Hi OML,

The below seemed worth mentioning

regards Jogg

PS I sent a copy to the all the other orgonomy mail lists including the
obrl in case they may like to comment
--
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==============================================================================

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SCIENCE COLLIDES WITH CITIZENSHIP AT THE SPEED OF
LIGHT?
>
>by Tom Atlee
>
>
>The following story reads almost like science fiction. But it isn't
>science fiction; it's real. It raises profound questions about our
>survival, and about our democracy.
>
>It is a news story from a reputable newspaper, a story about scientists
>preparing a leading-edge physics experiment. That experiment runs what
>appears to be a tiny risk of literally destroying the world. Several of
the
>physicists involved are suggesting that perhaps the group should think
>again about proceeding.
>
>A committee of these physicists at Brookhaven National Labs, home of the
>most powerful ion collider in the world, is gathering to make that
decision
>-- a decision with profound implications for the rest of us.
>
>Did you know any of this was happening? I certainly didn't. It makes me
>wonder if our values, interests and views will be adequately represented
in
>that committee's deliberations.
>
>The article states: "John Marburger, Brookhaven's director, set up a
>committee of physicists to investigate whether the project could go
>disastrously wrong.... John Nelson, professor of nuclear physics at
>Birmingham University who is leading the British scientific team at RHIC,
>said the chances of an accident were infinitesimally small - but
Brookhaven
>had a duty to assess them. 'The big question is whether the planet will
>disappear in the twinkling of an eye.'"
>
>Did we hear that right? -- One of the leading scientists in this project
>saying: "The big question is whether the planet will disappear in the
>twinkling of an eye." That is certainly one of the oddest sentences I've
>ever read. I'm not sure I'm comfortable having the fate of the earth
>depend on someone who could say such a sentence.
>
>But read the article for yourself. See what you think. Then let's stop
and
>reflect about this.
>
>_ _ _ _ _
>
>The Sunday Times of London
>

======
Send concerns to: President@... or http://www.senate.gov


Let us not forget that the boys with their toys at
Los Alamos did not know whether or not the world would be destroyed by
the
atom bomb when they set it off. Seems like a deluge of D.C. is in
order.

====
Big Bang machine could destroy Earth

http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/99/07/18/stinwenws02029.html?999

July 18 1999 THE SUNDAY TIMES --- BRITAIN

Ready for blastoff: a Brookhaven engineer puts finishing touches to the
ion collider

Big Bang machine could destroy Earth

by Jonathan Leake
Science Editor
A NUCLEAR accelerator designed to replicate the Big Bang is under
investigation by international physicists because of fears that it
might cause "perturbations of the universe" that could destroy the
Earth. One theory even suggests that it could create a black hole.

Brookhaven National Laboratories (BNL), one of the American
government's foremost research bodies, has spent eight years
building its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island in
New York state. A successful test-firing was held on Friday and the
first nuclear collisions will take place in the autumn, building up to
full power around the time of the millennium.

Last week, however, John Marburger, Brookhaven's director, set up a
committee of physicists to investigate whether the project could go
disastrously wrong. It followed warnings by other physicists that
there was a tiny but real risk that the machine, the most powerful of
its kind in the world, had the power to create "strangelets" - a new
type of matter made up of sub-atomic particles called "strange
quarks".

The committee is to examine the possibility that, once formed,
strangelets might start an uncontrollable chain reaction that could
convert anything they touched into more strange matter. The
committee will also consider an alternative, although less likely,
possibility that the colliding particles could achieve such a high
density that they would form a mini black hole. In space, black holes
are believed to generate intense gravitational fields that suck in all
surrounding matter. The creation of one on Earth could be
disastrous.

Professor Bob Jaffe, director of the Centre for Theoretical Physics at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on the committee,
said he believed the risk was tiny but could not be ruled out. "There
have been fears that strange matter could alter the structure of
anything nearby. The risk is exceedingly small but the probability of
something unusual happening is not zero."

Construction of the £350m RHIC machine started eight years ago and
is almost complete. On Friday scientists sent the first beam of
particles around the machine - but without attempting any collisions.

Inside the collider, atoms of gold will be stripped of their outer
electrons and pumped into one of two 2.4-mile circular tubes where
powerful magnets will accelerate them to 99.9% of the speed of light.

The ions in the two tubes will travel in opposite directions to increase
the power of the collisions. When they smash into each other, at one
of several intersections between the tubes, they will generate
minuscule fireballs of superdense matter with temperatures of about a
trillion degrees - 10,000 times hotter than the sun. Such conditions are
thought not to have existed - except possibly in the heart of some
dense stars - since the Big Bang that formed the universe between 12
billion and 15 billion years ago.

