I am a “specialist in non-specialization”, in the words of my late Austrian mentor Konrad Lorenz, and an “interdisciplinary hybrid” in those of my late American mentor Bob Rosen. IMy work in chaos theory is a little bit well known, in that I discovered a so-called “attractor” or “reproducible dynamic phenomenon” familiar in everyday experience (a hoarse voice and an idling motorcycle’s noise being examples). My subsequent discovery of “hyperchaos” was soon used as a diagnostic tool in wards for the newborn whose cries turn from chaos to hyperchaos in case of a crisis, as H. Herzel found out. My “brain equation” is also getting some recognition lately. My “smile theory” is my oldest but hardest to understand theory (though children typically have no difficulty with it!).
My recent “Telemach theorem” – named after Ulysses’ son Telemachus – is a much more frightening conceptual structure, however. It suggests that continuing escalation of the energy of operation of the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland, indeed has the potential of forming dangerous mini Black Holes which could consume the Earth.
A proven implication of known physical laws – a theorem – is true until a counterargument is found that topples it. The name Telemach has to do with the youth of an ancient Greek myth who recognized a beggar as the long lost father he had believed was dead. In my title the acronym stands for Time, Length, Mass and Charge (T, L, M, Ch), four entities that can be measured in everyday life by means of simple devices — clocks, meter sticks, scales and volt meters.
You probably already know that there exists no “Ur-Second” in physics (because of Einstein’s work); but an “Ur-Meter” and an “Ur-Kilogram” and a “Universal Unit Charge” are believed to exist and are well known. The Ur-meter and the Ur-kilogram were actually quite costly and difficult to arrive at. The struggle took scientists and engineers many decades in furthering the science of measurement (Metrology) in this regard.
Therefore it is of some interest that my Telemach theorem in summary says that three “Urs” do not, after all, exist. The Ur-meter, the Ur-kilogram, the Ur-charge are all three as non-existent as the Ur-Second, dethroned 105 years ago by Albert Einstein, and the “Ur-Pound,” dethroned almost 350 years ago and proven to be nonexistent by Isaac Newton.
You might expect an excited reaction to the new elimination of three “Urs”, but my work has been met with silence. In one way this might seem surprising, since popular opinion holds that new findings are automatically embraced, since new equipment can be built and new money can be made. But there are always the old manufacturers, as it were. Something radically unexpected is never accepted without delay.
No doubt you are skeptical here: “Three major new things and no response” is implausible. Surely such a major offering of revisionist “new science” must be crazy? No one has shown so up until now — yet I hope this “counter-reaction” will come soon. For the present confession is not meant as a bid for scientific recognition with three grand new theorems L, M, Ch as you might expect. On the contrary, I do not like these results: I wish them to be proven wrong.
The key word is “LHC”, the Large Hadron Collider, on line now: the biggest machine in history, comparable to the pyramids, the largest concerted endeavor of humanity of the past. The LHC cost about ten billion dollars and like the interior of the pyramids is well protected, and is located hundreds of feet underground, underneath CERN and adjacent to UNO. Almost no one is afraid of it except me.
Of course I am not the only critic of the LHC, but while the others speak of “possibilities” I speak of “proven probabilities” which is a different matter. Specifically, I have been saying for 4 years: “You have to stop immediately until your safety has been assessed in a scientific safety conference.” And for a whole year now, a German court has suggested the same thing — but no one in the public is informed of this, except the profession of medical laboratory assistants, a member of which filed the suit in question.
This silence has to do with the logic of the media that I find so difficult to understand. I here follow the advice of a member of the media by stating my case in front of you in the simplest and most understandable way: Why should such a beautiful experiment, the most expensive in history, be delayed even briefly for a conference about “mini black holes” to take place? You guess right: because of my Telemach. Like Diogenes basking in the sun in his town in Ancient Greece and asking Alexander the Great to move out of the way to let the sunshine reach him, this is bound to be thought crazy.
At this point my speech in defense of the planet begins with Telemach in the witness stand. L-M-Ch are the crucial new letters added to Einstein’s T. T means that the Time registered downstairs in a long vertical rocketship, that is in constant acceleration in outer space, is slowed-down compared to the tip. Here I skip the proportionally enlarged L (for Length) and the proportionally reduced M (for Mass) and concentrate on the proportionally reduced Ch, which stands for Charge. My third new claim is that charge is not conserved in nature, just as the unit of time is not fixed.
