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Archive for the ‘existential risks’ category: Page 126

Jul 14, 2012

Jesse Bering Wrote an important Article in July’s Scientific American (“The Rat that Laughed”)

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

In it he reports on a gorilla in a cage who could be brought to phrenetic laughter by his human friend’s pretending to bite him into his toe. Quote: “If you have never seen a gorilla in a fit of laughter, I recommend searching out such a sight before you pass from this world.”

This is absolutely human behavior. If you know about the cross-caring theory, which explains how a young child interacting with his bonding partner is getting “moved” into suspecting benevolence shown towards him, then you realize that the same thing can be accomplished with a caged or non-caged gorilla.

I recently mentioned Margaret Howe, a pupil of my late friend Gregory Bateson’s. There are important insights about the mission of humankind on our planet and beyond (“galactic export”) that would make it a great pity if this “second level of human social evolution on earth and in the solar system” was going to be clipped.

I know I am being impossible, but finding outrageous things that tickle everyone in her or his heart so as to be moved is the real mission of science. I fantasize talking with a gorilla – or orangutan – about the long-stretched “toe” of the visualized Schwarzschild metric of a black hole, both of us laughing.

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Jul 13, 2012

I Thank the Planet for Tolerating my Warnings without Panicking

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2012/07/2012759585764599.html (at minutes 09:00–10:10, 11:00–12:03, 12:35–13:25, 16:08–17:13) gave me a world-wide forum again. The rest of the media and all colleagues of mine keep their mouths shut.

There is logic behind this schizophrenic world-wide attitude: In case the outlaw is right, one can later always claim that not the whole planet was part of the conspiracy of silence since one high-ranking international outlet reported. However, this strategy is not logical. For if I am right and the worst case materializes, the fig leaf will go under as well.

My class yesterday in which this riddle was touched upon in passing helped me see the mechanism: My results on black holes are too much advanced from the planet-wide accepted lore to be understandable to any colleague.

Imagine the “generic 3-pseudosphere.” Its lower-dimensional analog in ordinary 3-space, the 2-pseudosphere (the so-called Newton pseudosphere) looks like two trumpets with infinitely long, infinitely thinned-out mouth pieces, glued together head-on with their bells ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Pseudosphere.jpg ). This smooth monster has the same volume as a sphere of the same (maximal) diameter, and also the same surface area and the same (if negative) curvature: a kind of miracle. Hence the name “pseudo-sphere.”

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Jul 12, 2012

A Resilient Logic for Hazardous Times

Posted by in categories: complex systems, economics, engineering, ethics, existential risks, nuclear weapons, policy, sustainability
“If the rate of change on the outside
exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near”
- Jack Welch

Complex societies are heavily addicted to expensive, vulnerable and potentially hazardous infrastructure. We rely on a healthy environment for production of food and access to clean water. We depend on technological infrastructure for energy supplies and communications. We are deeply addicted to economic growth to support growing populations and consumption. If one of these pillars of modern society crumbles our existence will collapse like a house of cards.

The interdependencies and complexities of the system we call modern society has become so intertangled that finding a robust and simple solution to our problems has become close to impossible. Historically the cold war gave us the logic of a “balance of terror”. This logic, originally concerned with a balance of U.S. vs. Soviet military capacities, has lead to an increasingly expensive way of reducing risk and ever expanding bureaucracies to keep us “virtually safe”.

With the onset of a global economic recession, drastic climate change, deadly natural disasters, raging civil wars and diminishing natural resources we need a new logic. A set of moral laws for reducing risk and mitigating consequences applicable at a low cost from the bottom up of entire societies.

The concept of resilience is based on the idea that disasters are inevitable and a natural part of existence. Our best defense is preparedness and engineering systems that not only can withstand heavy strains but also absorb damage. The Institute for Resilient Infrastructure at the University of Leeds gives this definition of “Resilience”;

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Jul 8, 2012

Three Manifest Miracles in Physics: Qualia, the Now and the Higgs Field

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

The whole within which we find ourselves at every conscious moment is a miraculous gift that we take for granted in our culture. Everything can be understood inside the world, so we believe in science – except for the qualia (like color) and also for the Now which both are non-existent in physics (although this is almost never mentioned).

For 4 days now, something that unlike the qualia and the Now exists within rather than outside the scope of science is just as baffling: the Higgs field. As Matt Strassler explained two years ago, the everywhere constant Higgs field is responsible for the masses of all elementary particles – without an exchange of particles being involved — provided it will be discovered experimentally via the signature of a first field-specific particle. Thus an immutable constant influence makes itself felt inside creation for 4 days. The freshly discovered Higgs particle can be called the first unmistakable miracle found in nature, because it reflects the presence of an everywhere constant field of unknown origin.

The discovery comes with a price tag which is none of its own fault. The machine made to find it was designed so as to also generate a second totally new animal in the hope that at least one of the two would be found: miniature black holes. The latter have eluded finding so far we are told, but this is not certain: a double success cannot be excluded.

This is because a trivial new implication of Einstein’s “happiest thought” of 1907 revealed that black holes possess radically new properties. The latter cause black holes to arise much more readily and make them invisible to CERN’s detectors. In addition they grow exponentially inside matter. Therefore if one specimen gets stuck inside earth, the planet will be eaten inside out after an asymptomatic period of a few years, so as to assume the size of a chestnut while retaining its gravitational influence on the moon.

