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writing for godot

Will We All Be Swallowed by a Black Hole?

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Written by Stefan Hansen   
Saturday, 12 March 2011 22:58
There is a post on S C E N A R I O, a magazine by Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, titled "in 50y". The post contains a string of short videos with interviews of experts in various fields, from cybernetics to chaos theory. It's the interview with the chaos theorist Otto Rössler about sustainability and the future that triggered me to write this post.

Otto Rössler talks about the possible dangers of the collisions about to be carried out inside CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). According to Rössler, his calculations show that there is a 50 percent chance that a micro black hole might be created in the Large Hadron Collider, and in about 50 months swallow earth into a black hole the size of a hazelnut. Naturally, that would be the end of us. All of us.


CERN not conCERNed

At CERN they don't worry about the micro black holes. They say that the safely of the LHC is solid, and that "the fact that the Earth and Sun are still here rules out the possibility that cosmic rays or the LHC could produce dangerous charged microscopic black holes." Further, CERN writes that Rössler's argument isn't valid, and that it has been refuted by professors Nicolai and Giulini. Additionally, CERN lists a string of scientists who support the case that LHC collisions are not dangerous. So, who are we to believe?

Well, we could make the easy choice, and simply believe the majority, the scientific consensus, taking their claim - that the Large Hadron Collider is perfectly safe - on authority. Or, we could do what any responsible skeptic would do: ponder the issue a little further. After doing so, we might end up opposing the CERN collisions. So far, I do, and I think you should as well. Let me explain why.


Odds and consequences

Let's say I offer you a bet. I'll roll a dice once, if it shows 1, 2 or 3, I'll give you $1, if it shows 4, 5, or 6, you'll give me $1. Would you take the bet? I don't know, only you know. I now offer you a new bet, this time you win $1 if the dice shows 1, 2, 3 or 4. Only if it shows 5 or 6, you'll lose your $1. Certainly a better bet, so no matter whether you took the first bet, there's a higher chance you'll take this second bet - unless, of course, if you are utterly irrational. And, naturally, if I offered you $1 if the dice showed 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, and you only would lose if the dice showed a 6, again the chances of you taking the bet increases. Nothing new here. But what's the point, you might wonder. What does all this have to do with black holes in CERN's Large Hadron Collider? Well, not much. Not yet, at least. But it soon will. But first a little more talk about dices.

Let's assume you decided to take the last bet I offered, the one where you would only lose if the dice showed a 6. Most people would. But what would happen if we changed the $1 bet to a bet for $10, $100, $1,000 or $1,000,000? Although your odds of winning remains unchanged, at 83 percent (5/6), you might think twice before accepting the bet. But why not take a bet where the chances of winning a million dollars are 83 percent? Obviously, because the risk - of losing one million dollars - is too high, although there is no more than a 17 percent chance of this happening. It other words: whether or not to take a bet doesn't depend on the odds only, it also depends on the size of the possible win, and on what is at risk. And that leads us back to the talk about microscopic black holes inside the Large Hadron Collider, and Rössler's warning that earth might be swallowed.


Odds and consequences related to CERN's Large Hadron Collider

Now that we are aware that choosing to play not only depends on the odds, but also what we can possible win/lose, let's consider the collision experiment at CERN. If Rössler is right, then there is a 50 percent chance we will all die in a black hole. That's the risk, if we lose. If we win - and are not sucked into a black hole - we might have learned something about how it all began. For now, let's assume Rössler is right. Should we play? Should we carry on with the experiment, knowing there is a 50 percent chance of killing all human beings on earth? I guess all sane people would agree that we shouldn't carry on, that the risk and the chance of losing is too high. We are not playing with matches here, humanity is on the line, and for what? For the hope that our curiosity about the beginning of the universe will be satisfied. No, thanks.

I admit, I'm curious too. I would like to know what this experiment could tell us, but not when there is a 50 percent chance of jeopardizing humanity. So, the question arises: how slim does the possibility of killing us all need to be to justify this experiment? At it's core, this is an epistemological question (what's the value of knowledge?), while also a moral question (what's the value of human life?) - and there is no easy answer. However, I'll try, and I hope you'll come along for the ride.

I assume you, dear reader, is sane. So, I also assume you agree that this experiment shouldn't be carried out if there really is a 50 percent chance of destroying us all. I also assume you are curious, like most. So, if there were no risk at all, I guess we could agree that the experiment could be carried out. So far, so good. Now it's "just" a matter of putting a value stamp on knowledge - and on humanity. I will continue this exploration assuming that we cannot know for sure. All science is in the domain of inductive reasoning, where - by definition - there are no certainties, only degrees of probability.


Putting a number on our sanity

The question now is: where do we draw the line? If a 50 percent chance of destruction is unacceptable, and a 0 percent change is acceptable, then what about 25 percent, 10 percent, 1 percent, 0.1 percent, 0.0001 percent and so on? How high a chance of total destruction of humanity will we tolerate to satisfy our curiosity? This is essentially the question we are facing, and in a sense, what we are doing is putting a number on our sanity. The insane would carry out the experiment no matter the consequences, even at a 100 percent chance of killing us all. But what about you, dear reader, where do you draw the line? Is the question the collision experiment might answer really so important that even the slightest chance of destroying all humanity would be acceptable?

What if Rössler was no more likely to be right than anyone else, and if he was the only one on earth saying there is a 50 percent chance of ending it all? With 7 billion people on the planet, the chance that we would all be swallowed by a black hole would then be 1 in 14 billion. That's a slim chance, but considering the potential consequence - killing us all, and all future generations - isn't even this chance too high? In other words: would you be willing to gamble the whole of humanity - in the hope of answering a question about the universe - with these odds?


To be or not to be - and to know or not to know

I've asked some people this question, and they didn't think twice: "No, absolutely not!" they said, "No question is that important to answer!" Even if you don't agree, I would be surprised if you would play this game if the odds were measured in percentages, rather than in millionths of a percentage. And that's more likely what they are. Unlike most of us - non-scientists - Rössler is a scientist with hundreds of scientific papers to his name, in the fields of mathematics, chemistry and physics. So, he is definitely much more likely to be right than most of us. I therefore suggest that we listen to this gentleman, and ask for a full halt of CERN's planned collision experiment - before it's too late.


Written by Stefan Hansen
www.hansensmag.net
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