This of course must seem absolutely ridiculous: Or so almost every physicist must feel, after almost two centuries in which science has taught that the opposite holds true. And if this tail of Telemach, the claim that Ch is not constant, is false, will the Large Hadron Collider experiment (LHC) at Geneva then be predictably safe from my point of view? The answer is Yes.
Are well-known textbooks not a stronger guarantee of truth than a single man’s proof — even if the latter is as youthful and old as Telemachus? I admit that this rule ordinarily holds true but, on the other hand, young David, sculptured by Michelangelo, still proudly exhibits his nakedness – and so at this moment does young Telemach.
What he stands up against is a most “noble” mathematical result accepted for almost two centuries. This says in its current physical application that if you have managed to put a given charge (think of an electron) into a bounded surface (a closed sack of any shape), then there is no way to diminish the sack’s attractive power on another sack containing the opposite charge (a positron, say) no matter how you might internally displace the charge in your sack: “The number of field lines leaving the sack is always constant.”
Two famous 19th century mathematicians, Gauss and Stokes, demonstrated this and their proof holds up to this day in the opinion of the highest-ranking specialists in the field, as I was told by one of them who quoted Robert M. Wald’s masterly book “General Relativity” of 1984 (see pages 432 – 434). Gauss’ and Stokes’ result remains authoritative – but no one can blame them for not yet knowing about black holes.
Black holes thus are the magic word. The name is the brainchild of my late friend John Wheeler (and at the same time that of an ancient farm near my University of Tübingen called “Schwärzloch”). The issue is about “my black holes” versus ”their black holes,” David against Goliath. The new knowledge revealed by Telemach on the one hand and the teaching of the better part of a century on the other are pitted against each other.
The Ch of TelemaCh says, applied to black holes, that any charge eaten by a black hole disappears. Therefore if you put a tiny black hole into the above sack along with the charge, Gauss and Stokes remain valid until you bring the charge close to the black hole and even let it fall down towards its surface. Then the sack becomes totally uncharged by virtue of Telemach, Gauss and Stokes notwithstanding.
Yet this is so of course only if Telemach is valid — the vigorous youth brought to life in Michelangelo’s David: “David versus Goliath or Telemach versus the suitors at CERN.” The CERNians by their openly ignoring Telemach insist that Penelope – their beautiful “black-hole factory LHC” as they call her with affection – belongs solely to them as their property. Telemach objects along with his father.
Is the whole world watching breathlessly? Not at all: The suitors — CERN (forgive me for the indictment before I have clinched the case) — do not want the world to know that they are in trouble. Even the United Nations Security Council – located not far from CERN with a sister organization that is honored with an “observer status” at CERN – stands firmly on the suitors’ side. Therefore the media of the planet keep strict silence. The fact that on September 10, 2008, more than 500 international newspapers reported on my engagement with CERN is forgotten.
But suppose Telemach were true – then the miniblack holes they hope to produce at CERN can, # 1, not even be detected at CERN. And # 2, when eventually a sufficiently slow specimen is formed amongst them, as will unavoidably occur in the long run, it will settle down inside planet earth to grow there exponentially as a mini-mini-quasar, putting the planet’s short-term survival to an end through turning it into a 2-cm black hole in a few years’ time.
This scenario is “absolute nonsense” as a scientist at CERN has said – if Telemach is not true. All I am asking my readers is to find out whether or not the youngster is right. In other words: to put a little bit of time aside so the question can be discussed by the foremost experts. This is all I have ever requested: the benefit of the doubt.
• After thus having given you the story, you may be curious for a bit more detail so as if this were a movie and after having watched it the audience could look at some omitted clips.
I stumbled across Telemach when I followed up – more diligently than this had been done before, perhaps – on the 28 years old young Einstein’s “happiest thought” (as he always affectionately called it because it was the breakthrough to his life’s work).
