LHC Safety and the Law

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by rpenner, Sep 23, 2008.

  1. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    or
    Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (1954, 1982) Three Rivers Press, New York. p. 349. ISBN 0-517-88440-2 14th Printing.
    (Which I have)
    Reprinted from
    Albert Einstein, "On the Generalized Theory of Gravitation" Scientific American, 182 4 (April, 1950) pp. 13-18
    (Which I have not seen yet)
     
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  3. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    • The criteria for introducing new evidence at the appelate stage is that it be new evidence. Here, all we have is a laziness (intellectual and otherwise) of the plaintiffs to look through the public documents at CERN.
    • How have plaintiffs recieved internal documents? Are these secret documents, or just public documents on the storage server? Are they the opinion and policy of CERN or a handful of researchers who just work for CERN? Where is the authorization in the Federal Rules of Evidence for these documents to be introduced? Where are these documents identified?
    • The criteria for saying an organization acted like a person is to show that the management of that organization moved as if one person. That people at CERN tell different stories is no surprise -- there is no thought police in science. It is far from clear that quote-mined excerpts from a decade of writings of hundreds of researchers in strained, and sometimes wholly artificial, readings appearing to conflict is evidence that "CERN has lied".
    • No source is cited for the quote “Strangelets will not happen at the LHC” -- The actual consensus position of CERN was entered into evidence by the US Government (not CERN) and is given in the 2008 LSAG-Report, section 5, backed by references of scientific observation and reasoning [11-21]. It is not a bare authorative claim. The document also gives a far better attempt to state what they mean by "strangelet" than the author of this paragraph.
      [11] H. Takahashi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 212502 (2001) and Nucl. Phys. A721, 951c (2003).
      [12] It has been speculated that if an unknown mechanism exists that could transport strangelets produced by an accelerator to the interior of the Sun, then positively-charged strangelets might also grow inside the Sun: A. Kent, hep-ph/0009130v2.
      [13] X.J. Wen, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A22, 1649 (2007), also available as arXiv:hep-ph/0612253.
      [14] Haidong Liu, Int. J. Mod. Phys. E16, 3280 (2008).
      [15] LSAG (J. Ellis, G. Giudice, M. Mangano, I. Tkachev and U. Wiedemann), Review of the Safety of LHC Collisions: Addendum on Strangelets, http://cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report_add.pdf .
      [16] B.I. Abelev et al. [STAR Collaboration], Phys. Rev. C76, 011901 (2007).
      [17] SLIM Collaboration, S. Cecchini et al., arXiv:0805.1797.
      [18] J. Madsen, astro-ph/0612740.
      [19] C. Greiner, P. Koch and H. Stoecker, Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 1825 (1987).
      [20] The RHIC White Papers, Nucl. Phys. A757, 1 (2005).
      [21] A. Dar, A. De Rujula, U. Heinz, Phys. Lett. B470, 142 (1999).
    • Reference [15] also expands on the theme with
    • The alleged quotes about the existing cosmic ray collisions in the Universe is not well-sourced, and conflicts in fact with paragraph 2 of section 2 of the 2008 LSAG-Report, which also cites cosmic rays 1000 times more energetic that the \(10^{17}\,\textrm{eV}\) protons which would recreate proton-proton collisions, ends with "This means [6] that Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth already – and the planet still exists." and paragraph 3 ends with "The surface area of the Sun is therefore 10,000 times that of the Earth, and Nature has therefore already conducted the LHC experimental programme about one billion times [6] via the collisions of cosmic rays with the Sun – and the Sun still exists." and so the claim of "millions" is not supported by the documents.
    • So with Einstein or with CERN, this Sanchovian author cannot be trusted to quote reliably and cite with specificity.
    • It is unclear why 'serious' has quotes about it.

    --- Break for Exhibits ---
    Preamble to Exhibit A:
    • So what is this? Opinion testimony from non-experts? That's not admissible under the rules of evidence.


    Exhibit A: This Page with the URL added and an uncited picture of the CMS on top. (No True Copy!)

    Preamble to Exhibit B:
    • It's not an internal document if these guys found it.
    • beyond the reach of cosmic rays may refer to experimental observations, in which case they are lamenting the sparse experimental record, not the failure of cosmic rays to achieve these energies.
    • Nothing visible supports the assertion that "strangelets" is meant by "exotic phenomena".

    Exhibit B: Unknown -- everything is blacked out except for a fragment of a pragraph which reads:
    Epilog to Exhibit B:
    • Calling the Department of Redundancy Department.

