Atlas Shrugs

Commentary

If scientists can be counted on for anything, it's for creating unintended consequences. (Michael Dougan)

Special to ABCNEWS.com David Melville is an eccentric physicist and thinker, and a friend of mine. Hes also terrified. Melville is preoccupied with what he regards as the most dangerous event in human history: an experiment, scheduled for November, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. Brookhaven has a device, called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, that has the worlds physicists tremendously excited. Scientists believe they can use the collider to duplicate the conditions that prevailed milliseconds after the Big Bang, when the universe consisted of a primordial soup called the quark-gluon plasma. Brookhaven scientists think that by colliding gold ions at extremely high speed, they can create a tiny, fleeting version of quark-gluon plasma to gain a better understanding of the origins of the universe. Sounds like fun. The only problem, according to David Melvilles panicky e-mail, is that, It has been theorized by Steven Hawking that from this quark-gluon plasma other forms of matter are also produced. The most dangerous being a black hole.

Consumed From the Inside Out All I know about black holes is that they have zero volume and infinite density. They sit in deep space, trapping everything that comes near enough (crossing inside whats known as the Schwarzschild radius) and letting nothing escape, even light. So I am perplexed. What happens if you create one in a laboratory? Melville says he believes it would be microscopic at first but would grow exponentially, eventually obliterating Earth. The black hole would first eat its way down toward the center of Earth and consume from the inside out. It would not be a good time to be around to see this. In the end ALL of Earth would be consumed. When I started looking into this, I was stunned to find that other physicists are speculating along the same lines as Melville. The July 1999 Scientific American contains letters debating the possibility Melville raises, and the July 18 Sunday Times of London reported on and editorialized against the experiment, which it considers frighteningly dangerous. So its not just paranoid physicists and rogue journalists concerned about the RHIC. Hoping to forestall the end of the world, I contacted Brookhaven immediately. We certainly do not wish to destroy the earth, sniffed spokeswoman Diane Greenberg, who clearly has been fielding plenty of questions like mine. Then she sent me a statement by Brookhaven Lab Director John Marburger, entitled On Consequences of RHIC Operations. The amount of matter involved in the RHIC collisions is exceedingly small  only a single pair of nuclei is involved in each collision, Marburger states. Our universe would have to be extremely unstable in order for such a small amount of energy to cause a large effect. On the contrary, the universe appears to be quite stable against releases of much larger amounts of energy that occur in astrophysical processes. RHIC collisions will be within the spectrum of energies encompassed by naturally occurring cosmic radiation. The earth and its companion objects in our solar system have survived billions of years of cosmic ray collisions with no evidence of the instabilities that have been the subject of speculation in connection with RHIC.

Playing at God Why am I not reassured by this? The short answer is that the experiment is conducted by human beings  the same folks who brought you the internal combustion engine, which threatens to destabilize the planets climate, and powerful antibiotics, which ultimately created an invincible staphylococcus bacterium. In other words, technopride goeth before the fall. The longer answer is that Melvilles scenario is perversely seductive in a Kubrickian sort of way. Think of Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are few things quite as persuasive as the vision of humans, their thirst for knowledge and progress insatiable, stumbling on a way to destroy the planet. It is an end-of-the-world scenario that has launched a thousand movie scripts. Human progress has always had a nasty habit of producing unintended consequences  usually because the prideful progenitors of progress insist on pooh-poohing any possibility of danger. Now, in recreating the beginning of the universe, we are essentially playing at being God  an unforgivable offense, punishable, as tragedians in the Bible and other literature have prophesied for centuries, by annihilation.