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Jul 4, 2012

CERN Found 2 out of 3 Needed Pieces of Evidence for the Higgs – A Bargain?

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

I congratulate Peter Higgs. And I ask him to forgive me that I raised the “cost” issue in my Aljazeera interview of to date. Not the financial cost, but the cost incurred by humankind: The fact that the doubling of data planned for the rest of the year (up to the scheduled pause for upgrading) will once more double the risk that the planet will be shrunk into a 2-cm black hole after a few years’ delay.

This risk is presently at about 4 percent already. Doubling it is a nightmare – unless a counterproof can be found. Until this aim has been achieved, I herewith ask Peter Higgs to join me in bequeathing CERN for a brief stop until the “doubling of the danger” has been shown to be inconsequential: because the black holes, to which CERN’s sensors are blind by design according to the published proof, have been shown to be absent since the proof has been punctured. The best scientist of the planet may need only hours if we are all lucky.

So far, CERN refuses to address the 4-year-old issue that only grew in strength – by admitting a safety conference. No citizen of the planet understands this ostrich policy. Dear Peter Higgs: will you help us all? No one else on the planet can.

Jun 30, 2012

CERN Refuses to Update Its Safety Report for 4 Years

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

I feel that this easy-to-verify fact is worth reporting by the media.

I admit I am biased because I found a so far un-refuted proof of a concrete danger of unimaginable proportions. So if I publicly ask CERN to update, everyone can say: “He writes this to get his will at last.”

Therefore I apologize for this partisanship of mine and ask other, less personally engaged persons to ask the neutral question of whether or not it is desirable to have an update on CERN’s safety report from early 2008.

Jun 21, 2012

Rest-mass Nonconservation in Special Relativity’s Equivalence principle and Ehrenfest Disk (Minipaper)

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

by Otto E. Rössler, Faculty of Science, University of Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076 Tübingen, Germany

Abstract: An unfamiliar result in special relativity is presented: non-conservation of rest mass. It implies as a corollary a resolution of the Ehrenfest paradox. The new result is inherited by general relativity. It changes the properties of black holes. (June 21, 2012)

Rest mass is conserved in special relativity in the absence of acceleration. Under this condition, the well-known relativistic increase of total mass with speed is entirely due to the momentum part of the total-mass formula, so rest mass stays invariant as is well known. However, the presence of acceleration changes the picture. Two cases in point are the constant-acceleration rocketship of Einstein’s equivalence principle of 1907, and the rotating disk of Einstein’s friend Ehrenfest 5 years later.

First the Einstein rocket:

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Jun 15, 2012

Play me the Song of Death

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

No scientist on the planet claims to be able to prove my “Telemach theorem” wrong (you find it by adding the second keyword “African”). Only anonymous bloggers express malice against it. The anonymous writers’ attitude is a logical consequence of the fact that CERN and Europe openly continue in defiance of my (and not only mine) results. This allegiance shown is no wonder: most everyone is ready to defend their own trusted government. And is it not unlikely indeed that a revered multinational organization like CERN should make a terminal blunder of this magnitude?

In the remaining half year of operation of CERN’s nuclear collider, before the planned 75-percent up-scaling scheduled to take two years’ time, the cumulative yield of artificial BLACK HOLES will grow by a factor of about 4 if everything works out optimal. So the cumulative risk to the planet will be quintupled during the next 6 months. This is all uncontested.

Of course, most everyone is sure that I have to be wrong with my published proof of danger: That black holes, (i) arise more readily than originally hoped-for by CERN, (ii) are undetectable to CERN’s detectors and (iii) will, with the slowest specimen generated, eat the earth inside out after a refractory period of a few years. “This is bound to be ridiculous!” is a natural response.

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Jun 4, 2012

Einstein-Rossler Theorem: Black Holes are uncharged and therefore maximally Dangerous

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

http://www.change.org/petitions/every-government-on-the-plan…en-refuted

Mr. Ben Rattray has enabled the planet to learn about the huge danger incurred by the currently running – and till the end of 2012 three times more black holes-spouting – LHC experiment. This despite the fact that CERN’s detectors cannot detect their most anticipated products and the fact that they grow exponentially inside earth once one of them gets stuck inside. In that case, only a few years separate us from earth being a 2-cm black hole.

Please, ask around whether anyone can name a physicist who contradicts the published proof (Telemach theorem: http://www.scribd.com/doc/82752272/Rossler-s-Telemach-paper ). This physicist is automatically the most important living physicist today. Finding him and learning about the strength of his argument is the only aim of the present appeal to every citizen of the world. To help in dismantling the danger before it has risen by a factor of three.

Thank you. He or she who can contradict me most is my best friend. And yours. Let us search for this human being.

Jun 3, 2012

Mini-Paper

Posted by in categories: existential risks, particle physics

“A Constantly Receding Mass at Constant Distance Has a Lower Rest-mass and Charge”

Otto E. Rossler, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076 Tubingen, Germany

This “extended gravitational redshift theorem” (EGRT) is unfortunately new even though it is true as far as anyone can tell up until now. The physics community is currently betting the planet on claiming that this result were not true. It would be gracious if a single physicist stood up saying why he thinks the theorem is not true. (For J.O.R.)