    Preamble to Exhibit C:
    • Not CERN, but one researcher at CERN. Not production probabilities but modeled detection probabilities contingent on production of hypothetical objects.
    • No evidence given that author can speak towards risk of extinction or what governments consider acceptable.


    Exhibit C: (presentation slides 17 and 18 from P. Katsas, Strangelet hunt at CMS QCD at Cosmic Energies II Workshop; Skopelos, 26-30 September 2005, http://cmsdoc.cern.ch/cms/castor/html/files/Strangelets_hunt_v3.ppt ) This ignores that the 65%-70% percentage are not production probabilities but detection probabilities contingent on the creation of hypothetical objects which are modeled on slide 15. This isn't rocket science -- it's Power Point.

    --- End of Exhibts ---


    Lawyerly ethics compel a lawyer to speak up when he has misstated evidence, just as the US Government Lawyers did when materially misstating the US costs of the LHC construction. Mistakes happen in the editing process, and you would be a fool to wait for the judge to point them out to you.
     
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  5. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    • Section III, at last. I thought we might be forever stuck on Section II.
    • The USA PATRIOT Act was never properly briefed in the original 2008 case or the 2010 Appeal, but only appeared as oral argument in June 2010. It wasn't even properly cited as relevant law for this request for rehearing.
    • Calling it new doesn't make it new. Calling it evidence doesn't make it admissible or probative evidence of anything claimed.
    • Potential victims only include all mankind in universes where any of the plaintiffs worries are the true laws of the universe, which plaintiffs do not and cannot demonstrate, so their claims of injury are entirely speculative and baseless.
    • I think it is likely that US Criminal law (Public Law 107-56, Chapter VIII, Section 802 "Definition of domestic terrorism." i.e. 18 USC 2331, Public Law 107-56, Chapter VIII, Section 803 "Prohibition against harboring terrorists." i.e. 18 USC 2339 and 18 USC 3077) were meant to be cited. Without a USC Title, these section numbers are meaningless.
    • No statute or case law is established where any operation of CERN is an "Act of Terrorism" -- the only demonstrated terrorism is the hounding of the news media of these various baseless fears, which was the alleged cause of one Indian girl's suicide. Indeed, Plaintiffs claim that CERN is not aware of any demonstrated mechanism whereby CERN's operations are unsafe so no act of CERN which causes future injury is foreseeable, and no element of the motive of an "Act of Terrorism" is viable.
    • What a curious claim that claimed statues automatically grant jurisdiction "as provided by law." The statues are the law, so if they automatically grant jurisdiction, it is curious that they would claim to refer to some other source of truth as to who gets jurisdiction. 18 USC 2339 (b) says: "A violation of this section may be prosecuted in any Federal judicial district in which the underlying offense was committed, or in any other Federal judicial district as provided by law." so plaintiffs still have not cited a law why the Hawaiian court has jurisdiction.
    • Having found the text to 18 USC 2331 (1)(B) nothing CERN does "appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping" and so as a matter of law cannot be terrorism. [*] The activity of searching for strangelets by some researcher does not imply that CERN as an organization "recognizes" that they exist in our universe or that they intend to form them. Neither does it imply that they are dangerous or that CERN expects that they are. [*] The footnote shows that my guesses were right, and the quote again shows that plaintiffs misquote and misconstrue sources like a creationist quote-miner. The quote is pieced together from fractions of 18 USC 3077 (1), 18 USC 2331 (5) and 18 USC 2339 (b). [*] It seems almost petty to point out that the activities are CERN are not "primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States" as required by 18 USC 2331 (5) (C) for that definition to apply. But as numerous people have correctly point that out since 2006, plaintiffs still don't get it. [*] More statues cited by the footnote. 18 USC 831, 18 USC 2332b and (this one I'm guessing at, since there is no content in the original) 42 USC 2284, none of which apply and none of which are part of the 2008 lawsuit.

    • The panel opinion did not concern itself with the USA PATRIOT Act, because those statues and any corresponding case law was not briefed with appropriate specificity in the March 2008 complaint or briefed for the June 2010 hearing. It only came up as bizarre ramblings in oral argument. FRCP 8 (a)(1) and FRAP 27 (a)(2)(A) requires that such grounds be briefed clearly and with specificity. Making vague noises about the USA PATRIOT Act which is no longer the unamended law of the land is not useful.
    • The actual section of the decision reinforces the rule-based viewpoint that the law of the case is
    • The Court will not reward Wagner for "new evidence" when his ignorance of this is his own doing, just as it won't reward Wagner with expert status in the field of probability, breathtaking as the scope of the "Wagner Principle of Probability" is. Mulish ignorance is to no-one's benefit.
    • No evidence has yet shown this 'mass destruction' and even if anti-terrorism law was part of this case, none of the plaintiffs claims amount to a hill of beans in the realm of casting CERN as the villain.