This had to do with his stomach, of all things. The story is well known among physicists. He was standing in front of the open window in the Swiss patent office in which he was employed, feeling an aching pull from the weight of his stomach after a heavy meal. And for some crazy reason he fleetingly imagined jumping out of the window right away – to experience in his mind’s eye an instant relief in his stomach. For he realized in a flash that his stomach would cease pulling down on him as soon as he was in free fall. And indeed, anyone in free fall like an astronaut in outer space is weightless in regard to all of his organs as we know today from broadcasts from the International Space Station. In outer space, Einstein knew, the exact laws which apply are the very laws of special relativity discovered by himself two years before. So he realized in a flash that he was empowered to solve the riddle of gravity.
The first thing he found is signified by the “T” of Telemach: Time and all clocks are slowed down closer to the surface of the earth compared to farther up – a phenomenon now well known from the operation of the GPS system.
• Regarding the other three letters of Telemach, it is easy to see that their variation could NOT be discovered at that time by Einstein or anyone else. But this new result takes a moment to explain if you allow me to try.
Stemming from this “happiest thought”, the variability of Time (the capital T of Telemach) is universally accepted today. The variability of the other three letters – L, M, Ch (if Ch is understood as a single letter like Chi in the Greek alphabet) – is new, as mentioned, the last finding being barely 5 years old.
Now you will ask me to show you why Ch (charge) is diminished by the same factor by which time is slowed down. For it is this letter Ch on which our survival depends. For although L,M,Ch all radically change the properties of black holes if true, Ch brings in the strongest alteration. While L renders black holes immune to Hawking radiation (which, in spite of its mathematical ingenuity in combining quantum mechanics with pre-Telemach general relativity, eluded physical detection for almost 4 decades), and while M reinforces this fact, Ch in addition renders any successfully produced black hole at CERN opaque to its high-tech detectors –so that their proud announcement of not having found any acquires a bitter taste.
But I charged ahead too fast with charge, perhaps. My revision of the accepted theory – the last three consonants of Telemach – implies that Ch is reduced in proportion to the “redshift” (reduction in ticking rate T or frequency) of light that emerges from the bottom of a rocketship, compared to that emanating from an equal source at its tip (or else from the surface of a gravitating body compared to that produced at a higher-up position). The emitted light down in the lower position has a lower frequency, since time T ticks more slowly there. This well-known fact is called “redshift”, since red light has a lower frequency in our visible spectrum of colors.
Now on a black hole, gravity is so strong that the redshift is infinite there, and the energy (mass) of any ascending photon approaches zero, without this fact being noticeable for a hypothetical local, equally slowed-down inhabitant.
Every material object is transformable into photons locally. So, since physicists like to think concretely, imagine a so-called positronium atom down there which can be “annihilated” into two 511 kilo-electron-Volt gamma photons and vice versa, a familiar transformation. Photon mass and particle mass hence are altered in parallel, if it is true that all local masses are reduced in their mass-energy by the redshift factor of the photons, as we have noted.
But locally, mass and charge do keep their fixed ratio as we know (since you can release the mass into free fall locally, and immediately it is as if it is in free outer space locally, even though when freshly dropped it is still momentarily indistinguishable from its un-released, equally motionless twin). So the virtually massless (compared to the outside world) positronium atom close to the surface of a black hole is equally virtually charge-less compared to the outer world.
This is the whole Telemach story put in the form of a logical proof. Sorry, if I went too fast. But if I was not clear enough – or not right –, this does not matter at this point, because to check on this result is precisely the task of the scientific “safety conference” asked for by the Cologne Administrative Court on January 27, 2011.
• So far, not one specialist has stood up to say, “I, the author of XX, contradict the Ch result (or the full Telemach” for that matter). They just refuse to answer, for some unstated reason. Presumably it is because if they did, then my planet-wide pledge to be criticized in a public dialogue or conference — which CERN abhors — would be fulfilled on the spot.
A maximally simple scientific question is waiting to be answered publicly on our planet: Is it true that clocks slowed down in gravity are larger and less massive and less charged? If so then the field lines observed on neutron stars are induced by more charges, although less powerful charges, on their surface than assumed so far. The theory of neutron stars has to be re-written, of all things. And the distance to Andromeda is really longer in terms of light-years, than currently estimated, and not just that one, owing to earthly yardsticks making for somewhat-too-long yard sticks in outer space. And there are some more and deeper implications (new constants of nature) as well.