Under such conditions atomic nuclei "evaporate" into a plasma of
even smaller particles called quarks and gluons. Theoretical and
experimental evidence predicts that such a plasma would then emit a
shower of other, different particles as it cooled down.

Among the particles predicted to appear during this cooling are
strange quarks. These have been detected in other accelerators but
always attached to other particles. RHIC, the most powerful such
machine yet built, has the ability to create solitary strange quarks for
the first time since the universe began.

BNL confirmed that there had been discussion over the possibility of
"perturbations in the universe". Thomas Ludlam, associate project
director of RHIC, said that the committee would hold its first meeting
shortly.

John Nelson, professor of nuclear physics at Birmingham University
who is leading the British scientific team at RHIC, said the chances of
an accident were infinitesimally small - but Brookhaven had a duty to
assess them. "The big question is whether the planet will disappear
in the twinkling of an eye. It is astonishingly unlikely that there is
any
risk - but I could not prove it," he said.


=================

> [ Note: At the end of this page there are two Appendices:
> (1) a note from a British colleague verifying that the
> Sunday Times is a respectable paper in England and
> (2) a further description of the ion accelerator project
> at RHIC. - Tom ]
>
>
>_ _ _ _ _
>
>So now for a bit of reflection.
>
>I see two issues here. The short-term issue is: Should this experiment
>even be tried? To me the clear answer is NO. If you agree with me,
please
>share your thinking with government officials and any representatives,
>media, colleagues, friends and family who might care about how all this
>proceeds. I don't know where the leverage is in this, but if we all do
the
>best we can, perhaps in the next few months our views will reach someone
>who can have a real effect.
>
>But there's a longer-term issue here, as well. If the world doesn't
>disappear into a black hole, this other issue will come up over and over,
>louder and louder, until we deal with it or destroy ourselves. That
>question is: What is the appropriate way to make scientific and technical
>decisions that effect the broader welfare of society and the planet?
>
>It has been said that democracy is people having a voice in the decisions
>that affect their lives. The decision to proceed with this experiment
>could affect everyone. To the extent we live in a democracy, we should
>have a voice in that decision. And yet we find that science and
technology
>seem to be operating in a different world, far beyond the reach of
>democracy, with no way for our voices and interests to be heard.
>
>This isn't new. We've been climbing out on this limb for years. The
>Brookhaven Big Bang experiment just gives us another warning about how far
>out we have climbed. Science and technology have outstripped democracy in
>so many realms -- from global warming to genetic engineering, from
>telecommunications to nanotechnology, from Y2K to antibiotic resistance,
>from weapons technology to an endless array of other highly technical
>social problems.
>
>Many of these problems are hidden in shades of grey, making them hard to
>think about. The Brookhaven Big Bang experiment presents us with a
starker
>vision. If it produces the "wrong" results it could eradicate not only
>life on earth, but transform the planet itself into a super-dense black
>hole.
>
>We are seriously out of our league here. We're not dealing with a leaky
>roof, a sick grandmother or a war with a neighboring tribe. Such things
>are native to the level of reality that we're all familiar with -- the
>realm in which we've evolved to operate -- the realm of things we can see
>and hear and touch, things that please us or get our adrenaline running...
>things that we can handle with chamomile tea, hatchets, a friendly hug or
a
>primal scream.
>
>When I say we're seriously out of our league, I mean we're dealing with
>things we can't see or hear or feel because they are too tiny or too large
>or too subtle for ordinary people to grasp. I mean scientists are cracking
>genes and atoms in the lab -- and industries are pouring 75,000 barely
>tested chemicals into our environment -- while we walk through our lives
as
>if everything is normal. It seems to me that things are getting
profoundly
>less "normal" every day. We are in a very different era now.
>
>How is democracy supposed to work in this new environment? What does
>citizenship mean, when most of us don't even know that most of these
>problems exist, or how to think clearly about them, or have forums for
>meaningful dialogue about them? What does responsibility mean, given this
>new world we're living in?
>
>The hour is late. It is time to face these questions. The potential
>consequences of ignoring them are growing daily.
>
>As we try to deal with this issue, one pair of facts stands out:
>
>(a) We human beings are able to create immensely powerful collective
>effects outside of the realm of our everyday awareness and
>activities. Scientific progress, computers, telecommunications, technical