    • Wrong. Plaintiffs never demonstrated that even the USA PATRIOT Act, were it part of this case, allows extraterritorial jurisdiction over CERN or that it applies to the US funding efforts. They claim this, but do not make a case for it.
    • Wrong. They did not show that the any of the criminal statues apply, because they have no facts in evidence. In fact, should plaintiffs ever bother to serve CERN correctly, CERN will probably immediately sue for defamation of what are ultimately vile and baseless allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Since Sancho reposts this recent slur on his web pages, the privilege that protects statements made in the course of a court case does not apply.
    • Wrong. The exhibits are not in evidence. The purpose of the appeal is not to get a new bite at the apple but to show that the first bite was unfairly thrown out. Wagner has lost the thread of the case and each appeal ranges further afield and has less to do with the March 2008 case.
    • Wrong. Even if the exhibits were in evidence, they don't begin to show what Wagner claims for them.
    • Wrong. You don't tell 11 judges of the ninth circuit what they must do, you persuade them that they should do it in the interests of justice, and you build a case with statues and case law, read fairly and completely. This cannot be done with a quote-mining mentality.
    • Wrong. It is not the job of the Appellate Court to order the DOE (what about the NSF?) to do anything. The goal is to get the case back to a trial which was never had in District Court.
    • Wrong. It is never the job of the court to advance your political causes -- you have to petition those governments yourself.
     
    Last edited: Oct 23, 2010
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  7. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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  8. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Just a reminder, this case was dismissed in September 2008 for a lack of Federal jurisdiction because the only Federal Statue in the case was "National Environmental Policy Act. 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321-4347" and especially "42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(c)" which only covers "major Federal action" as defined by Federal regulations. The court also made clear that it had seen the letter from the Swiss Embassy disputing the service to CERN as illegal and no applicable laws were cited to make CERN part of the case.

    In 2008 the court also acknowledged that the Federal Defendants (i.e. not CERN) raised other arguments, which the court declined to decide at that time having settled the issue with NEPA analysis.

    But Plaintiffs still haven't meaningfully responded to the case or laws on paper and go tilting at windmills.

    They ask as if they think each appeal is a retrial, when only the narrow issue at stake is if the dismissal gets overturned.

    In August of 2010, the appellate court upheld the dismissal for multiple reasons:
    • That Wagner did not demonstrate as a matter of fact that the LHC would cause harm, nor did Wagner claim that it would -- only that there, in Wagner's words, was "potential [for] adverse consequences."
    • That Wagner did not demonstrate as a matter of fact that the LHC operation is under US Defendant's control, so there is no order that the court can make to the US Defendants that would have any impact on future LHC operations.
    • CERN, as was never argued against by fact, statue, treaty and case law, is not part of this case.
    There is no appearance of 18 USC 831 or the USA PATRIOT act or BP's oil slick in the decision because Wagner didn't properly bring them up as part of the case.

    So now we are going line-by-line through the Gish Gallop of a filing which is meant to be Petition for Rehearing En Banc, which is to say a legal brief of why the Appellate Panel screwed up some matter of fact or law that was properly before them and not itself a retrial.

    Hopefully, the court will take notice that a majority of judges did not call for a rehearing and we can consider this matter closed by the end of next week.

    So back to the petition....