By now you can perhaps understand why almost no one has wanted to hear all this so far. Imagine: “Gauss and Stokes toppled because of Einstein” more than half a century after his passing away. Almost every specialist is laughing at the idea, ready with a good conscience to die rather than believe such nonsense. But why is their innocent refusal to dialogue unethical?
Only because time is running out in the face of a huge machine that needs money and public support on a democratic basis dependent on the popular mood. If your credibility can be lowered at any moment, would anyone act any differently in CERN’s place?
Mr. Rossler
In your latest post you said that “It suggests that continuing escalation of the energy of operation of the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva, Switzerland, indeed has the potential of forming dangerous mini Black Holes which could consume the Earth.”
My question is at what energy level would the LHC be capable of forming these black holes that could consume the earth and once that energy level has been reached how many years would have to go by before you could conclude that the LHC is indeed not forming earth threatening black holes?
Mr. Rössler!
Your “mentor Konrad Lorenz” was a supporter of Nazi-fascism and a bloody racist. He wrote in 1940: “The racial idea as the basis of our political system has already infinitely done much in this direction.” With “this direction” he meant the eradication of what he thought are “asocial cells” and “ethical inferior”. Even in writings of the 70s he repeated this ideology. You are proud of him? You try to use his “authority”? Disgusting!
For more quotations and references see (in German language, but quite detailed): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Lorenz
Pinky, the gothic mouse
Dear Mr. Johnson,
thank you for your important questions. Only probabilistic answers can be given. I try to specify.
• “At what energy level would the LHC be capable of forming these black holes that could consume the earth?”
The probability that any earth-bound energy level suffices would be zero if black holes could be charged in accordance with the currently accepted (but disproved) paradigm. In that case, the unknown plausibility of string theory would put a – possibly quite low – upper bound on the hoped for success. Moreover, any formed black holes would not need to be feared since their electrical stickiness inside matter would prove their automatically likewise existing much faster natural cousins innocuous. Thus on the basis of previously accepted knowledge, CERN is safe regarding black holes. Even though 95 percent of theoretical physicist work on string theory as an insider told me, CERN and most applied physicists scoff at the idea but try to be polite and would, of course, be delighted if the experiment were to be successful in this sense. Having the string theorists in the boat greatly enhances their clout with the physics community.
Unfortunately, the new unchargedness of black holes (unless disproved after 4 years) possesses an inverse corollary: Charged particles (like the electron) can no longer be point-shaped because they would then be smaller than their own Schwarzschild radius and hence as black holes be uncharged. Therefore, “something” (call it “string theory of the future”) empirically prevents electrons from being maximally small in nature.
No one has currently any idea at what particle mass-energy the new empirically valid “boring-open force” in nature that prevents electrons from being point-shaped, sets in. This threshold for the onset of string-analogous behavior in nature can lie anywhere in between the Planck energy of 20 orders beyond the proton mass (at 1020 proton masses) which is forever unreachable by accelerators, and the thousand proton masses (103) already reached by pre-LHC accelerators. Since no one has any idea as to the actual value, all orders of magnitude within this 17-orders-of-magnitude range (between 20 and 3) have the same probability as far as doing experiments is concerned. CERN covers about one new order of magnitude – or more than half of one – at last year’s energy, which fact lets it achieve a probability of about one in 25, or four percent. This year, a quintupled effort in terms of the cumulative number of collisions to be reached is planned, setting-in in late March or early April.
This number – four percent – represents my answer to your first question. But tomorrow already, new evidence may come in from somewhere that either exculpates this energy range or drastically increases its statistical weight. At the time being though, the danger implicit in the current energy level of CERN cannot be considered to lie below the finite-percentage range, to the best of my knowledge.
• “Once that energy level has been reached, how many years would have to go by before you could conclude that the LHC is indeed not forming earth threatening black holes?”
First, no one knows how long it will take in case the LHC produces undetectable black holes until a “sufficiently slow one” to stay inside earth (slower than 17 kilometers per second) is formed. This time lag is the smaller the larger the luminosity (accumulated collision number) becomes. One can only hope that last year’s luminosity remained safely below that critical value, although even then a scant event could have been included in the distribution.
