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Published online 9 October 2009 |
Nature
| doi:10.1038/news.2009.993
Updated online: 12 October 2009
News
Physicist working at CERN arrested
Postdoc faces terrorism charges in France.
French police have arrested a physicist working at CERN, Europe's premier particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, on charges of terrorism.
The suspect, a French-Algerian, was taken into custody by French police on 8 October in the town of Vienne.
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Cautiousness is good and appreciated but to arrest some one in case like this is not digestible. The information form above article says that are so many people involve in this project and data are published already. It seems that there are some hidden facts which are either unknown to author or he don't want to disclose them. It is also not believable that French police had arrested the duo without concrete evidence. Almost nothing is clear except news that two post docs arrested in suspect. This seems more like news paper information.
Rajiv Lochan Gaur
The theme of a scientist at the LHC being connected to a terrorist group was portrayed last Spring in the movie "Angels and Demons." The single scientist as terrorist story may be misleading, however, for it implies that CERN's leaders are blameless, i.e., "Angels."
But in terms of potential threats to the planet, CERN's management may itself function as a terrorist group far more dangerous than Al Quaeda, for they are subjecting France, Switzerland and the world to the risk of damage on a Holocaust scale through the potential generation of black holes and strangelets by the LHC. Some scientists, such as physicist Rainer Plaga, PhD (at http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1415v3) and Prof. Otto Rossler (see http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/CERNTRIGGER.pdf ) have warned against the reckless game of Russian roulette that CERN is playing with our lives.
Robert Houston
"But in terms of potential threats to the planet, CERN's management may itself function as a terrorist group far more dangerous than Al Quaeda, for they are subjecting France, Switzerland and the world to the risk of damage on a Holocaust scale through the potential generation of black holes and strangelets by the LHC."
Seriously? No one with any credibility takes these supposed "threats" seriously. The earth is bombarded constantly by particles orders of magnitude more powerful than anything the LHC can create. Every second of everyday. To compare the scientists at CERN to Al Quida is disingenuous, dishonest and downright rude!
My earlier comment quoted by Ian Brooks should have been better qualified. I would like to note that the leaders of CERN are no doubt well-motivated by good intentions to further scientific progress. They are in no sense conspiratorial or malicious. My comment was only concerned with the possibility of unintended adverse consequences from potential phenomena produced at the LHC.
Are cosmic ray particles striking the Earth's atmosphere the same as protons collided at the LHC? Some scientists note a crucial differerence: if micro black holes were formed in direct collisions in the collider, some would be slowed to below the Earth's escape velocity and linger, whereas the products of cosmic rays would speed off harmlessly at nearly light-speed. The cosmic ray argument has thus been shifted to dense neutron stars and white dwarf stars, but critics (such as Plaga) point to holes in each example. A safety conference including all sides should be called.