    • In 2008, the District Court wrote: "NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare and file an EIS before undertaking any "major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment." 42 U.S.C. § 4332(C)." Nowhere in this document do they argue that US Defendant's or CERN's actions was a "major Federal action" so they are attacking just if their physics claims are right, which is not sufficient to reopen the case.
    • The case law for "injury in fact" with respect to NEPA was spelled out by Federal Defendants in their 2008 Motion to Dismiss, page 12 and the 2010 reply. Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180-81 (2000) and Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992). In contrast, this filing does not address those points.
    • The factual case for "injury in fact" is entirely based on non-expert Wagner's strained reading of documents not part of this case and his non-expert speculations on top of that shakey foundation. As the District Court wrote in 2008: "Conclusory allegations of law and unwarranted inferences, though, are insufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss. ... When the motion to dismiss is a factual attack on subject matter jurisdiction, no presumptive truthfulness attaches to plaintiff's allegations." Indeed.
    • Recent astrophysical results (see previous post) tend to rule out stable bulk strange matter.
    • Quoting Dr. Rujula who starts the sentence with "imagine" is no way to show the claim is non-speculative.
    • Reprinting some objections to footnote 2 which concerns materials not properly before the court:
      • "Dr. Rujula's" paper excerpt does not appear to be underlined for emphasis. There is no basis established for a Dr. Rujula being at CERN. The actual authors are: Arnon Dar, A. De Rújula, and Ulrich Heinz http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910471 and were at CERN during the writing of this paper, over 10 years ago. Plaintiffs lack foundation to quote mine the questions asked in the paper and ignore the answers. Under Wagner's own methodology, the "may" and "if" turn the quoted excerpt into sheer speculation.
      • Further demonstration of the plaintiff's inability to read the paper is in the scrambled scientific notation cut and pasted without corrections. The lack of effort that went into assembling this section amounts to contempt of court.
      • Also, the radius of the 'rock' is sourced at 100 m but argued without source at 7500 m.
      • Further demonstration of the plaintiff's inability to read even arXiv's website is that the Peng, Wen and Chen paper did appear in peer-reviewed literature in 2006. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0512112 Figure 4 indicates that it is a matter of speculation what the parameters of the universe are (even if the MIT Bag model is reliable in this domain) and that this paper does not constitute evidence for stable strangelets.

    • When he talks about stalking, weapons, and restraining orders, is he talking about himself?
    • Courts don't prevent crime, they punish for it. This is civil court, so crime is irrelevant. The word Wagner is looking for is tort.
    • Also this is US Federal Court and things like anti-stalking laws are often only governed by State Laws, like the California anti-stalking statues a judge criticized a prosecutor for not charging Mr. Wagner with. And so stalking is a separate crime in California. Violation of criminal law is an ‘injury in fact’ in Federal law, but a violation of a procedural law (like the EIS filing requirement of NEPA for "major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment" does not of itself amount to a ‘injury in fact’ in Federal case law. It's a piece of paper not being placed in a file somewhere, how is that an "injury" especially if the controlling statue and regulations don't even require its existence?
    • Talk about "[c]onclusory allegations of law and unwarranted inferences" ! Wagner has learned nothing since 2008.

    Also I wrote up some implications of the previous post for a comment on Starts With a Bang.

    • A neutron star mass was measured to high accuracy and seems to put it beyond the highest mass supportable if any of the hypotheses of kaon- or strange matter- stars were relevant to our universe. Like more conventional models of neutron stars, these objects have upper mass limits set by the equation of state of baryonic matter and tend to be denser and therefore more susceptible to collapse than conventional models. Without stable bulk strange matter, all the "LHC strangelet might eat the Earth" bugaboos are non-starters. Prior to this discovery, they were just ridiculously unlikely, poorly defined, unmodeled and baseless scare stories.
     
    Last edited: Oct 30, 2010
  9. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Exhibit B (source not previously known) is derived from the last four sentences of the abstract to

    Edwin Norbeck, Yasar Onel, Ewa Gładysz-Dziaduś, Apostolos D. Panagiotou, and Panagiotis Katsas "Exotic Physics at the LHC with CASTOR in CMS" International Journal of Modern Physics E 16 7-8, pp. 2451-2456 (2007)
    http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpe/16/1607n08/S0218301307008082.html
    http://cms.cern.ch/iCMS/jsp/openfile.jsp?type=CR&year=2007&files=CR2007_013.pdf

    or in quote mined form as "Exhibit 40" of the pseudo-scientific stylings of Eric Penrose http://www.heavyionalert.org/docs/CERNContradictions.pdf
    which is apparently where the weird black out in the "Exhibit B" came from.

    Far from being an "internal document" as Wagner (and possibly Sancho) claim, this was published and clearly available prior to the start of case filed in March 2008.

    Further, this paper exposes a second fraud upon the court -- CASTOR does not stand for the ungrammatical "Centauro and Strangelet Object Research" -- which is claimed in text introducing Exhibit A, but "Centauro And Strange Object Research" -- where strange means unexplained.

    The authors then go on to discuss a model of distillation of QGP (that seems to have a pretty narrow buy-in in the physics community) to identify with the unknown "strongly penetrating component" of high energy cosmic ray showers. This conjecture is the reason "strangelet" often appears in quotes or in a qualified context from these authors.
     