The Doomsday Machine This Doomsday scenario dovetails creepily with the speculation put forth by the late Carl Sagan in his book Cosmos. Sagan believed that we could never find evidence of life anywhere else in the universe because the pattern of evolution has been the same everywhere: Life begins and evolves through millions of years to the moment when it destroys itself. The nature of consciousness is such that evolution itself is a doomsday machine. Sagan considered nuclear war the likeliest cause of destruction, but the creation of an annihilating black hole is more plausible. Not only does it explain the apparent absence of life anywhere else in the universe, it also explains the absence of any ruins of past civilizations. A black hole removes all traces of everything  including of the creating civilizations planet. So why am I telling you this? Melvilles message to me ends. I think this should be brought out into the general publics view. For once, maybe once in the history of the universe, we can avoid THE END. Have a nice day.

Fred Moody is the author of I Sing the Body Electronic: A Year with Microsoft on the Multimedia Frontier and of The Visionary Position: The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who Made Virtual Reality a Reality. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/FredMoody/moody.current.html

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), September 16, 1999

Answers

Homer:

Brookhaven is not that far from Wall Street. At present everything is "sucked-in" there.

Best wishes,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 16, 1999.

somebody....please...anybody...just shoot me...

-- Billy-Boy (Rakkasn@Yahoo.com), September 16, 1999.

There was a New Scientist article about this on 28th August, try http://www .newscientist.co.uk/ns/19990828/ablackhole.html

Also a report from Brookhaven at www.bnl.gov/bnl.html

-- J (j@j.j), September 16, 1999.

Something bad with the 2nd link. Have to copy & paste instead. Sorry.

-- J (j@j.j), September 16, 1999.

Homer Beanfang, I admire your links (and address) very much.

-- PH (ag3@interlog.com), September 16, 1999.

Similar arguments were made against exploding the first atomic and hydrogen bombs...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 16, 1999.

This has also been discussed earlier at

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0016NS

-- jjbeck (jjbeck@recycler.com), September 16, 1999.

"People were standing on tops of mountains, wrapped in sheets; waiting for the end back in 999 and look; nothing happened, and nothing's gonna happen now; anybody who's anybody's gonna have their stuff fixed, It's the "nervous Nellies" who are stirring up hysteria, sure ,maybe the small guys will suffer some but all in all it will be just another damn new year" - my apt.maintenance engineer, ( who will remain anonymous)

-- KoFE (your@town.USA), September 16, 1999.

Hey, Z, ain't that far from Wall Street? Hell, it ain't that far from ME!

-- Mr. Mike (mikeabn@aol.com), September 16, 1999.

Mr Mike:

Don't know where you are, but I live with the joy brought by the fact that if any of this were true that I would live a micro-second longer than you.

Best wishes,

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 16, 1999.

Z, I'm about the burst radius of a hand grenade away from Brookhaven Nat'l Labs. Have you got enough freeze-dried food to last for your extended (i.e., longer than mine) lifespan?

-- Mr. Mike (mikeabn@aol.com), September 16, 1999.

Mr Mike:

Yep: but one of the questions of modern physics is what would happen if a black hole consumed so many beans.

Best wishes,

Z

-- Z1X4Y7 (Z1X4Y7@aol.com), September 16, 1999.

Ya know, until the day comes when they fire this monster up, there won't be much done to stop it. Even then there will be just a token few lined up with pickets outside. The masses are really not as informed on the dangers of this freak show as they should be. There is so much to detract from any attention this might garner, and the press should be ashamed for not even trying to bring this to light. Even if the chances of this going wrong were 1 in 40 million, who are these idiots to take those kind of chances with our lives? And the good news? Apparently our demise will come so fast we won't know what hit us. We'll be goin ?Huh? in heaven.

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), September 16, 1999.

Homer,

I clicked on this thread thinking it had something to do with Ayn Rand, objectivism, or perhaps John Galt...in a way, I suppose that it does. Heckuva way to run a railroad, huh? :-)

Back in July when the London Times ran the story, they reported that Marburger (director of Brookhaven)had halted further research until a panel of big brain nuclear physicists had studied the issue and agreed it was safe to proceed. It had sounded then as though at least one or two of the panel memebers had some reservations about the experiment. Does anyone know if the panel has convened and achieved consensus?