>mastery, mass culture, overpopulation and oceans of money are cranking up
>our ability to generate phenomena never before seen on earth, either in
the
>lab in or the real world.
>
>(b) We aren't yet very good at collectively perceiving, reflecting on,
and
>responding to the consequences of that immense power. The best we've got
is
>an endless battle among interest groups and among experts, which generates
>precious little wisdom. If we don't improve our ability to track and
>wisely modify our collective power -- especially in the realm of science
>and technology -- I doubt we'll last much longer. What I don't doubt is
>the competence or ambition of those who are currently tapping into the
>physical and biological fundamentals of life.
>
>Even if it doesn't all unravel in an experiment gone awry, our expanding
>technological power is becoming increasingly available to the dark side of
>humanity, empowering them to destroy the rest. It is also empowering all
of
>us who impact the world without even knowing it, simply by living our
>lives... driving our cars.. sending chemicals into the air, water, and
>soil... supporting increasingly toxic wars....
>
>It doesn't have to be like this. We do not have to continue this insane
>state of affairs.
>
>A number of brilliant approaches to this problem are in use today and more
>are being developed. For example, in Denmark, quasi-official citizen
>panels review technical issues to advise their government on what
>technology policy should be. They have proven that ordinary citizens,
>given adequate information and facilitation, are fully capable of coming
to
>wise judgments about how to handle complex technical issues. Experts play
>a role in this process, but (as Frances Moore Lappe says) they are on tap,
>not on top. Wouldn't it make sense for every technological society to
adopt
>similar practices?
>
>For more information about the Danish model, you can check out
>http://www.co-intelligence.org/S-ordinaryfolksLOKA.html. It describes the
>Loka Institute ( http://www.loka.org ), a group in Amherst, MA, who are
>trying to bring democracy and sanity to our scientific and technological
>decision-making. Their work is part of a broader vision, an exciting set
>of possibilities for making democracy strong, resilient and wise enough to
>carry us safely into our challenging future. For more on this vision, I
>invite you to read "Creating a Culture of Dialogue"
>http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_CultrOfDialog.html and other articles
>listed on http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html.
>
>There's a story about frogs. It says that if you put them in a hot pan,
>they'll jump out, but if you set them in a pan of water and slowly raise
>the heat, they'll just sit there until they boil.
>
>I suggest that it's time to jump out of the pot.
>
>
>_ _ _ _ _
>
>APPENDIX I
>
>>From Paul Swann <pswann@...>
>22 Jul 1999
>
>Hello Tom,
>
>You wrote:
>
>>Isn't the Sunday Times a respectable paper like the New York Times?
>>Or is it a tabloid rag?
>
>Yes, it's considered respectable...though like The Times it's owned by
>Murdoch's News International Corporation.
>
>To give both the Times & Sunday Times credit, they're the only British
>newspapers who've given consistent, and often thoughtful coverage to y2k.
>_ _ _ _ _ _
>
>APPENDIX II
>
>More on the RHIC, dug up out of the Web:
>
>http://rsgi01.rhic.bnl.gov/html2/guardian599.html
>
>The Guardian London, England April 29, 1999
>
>Ions in the fire
>
>Particle physicists are on collision course to recreate conditions at the
>birth of the universe, reports Frank Close.
>
>Hearts of gold will have an intimate reunion next month, their first for
15
>thousand million years. The event will take place in the underground
tunnel
>of the new 'relativistic heavy ion collider' (or RHIC) at the Brookhaven
>National Laboratory on Long Island, New York.
>
>Experiments will begin that may give us the first glimpse of what it is
>like inside a neutron star or a supernova and even what the matter that we
>are made of was like in the first ten-millionths of a second of the
>universe's existence. Physicists from around the world, including a team
>from Birmingham University, have been preparing for this moment for years.
>What is it all about? Strip an atom of its electrons and you have what is
>known as an ion. Do this to atoms of heavy elements such as gold or lead
>and you have a 'heavy ion'. Then hurtle beams of these ions together in
>head on collision and you have a heavy ion collider.
>
>It is all high speed where relativity rules; hence 'RHIC'. At least the
>name makes sense; but what is a collider like and what is its purpose?
RHIC
>is a circular ring of magnets over a mile long, which is small compared to
>the 17 mile long LEP (large electron positron collider) at Cern, the
>European nuclear research laboratory in Geneva. While LEP is designed to
>whirl beams of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, the
>novel feature of RHIC is that it can control heavy ions.
>
>The magnets surround a narrow tube, a few centimetres in diameter, within