  10. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Alas and alack! Before I was able to finish my writeup of the further two sections and the various ways in which they fail to connect with verifiable reality or the law, the Court has ruled on the petition:
    From Case: 08-17389, Document: 41, Today at 9:07 am
     
  11. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    I've received some encouraging feedback, and so I guess I will continue.
    • Wagner forgets to be specific in that redressability was just one of the prongs on which his case has been progressively thrown further out of court. All of the prongs, from both September 2008 and August 2010, must be resolved in Wagner's favor in order for the case to be returned to Federal District Court in Hawaii -- where Wagner no longer resides.
    • Wagner's proposed partial strangulation of CERN's cashflow is not equal to controlling operations and no submitted materials or arguments make this case.
    • Going to the text of Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, we have that it is a fatal flaw to speculate on what CERN, its numerous funding sources which obviously go beyond just the European Governments, and possible new funding sources might do if the US pulls out of its agreements.
    • Even Wagner claims partial strangling funding would just delay and so is in no way equal to a permanent injunction of the controlling operator of the LHC. Such indirect and speculative chains of events leave the case far from a hope of effective relief.
    • Wagner doesn't cite any expert source or empirical model which claims the LHC is more dangerous at higher beam energy than now. Those claims are his non-expert opinions which are not part of the evidence.
    So this paragraph is wishful thinking from start to last.
    • In September 2008, the District Court Judge reasoned by statute, regulation, case law and simple arithmetic that no part of the US Government is required by statue to carry out an EIS with regard to the LHC.
    • Of course, no statute requires CERN to file an EIS.
    • Section IV at no point addresses the "Major Federal project" language of NEPA which means the 2008 decision automatically stands.
    • If this paragraph is meant to address the 10% rule articulated by the District court and the 10% parallel decision of the US Supreme Court in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife it fails for lack of specificity and facts.
    • It also fails as nonsensical apples and oranges since the total of all Federal funding where no EIS is filed probably greatly exceeds $531 million in every year. c.f. the Federal K-12 funding.
    • It also doesn't address the other prong examined by the District Court, namely that the US doesn't control the operation of the LHC.
     
  12. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Wait, so now we've gone from fears about the world blowing up, to claims that there's some sort of multimillion dollar injury to team Wagner?

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    He should probably be in court trying to shut down the Daily Show too after what they did to him.
     
  13. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    They don't defend as much as these guys!
     
  14. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry -- I don't see where Wagner says millions of dollars is a damage claim.

    The discussion of $531,000,000 is about the US-paid contributions to LHC construction costs over 1997-2007, which completed before Sancho and Wagner filed their March 2008 case demanding an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under NEPA and also demanding CERN (which as early as June 26, 2008, the Federal government pointed out there was no evidence of effective service which would give the Court jurisdiction over CERN in footnote 11 of Federal Defendants’ Memorandum In Support Of Combined Motion To Dismiss And Motion For Summary Judgment) provide a new Safety review which they did on June 20, 2008. But, as NEPA is a law, you can't just quote mine a single sentence to know if an EIS is actually required by law. So the judges looked at the whole of the statute, the federal regulations required by the statute, the history of the case law -- which many times says paperwork like the EIS and the desired Safety review is a mere procedural hurdle and not of itself a "injury in fact" to Sancho and Wagner, personally -- and the judges correctly point out that less that 10% of the $8+ billion dollar construction costs were funded by the US and the US has no control over operation of the LHC, which force the judges to decide that the LHC -- which straddles the French-Swiss border -- is not a "Major Federal action" and that therefore NEPA -- National Environmental Policy Act -- does not require an EIS.

    The figure of $133,400,000 is talking about a decision of the European governments which are actually members of CERN reducing their contributions over 2011-2015. It's only in the case because Wagner is trying to say desperately that LHC today with the 3.5 TeV proton beams is a different beastie than LHC circa 2016 with the 7 TeV proton beams. Since his 2008 case is about a funding decision made over 1996-1999, I think this is trying to unscramble an egg.

    The injury Sancho and Wagner flip-flop on is at different times (1) a whining about paperwork whose filing after-the-fact would not seem to have any effect on funds completely spent before the case was filed, (2) allegations that CERN intentionally wants to murder all of humanity but this they try to call terrorism when that law was not part of the 2008 case and they don't begin to address even the plain text of the statutes, and (3) that CERN wants to negligently proceed and ignore their concerns, even though the successful scientists state repeatedly that the concerns of the soi-disant scientists Sancho and Wagner are baseless and without scientific merit in light of empirical and theoretical studies. Clearly at least two of those theories require that CERN be a part of the case and the remaining one doesn't seem to rest on any legal right of the plaintiffs.
     
