A Journalistic Failure on Black Holes and the LHC
Technology Review recently published a summary of an arXiv paper arguing for mass quantization in black holes. The physics involved is evidently an ultraviolet catastrophe argument, which is fascinating in its own right. But the accompanying editorial commentary on LHC safety is a spectacular misreading of the science.
The article suggests the paper "once again raises the thorny question of whether the safety assurances we’ve been given about these experiments are valid." This is precisely backwards. The paper in question was prompted by the absence of black holes in experimental data, and the model in question implies black holes are harder to produce at the LHC, not easier.
The commentary goes on to ask whether "state-of-the-art theoretical physics is up to the task of making a trustworthy prediction that the LHC is safe," citing the paper as evidence that "our understanding of micro black hole physics is rapidly changing." It concludes that physicists are "strangely reluctant to engage" in the safety debate, "having ignored most of the question marks over safety."
This is nonsense. Physicists have answered this question repeatedly and clearly. The fundamental point is one of scale: LHC collisions reach 7 tera-electron volts, while cosmic rays—which constantly bombard Earth's atmosphere—reach 100 exa-electron volts. That is eight orders of magnitude difference in energy.
The editorial even hedges by questioning "whether particle physicists are in any position to make safety assessments in the first place, given that they have the most to gain from running these experiments." This begs the question: who else should evaluate particle physics safety? We trust automotive engineers with airbag systems, structural engineers with bridges, and aerospace engineers with spacecraft. In any domain involving quantitative risk assessment, we sensibly defer to those who dedicate their careers to understanding the system in question. Claiming to evaluate a complex system without understanding its underlying physics is not skepticism—it is simply uninformed.
CERN and independent reviewers have published a wealth of experimental and theoretical arguments on collider safety, and they have been consistent on this point. The LHC cannot produce anything that cosmic rays have not already produced—at energies up to tens of millions of times higher—continually and without incident for the entire history of the planet. To ignore these arguments, or to misrepresent a physics paper in a way that suggests increased risk, is journalistic negligence.
