.
LHC-Kritik / LHC-Critique – Network for safety at experimental subnuclear reactors