  15. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    "Ahem. Mr. Mandrake, this court will not tolerate any more of your shenanigans with the evidence disappearing like that."

    More like "Defenders of the King Features Syndicate". Nothing ties them together but profit and the suspicious Rick Gordon (1986-1987) who looks much like "Wheeler" of the Planeteers (1990-1995).
     
  16. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    Why is he suing in U.S. courts anyway? I understand that it may be convenient for him, but if he feels strongly then the thing to do is obviously to hire counsel and sue them in Switzerland. If your going to be a crackpot, don't be a lazy or a cheap crackpot, shell out for the airfare and sue in the proper court.
     
  17. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    CERN has legal immunity in both France and Switzerland. Besides, Walter is obviously much more familiar with US law, he'd be completely in over his head if he tried a European court. And he'd not want to make a fool of himself, would he.....
     
  18. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    • This paragraph starts with an unclear antecedent. In what sense?
    • The BP oil spill from Deepwater Horizon started on April 20, 2010 and was not part of the filings for the June 2010 hearing where it was first brought up in oral argument. “British Petroleum when they sought to obtain a drilling permit from the Marine Management Service, arguing that they should be exempted from NEPA because of the unlikely scenario of having environmental disaster and that argument has ..” while here for the first time they purport to quote the Exploration Plan, but only quote a news story with a sentence fragment which doesn't even hint at the methodology used to obtain the evaluation as “unlikely”.
    • The February 2009 Exploration Plan almost certainly didn't include the phrase “in our lifetime” in this context. You can look at it yourself by going to http://www.gomr.boemre.gov/PI/PDFImages/PLANS/29/29977.pdf or by going to https://www.gomr.mms.gov/WebStore/pimaster.asp?appid=3 and entering lease number G32306.
    • It's apples and oranges (or in legal jargon to suit Wagner's stylings, inapposite) to compare the DOI policy which allowed for “categorical exemptions” to NEPA-based rules, like requiring EIS filings, ( http://www.law360.com/articles/175351 ) from the September 2008 ruling that a project which sits on foreign soil, has over 90% non-US funding, and zero US Government control is obviously not a “Major Federal action” and that the portion of NEPA which requires the US Government create an EIS for “Major Federal action” does not apply. As CERN is not part of this case and not a US Government agency, it even more obviously fall under NEPA.
      [*] Trust Wagner to make unclear claims and fail to cite correctly. Wagner is either citing an opinion piece (not a scientific paper) Sheldon L. Glashow and Richard Wilson "Taking serious risks seriously" Nature 402 (Dec. 9, 1999) http://www.physics.harvard.edu/~wilson/publications/ppaper746.pdf where different prerequisite hypotheses are called "unlikely" or the opposite of something "strongly favour[ed]" or "exceedingly unlikely" ; or the Amici Curiae brief of 2008 (Docket Number 93) from Glashow, Wilczek and Wilson which goes on to point out that no evidence for strangelets emerged from RHIC; or the 2010 Amici Curiae brief (08-17389 Docket Numbers 18, 30) which was updated for the appeal to emphasize that the "exceedingly unlikely" proposition from 1999 that strangelets can be created at colliders like RHIC is still "exceedingly unlikely".
      [*] Indeed, recent astrophysical observations support and strengthen the opinion of the three Amici, who go on in the 2010 brief to point out that Wagner's misuse of the term "unlikely" marks him as a non-scientist.
      [*] In the footnote, the same February 2009 Exploration Plan is linked to -- the word "unlikely" is not prominent (indeed, I can't find it outside of section 7.1.2) and even if it is there in the context Wagner claims, Wagner did not demonstrate that BP lied by using unlikely. (Indeed, doesn't the cumulative evidence from all oil drilling rigs support the general proposition?) A much better case could be made that BP was not in fact telling the truth when they "certif[ied]" that they could deal with any spill.
      [*] Even more embarrassing to Wagner's law teachers is that the opinion of Amici (in 1999, in 2008 and in 2010) is distinct from the opinion of CERN. The Amici do not speak for CERN but for science. Here there is some evidence that Wagner is referring to the 2010 brief.
      [*] Nor is that the opinion of Amici evidence differs from a handful of researchers at CERN who co-author papers together evidence that either opinion is a lie or formed from non-scientific means.
      [*] Just like to the expert eye, the close collaboration between the small CASTOR team in publications cited, can be indicative of a eddy of thought less connected with the totality of the progress of science, so the expert is loathe to project the opinion of this handful on all of CERN. There are many reasons why CERN might want an forward calorimeter to look at long-flying components of glancing collisions, including whatever are the Centauros.
      [*] Telling, the 2007 opinion of the handful of researchers is not cast in stone, and in an interview with Alan Boyle of MSNBC, two of the authors state that they no longer support the hypothesis advanced in Exhibit B. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/04/5408660-physicists-get-set-for-little-big-bangs
      [*] And again, the 70% probability of detection assumes that the objects will be produced as modeled, not that physics supports that they will be produced. Probability is not Wagner's strong point.
      [*] Again, not new evidence -- just new to Wagner due to failures preparing the 2008 case.
      [*] "[Q]uite possibly" sounds theoretical, speculative and not credible, especially since no model of the event is given and no reliable methodology for assessing the claim is given.
      [*] The last sentence is repetitive except where they call CERN a "Company", which is Luis Sancho's phrasing from the Oral hearing if I recall.