-- RUOK (RUOK@yesiam.com), September 16, 1999.

I STILL haven't seen sufficient math to convince me there is a problem with this. The gravitation portion of the equasion for the generation of a black hole just pretty much eliminates the problem as far as I'm aware. (the electrical repulsion vs gravitation vs the actual distances don't add up to a black hole) Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), September 16, 1999.

harl-zzzzz...Nytol. Chuck- You seem like a nice reasonable guy, but science can't explain everything, thus the need for "tests". Some of these, of course, will have an outcome less predictable than others. If human life is involved to any extent, shouldn't they have to PROVE that this is absolutely safe? If not, why not? I do not see why Y2K would be considered a more tangible event, as comparitively neither of these things has previously been experienced. Therein lies my concern. Do I have to sing it for you? :)

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), September 17, 1999.

I don't like chain reactions.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), September 17, 1999.

Alright, for anyone who can't manage to digest an article, let me offer a little help. Quote from that New Scientist link up above:

"In 1995, Paul Dixon, a psychologist at the University of Hawaii, picketed Fermilab in Illinois because he feared that its Tevatron collider might trigger a quantum vacuum collapse. Then again in 1998, on a late night talk radio show, he warned that the collider could "blow the Universe to smithereens".

But particle physicists have this covered. In 1983, Martin Rees of Cambridge University and Piet Hut of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, pointed out that cosmic rays (high-energy charged particles such as protons) have been smashing into things in our cosmos for aeons. Many of these collisions release energies hundreds of millions of times higher than anything RHIC can muster--and yet no disastrous vacuum collapse has occurred. The Universe is still here. "

No, this isn't the only concern. No, I'm not going to even try and simplify that explaination any more, just reread that 'hundreds of millions' part again. No, this isn't the only article I've seen that explained why BNL isn't going to blow up the world. No, I don't really expect to change anyone's mind on this, any more than I could hope to change anyone's mind on the end of the year at this point.

Now, are you still worried? Then perhaps you should try getting a little background in high energy physics, with emphasis on quarks, gluons, and radioactive decay states. Good news, at least that last bit may come in handy later.

"If you don't understand the question, why should I care if you dislike the answer?"

:::Apologies. Everyone has buttons. Luddite, knee-jerk, "mad scientist" reactions to technology happen to be one of mine.:::

-- harl (harlanquin@aohell.com), September 17, 1999.

Homer: The above post notwithstanding; If the black hole forms, or the universe is annihilated, or whatever, it will be quick and painless and you-won't-know-what-hit-you and you won't have to bite your nails anymore.

Who's afraid of the big black hole, the big black hole, the big black hole...

You better have

Godspeed,

-- Pinkrock (aphotonboy@aol.com), September 17, 1999.

KoFE,

Did you ever consider the possibility that your appartment maintenance engineer just might be the garbage man from Dilbert ?

Might be worth a question or two on "the nature of the human condition".

Kind Regards

W

-- W0lv3r1n3 (w0lv3r1n3@yahoo.com), September 17, 1999.

"Sagan believed that we could never find evidence of life anywhere else in the universe because the pattern of evolution has been the same everywhere: Life begins and evolves through millions of years to the moment when it destroys itself. The nature of consciousness is such that evolution itself is a doomsday machine."

As someone who has read Cosmos at least ten times since I was given it in the sixth grade, I can state unequivocally that Moody has completely misinterpreted Sagan's writing. Carl Sagan did not believe that self-destruction was inevitable; he speculated on it, but was also very clear that the most advanced species in the universe -- those potentially capable of becoming starfaring civilizations -- would necessarily be capable of avoiding self- destruction. Nowhere does he state that he believed otherwise. This is not the first time Moody has played loose with the facts in his columns.

-scott

-- Scott Johnson (scojo@yahoo.com), September 17, 1999.