>which the beams are whirled around the ring, one beam clockwise and the
>other anticlockwise. At various points around the circle the two beams
>cross one another and here the collisions occur.
>
>The beams are like diffuse swarms of gnats, whose individual members are
so
>small that the chances are that the two swarms pass clean through one
>another. The trick is to concentrate so many gnats (ions) into the beams
>that occasionally two meet head on. The ions in the beams are moving at
>near to the speed of light and whirl around the ring over 10 thousand
times
>each second.
>
>With billions of ions in each beam, collisions actually occur many times a
>second. By surrounding the collision points with sophisticated
electronics,
>it is possible to record the cataclysm as debris hurls across the
>electrical sensors. The resulting trails are like hieroglyphs that experts
>decode.
>
>What is RHIC hoping to reveal about the nature of matter? Matter on Earth
>consists of atoms whose electrons whirl remotely around a massive central
>nucleus. They cluster together to make liquids, solids or gases. Inside
the
>sun, things are different. The temperature is millions of degrees and the
>atoms cannot survive intact; the electrons escape from their atomic
prisons
>and swarm independent of the protons. This is often called 'the fourth
>state of matter', or 'plasma'.
>
>Although a temperature of a million degrees disrupts atoms, it is still
>cool on the nuclear scale. Protons and neutrons, the pieces of atomic
>nuclei, still retain their identities.
>
>In the searing heat of the Big Bang the fundamental quarks and gluons,
>which in today's cold universe are trapped inside protons and neutrons,
>would have been too hot to stick together.
>
>The sun consists of an electrical plasma: by analogy we suspect that in
the
>aftermath of the Big Bang matter consisted of a 'quark gluon plasma' or
QGP
>for short. Physicists believe that QGP might still exist today in the
>hearts of neutron stars which are so dense that a piece the size of a
>pinhead would weigh more than the Eiffel Tower. Even if QGP does survive,
>we cannot access it and so have to recreate it in the laboratory.
>
>This is done by smashing heavy ions into one another at high energies,
>squeezing the protons and neutrons together in the hope of making them
>'melt'. The quarks and gluons will then flow freely instead of being
frozen
>into individual identifiable neutrons and protons.
>
>Although the huge LEP accelerator at Cern is not yet able to control heavy
>ions, a smaller accelerator at Cern can. For several years physicists
>working have been smashing heavy ions in the hope of determining the
>conditions for QGP to form. But they have been aiming the beams at
>stationary targets. RHIC's head-on collisions will be far more violent.
>
>Cern can heat the ions to temperatures of a million million degrees and
has
>seen tantalising but inconclusive hints of QGP being formed. RHIC will
>increase this by a factor of 10 and should take us into the weird world of
>the quark gluon plasma.
>
>The challenge for physicists is not simply to make QGP but to record the
>fact. There is an analogy between particles escaping from the heart of QGP
>and those escaping from a more conventional plasma, such as is found in
the
>centre of the sun. Neutrinos are impervious to the solar plasma and fly
out
>from the heart of the sun; both neutrinos and also electrons and their
>anti-matter counterparts, positrons, can escape from within a QGP. So by
>detecting electrons and positrons we are effectively looking into the
heart
>of the QGP by analogy with the way that by detecting neutrinos we can look
>into the heart of the sun.
>
>There are other tests that can be made. So-called 'strange' particles are
>expected to increase while production of the charmed 'psi' particles
should
>become rarer. The measurements at Cern do show such behaviours but the
>energy of the collisions appears to be just on the threshold for making
>QGP. These discoveries are suggestive and raise excitement as to what the
>higher energy experiments at RHIC will reveal.
>
>About six years from now the huge LEP accelerator at Cern will have been
>modified into a new form known as the large hadron collider, or LHC. In
>this new form it will be able to accelerate lead ions and to collide them
>head on at energies far higher even than those accessible to RHIC. At
these
>extreme energies, akin to those that would have been the norm in the
>universe when it was less than a trillionth of a second old, it is
expected
>that QGP will be common, enabling its properties to be studied in detail.
>
>That is for the future. For the moment, in the race to produce QGP, it is
>RHIC that has the lead chance to strike gold.
>
>
>Frank Close is head of theoretical physics at Rutherford Appleton
>Laboratory in Oxfordshire, currently on leave as head of communications at
>Cern. His next book, Lucifer's Legacy, will be published by Oxford
>University Press next year.
>
>
>Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * Oakland, CA

http://www.co-intelligence.org
http://www.co-intelligence.org/Y2K.html
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html