    • The purported quote omits without notation the sentence "I am a Ph.D student at the Nuclear & Particle Physics department of the University of Athens, where I also obtained my bachelor and MSc degree." and so Panos Katsas is among the more junior authors of the paper quote-mined in Exhibit B.
    • Neither the paper from Exhibit B, or the profile piece in CMS Times gives an empirical or theoretical basis to believe in the existence of strangelets. So when we learn that the first two listed authors now have the opinion that the cosmic ray record does not demonstrate their existence, how are we to judge the one-time stated opinion of a junior member of their group?
    • As with the underlining purported added to a quote in footnote 2, there is no sign of the italics added.

    • One happened in US territorial waters under the Interior department -- another is conjectured to perhaps be possible to happen on the French-Swiss border.
    • One happened in a manner obviously consistent with long-accepted physical law, another is conjectured to perhaps be possible to happen but as of yet not shown to be consistent with empirical observations.
    • One failed to have an EIS filed because the Department of Interior had adopted a policy of granting "categorical exemptions" to the requirements of the law, the other was never subject to the EIS filing requirement that NEPA imposes on major actions which are Federal actions.
    • Oil has a long history of being studied and many mechanisms of how it harms life of Earth have been documented scientifically. The scientific documentation of the harm caused by strangelets is similar is size to the scientific documentation of transmutation of the elements caused by unicorn horn.
    • These "significant" differences suggest that the BP situation does not shed light as to the proper disposition of this case.

    • The first sentence is vivid, but based on nothing, when evidence and calculation is necessary to hold that opinion by a hypothetical expert witness or scientist.
    • The statement about the utilizable fuel of fusion weapons serves to completely trivialize the job of the bomb designers who seek to achieve yields close to the theoretical 6 megatons of TNT per ton of bomb, and by trivializing it demonstrate that Wagner and Sancho have no real understanding of it.
    • Is it true that Luis Sancho makes a living writing? I found that last sentence very painful to type.
     
    Last edited: Nov 8, 2010
  19. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,833
    • Neither the 1999 Dar, De Rújula, and Heinz paper http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9910471 nor the 2006 Peng, Wen and Chen paper http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0512112 paper referenced in footnote 2 demonstrate any part of the chain of reasoning to suggest that negative strangelets are stable and form at colliders or that any collider product poses a danger to the Earth. The are both speculative papers that explore ideas.
    • Neither paper reflects the judgment of CERN that the LHC is going to form strangelets.
    • Plantiffs do not explain why they say in paragraph one of section I that "This type of matter . .. no longer exists." if they now want us to "magine" that stranglets are stable.


    • Footnote 1 was a URL to a copy of the French letter stating what Wagner's $500 bought -- the delivery of an English-language complaint via means not authorized by law. So this is more evidence of a poorly edited draft being sent off to the court by Plaintiffs who insist that this is the most important issue ever.
    • Footnote 2 as just referenced above doesn't seem to make sense here either.
    • Footnote 11, the last appearing, ends in mid-phrase leaving us to speculate what marvel is going to be revealed on Google maps. That the US is on planet Earth?!?
    • So without support, we have more self-serving "[c]onclusory allegations of law and unwarranted inferences". You can't tell the court what to think, you are suppose to persuade them to see things your way. It's called building a case.