How much time remains then? Here I found (and sent to CERN 4 years ago and published soon after) a new physical result, the “quasar scaling law” as it can be called: Quasars in the sky, powered by a black hole of up to 20 billion solar masses, form an exceptional class of physical objects (“attractors in real space”). While beetles – a biological analogue – come in self-similar varieties scaling by about 3 orders of magnitude (between a stag beetle and a bed-bug), quasars are empirically known to scale by 10 orders of magnitude. Quasars grow exponentially inside matter (as long as there is food). This is known but unappreciated.
The new thing is that the hierarchy does not stop at about one solar mass, as it does empirically so far. Chaos theory allows one to understand quasars as “attractors in real space.” As such, their scaling law continues downwards. The point is that even the first mini-black hole getting stuck inside earth is most likely to implement the quasar self-similarity, starting to grow exponentially inside earth. The hierarchy is thereby added another 57 (or so) orders of magnitude. In other words, there is no more dangerous bug in the universe than the black hole attractor. To pull it inside earth is not recommendable. Nothing is more unstoppable in the universe (as long as there is something to eat).
Everybody knows about compound interest. Or the game of doubling wheat grains on a checkerboard. The little engine that could inside earth would not take long – 50 months? – to do its job. Thus after 5 years or a small finite multiple, the black-hole danger could be said to be over.
This was two maximally hard questions. Thank you. Perhaps the world will now see that it is worthwhile after all, to seek a way to prove at least one result, in the chain of bad news posed to us by nature as if as a trap, wrong. Nothing else was ever requested.
Dear Mr. Johnson, I appreciate your perspicuousness and kindness.
Sincerely yours,
Otto E. Rossler
http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/PetitiontoCERN.pdf; http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/apetitiontocern/
Mr. Rossler,
Thank you for your detailed reply to my questions, your response was very helpful, but I am still fuzzy on the first question about the energy level. You said that only probabilistic answers can be given with the answer being 4 percent but I wonder if an energy range in TeV could also be given as an answer.
Currently the LHC is operating with 7 TeV collisions. Currently CERN plans on running the LHC at this level until the end of 2012 at which point the LHC will be upgraded to run 14 TeV collisions. So could we safely say that (x) TeV level does not present a risk but (Y) TeV level does present a risk. If so what TeV level would you see as the threshold?
Also would I be correct in understanding that the five year period after which the danger could be said to be over would begin once the luminosity reaches the critical value?
Thank you, dear Mr. Johnson, for your very concrete follow-up question. I was too wordy above. What I meant was that at the current 7 TeV, we have a probability of between 4 and 8 percent that the deadliest virus of the universe (a black hole) settles inside earth to devour it in a few years’ time.
To make this danger real, however, one day of operation probably did not suffice (the Cologne Court thus warned in time). One year of operation — last year — may have been sufficient, two more years with an increase of the luminosity by a factor of ten will most likely suffice to consummate this danger.
But as we know so little, the possibility that the feared few percent have already been activated cannot be excluded. So an immediate promise of non-resumption until after re-evaluation is absolutely mandatory: from the point of reason, rationality and humanity.
This unless a reader kindly finds a loophole – in which case the aim of the safety conference will have been fulfilled without safety conference. I shall then apologize both happily and meekly for having warned without reason if in good faith. A whole planet is praying for this to happen.
Dear all
If the fundamental Planck scale is of order a TeV, as the case in some extradimensions scenarios, future hadron colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider will be black hole factories. (High Energy Colliders as Black Hole Factories, Steven B. Giddings and Scott Thomas, 2002).
This paper predicts Hawking radiation but other papers of various physicists do tell the contrary or let it open. For example “Black hole state evolution and Hawking radiation” (D. Ahn) or “Do black holes radiate” (Adam D. Helfer) or “On the Universality of the Hawking Effect” (William G. Unruh, Ralf Schützhold).
Sincerely yours, Niccolò Tottoli
Mr. Rossler
Thank you for that clarification on my question, that cleared it up for me.
Dear Professor Rossler, thank you, but I think you give me too much credit in your headline. I merely edited your script to ask if things could be explained in less technical terms for the ignorant such as myself, and less easily ignored by the mostly untutored hacks who report and edit science in the great newspapers of the world, excluding the great and justly celebrated Old Lady of Times Square, of course, whose flaws should be discreetly overlooked when she is in public.
I think your answers above might be incorporated into your post statement also.