Heavy Ion Alert

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We urge the reader to consider the evidence below and its implications for great danger in operating LHC's heavy ion collision. For evidence of further contradictions from CERN's own physicists with statements of CERN's Safety Report and an outline of available doubts by physicists concerning the remaining assurance arguments, please see the report.

What are dangerous strangelet attributes? - As shown here - i) negative electric charge and ii) stability:

In light of the possible consequences of production of a stable negativly charged strangelet, we shall refer to such an object as a 'dangerous' strangelet.

R.L. Jaffe, W. Busza, F. Wilczek and J. Sandweiss, 
 ‘Review of speculative
“disaster scenarios” at RHIC’,
 Rev. Mod. Phys. 72(4) (2000) 1125-1140,  p.11 of the arXiv version.

Clearly, negativly charged strange matter would have disastrous consequences for any ordinary matter it touches. It probably could not be tolerated at any level on earth or in ordinary stellar environments.

E. Farhi and R.L. Jaffe, ‘Strange matter’, Phys. Rev. 
D30(11) (1984) 2379-2390, p. 2390, abstract

As shown below, CASTOR is the LHC's detector primarily for strangelets:

CASTOR is a sampling calorimeter, consisting of tungsten and quartz plates oriented at 45o to the beam. The Cherenkov light is driven by air-core light guides to the 224 Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs). It is 1.6 m long, with a diameter of about 60 cm and weighs more than two tonnes! It is in total 10 interaction lengths deep, with an EM section of 20 radiation lengths. CASTOR is the experimental tool for strangelets
From CMStimes 6 July 2009 
P. Katsas, ‘Strangelet hunt at CMS’, 
QCD at Cosmic Energies II Workshop, Skopelos, 
Greece, 25 Sep - 1 Oct 2005. 
Slide 32 from presentation here

According to both CASTOR theory and another CERN theory, strangelets could satisfy dangerous attribute (i) of negative charge:

Average characteristic quantities of Centauro events and Strangelets produced in Cosmic Rays and expected at the LHC.

Table 6.3, p. 112 
E. Gładysz-Dziaduś, 
‘Are Centauros exotic signals of the QGP?’, 
Phys. Part. Nucl. 34 (2001); 
also Fiz. Elem. Chast. Atom. Yadra 34 (2003) 565-678; 

See arxiv version here.

strangelets and MEMOs might be found in the final state as objects with baryon number A ≈ 2-40, Z/A ratio from ˜-0.5 up to +0.5, and fraction of strangeness within ƒ<sub>s</sub> ≈0.5-1.5.

ALICE Technical Proposal for A Large Ion Collider Experiment at the CERN LHC’,
 CERN Document codes: CERN / LHCC / 9571; LHCC / P3 (1995), 
Chapter 11 - ‘Physics performance’ p.189

Note that Z/A in range -.5 to +.5 implies a charge that is negative, neutral or positive.

Again according to these theories, LHC strangelets could also satisfy dangerous attribute (ii) of stability:

There are also predictions that quite small strangelets might gain stability due to shell effects [116,117]. They are called "magic strangelets". However, due to the lack of theoretical constraints on bag model parameters and difficulities in calculating coulour magnetic interactions and finite size effects, experiments are necessary to help answer the question of the stability of strangelets.

table 6.3, p. 112 E. Gładysz-Dziaduś, 
‘Are Centauros exotic signals of the QGP?’, 
Phys. Part. Nucl. 34 (2001) 285-347.  See arxiv version here

Strangelets and MEMOs could be stable or metastable objects and their stability, lifetime, amnd decay modes are atrongly parameter depemdent [96]

‘ALICE Technical Proposal for A Large Ion Collider
Experiment at the CERN LHC’, 
Document codes: CERN /LHCC / 9571, LHCC / P3, (1995), 
Chapter 11 - ‘Physics performance’ p.189

Note that MEMOs (metastable exotic multihypernuclei objects) are similar to strangelets, but without the clear associated risks.

CASTOR theory and the likelihood of strangelet production: 

’The University of Athens (Greece) in CMS’, 

CMS times 3 Dec 2007.  
See also podcast interview here.

’ P. Katsas, A.D. Panagiotou and E. Gladysz-Dziadus for the CMS/
CASTOR Group, 
‘Searching for Strange Quark Matter with the CMS/
CASTOR Detector at the LHC’ CMS-HI meeting.  
Slide 30 from here

 

 

 

© Eric Penrose | Email: info@heavyionalert.org

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This report is a revised version of 'How CERN Documents Contradict the Bases of Its Own Safety Assurances'

 t.i.w.i.p (this is work in progress)  >

Download the Report:'How CERN’s Documents Contradict its own Safety Assurances: Plans for "Strangelet" Detection at the LHC'