    • Defendant NSF will be glad to know they are off the case.
    • The second of the sections labeled II beats the drum a little on black holes, but it looks like plaintiffs have largely abandoned black holes, and completely abandoned magnetic monopoles (from paragraph 13 of the 2008 Complaint)
    • You can't be convicted of "Terrorism" by means of negligent acts. I've linked to the statutes (e.g. 18 USC § 2331) and obviously a hypothetical supervillan is only guilty of terrorism if that supervillan threatens or causes mass destruction as a means to get a government or population to do something. Proving negligence and/or recklessness would be the same as acquitting the alleged supervillian of any charges of terrorism.
    • If the lives of all Americans are equally threatened, then court doctrine says Plaintiffs have no particular standing and thus lack standing to sue. "..plaintiffs may not air “generalized grievances” shared by all or a large class of citizens." This is a matter for the Executive branch if claim is true.
    • CERN cannot be guilty under NEPA when the requirement is that the US Government file paperwork when undertaking a "Major Federal action." CERN and the US Government are different things.
    • The DOJ cannot be guilty under NEPA when the requirement is that the US Government file paperwork when undertaking a "Major Federal action" unless the LHC (owned and operated by CERN) is a "Major Federal action."
    • Footnote 3 is an unhelpful footnote on quantum mechanics -- I've tried reading the (1), (2) and (3) as something other than footnotes, but nothing occurs to me.
    • Ruling against defendants at the appellate level of an appeal to dismiss will at best return the case to the District Level -- in Hawaii. Having long since lost the thread of the case, Wagner has let the clock for proper service to CERN run out, and has wasted many pages on irrelevant side issues like the physics opinions of Panos Katsas and a garbled description of terrorism. The biggest issues -- how a 6-7% percentage of the $8 billion LHC construction turns the project into a Major Federal action, how lack of an EIS -- predicated on a favorable answer to the first question -- is an particular injury to Wagner and Sancho and not the whole of the world, how the appellate court misapplied the law or misread the facts before them when they found many other fundamental flaws in the case.
    • Wagner is in no place to lecture the courts on the law, when the claimed titles in US law don't exist. 18 USC § 2331, 18 USC § 2339 and 18 USC § 3077 are meant, but never properly referred to -- especially in the 2008 Complaint which sets the law of the case to be National Environmental Policy Act. 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321-4347.
    • Wagner is free to petition the Governments himself -- the US Court has no reason to.
    • The French and Swiss Governments are not ignorant of CERN's activities. They endorse them.
    • And yes, it looks like Wagner signed Luis Sancho's name on the (recently denied) Petition for Rehearing En Banc.

    OK, this is over for now since November 5 brought a complete and utter rejection of this filing. Thank you for your patience. Rule 13 of the Supreme Court gives 90 days for the filing of a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, which is an exceedingly formal document that can't be home assembled with the level of skill show in this filing. So this matter isn't truly dead until the early February 2011 deadline passes.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/ctrules/2010RulesoftheCourt.pdf

    Of course Wagner's flagging case isn't helped by the this month's successful lead-lead collisions at the LHC.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...der-creates-mini-Big-Bang-with-lead-ions.html

    Or by the observation of neutron stars too heavy to be held up if bulk strange matter were stable.

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7319/abs/nature09466.html

    And Eric Penrose's new site just plays up the pseudo science more with the same tired techniques of quote-mining materials they show no hope of understanding. It's creationists and Luddites in love.

    Now Wagner has nothing to complain about since I presented his fractured filing in toto, verbatim. If there are five sentences in it that aren't rubbish, I can't find them.
     
  20. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198

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    One of the lead-ion collisions at the LHC

    "... The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons. … on 7 November. The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun. …For the next four weeks, scientists at the LHC will concentrate on analysing the data obtained from the lead ion collisions.

    This way, they hope to learn more about the plasma the Universe was made of a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago. "This process took place in a safe, controlled environment, generating incredibly hot and dense sub-atomic fireballs with temperatures of over ten trillion degrees, … "At these temperatures even protons and neutrons, which make up the nuclei of atoms, melt resulting in a hot dense soup of quarks and gluons known as a quark-gluon plasma."… In the state known as quark-gluon plasma, they are freed of their attraction to one another. This plasma is believed to have existed just after the Big Bang.

    … by studying the {quark} plasma, physicists hoped to learn more about the so-called strong force - the force that binds the nuclei of atoms together and that is responsible for 98% of their mass. ..."

    From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11711228
     
  21. prometheus viva voce! Registered Senior Member

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  22. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    You can see the level of detail CERN gets compared to RHIC, that picture of a QG plasma is much crisper and with a great many more tracks in it than the well known RHIC fireball picture.
     
  23. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

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    WOW, that's pretty cool stuff

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    The so-called God Particle is going to be found then?
     

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