And that because the experiment has been tried before millions of times in the form of cosmic rays
Not millions of times. Not even just billions of times.
From a back of the envelope calculation they’ve been tried >10^16 times a year.
For the past 10^9 years.
That’s 10^25 times
And that’s probably several orders of magnitude low.
So yes, treating it as something with a non-zero probability of destroying the planet is silly.
Especially because every model I’ve seen that says it’d destroy the planet would also have it destroy the sun. Which has 10^4 times the surface area of the Earth, and would have correspondingly more cosmic ray collisions.
I’m guessing you weren’t aware of all the technical intricacies of this argument nor the necessity of bringing in white dwarf stars to clinch it. Now, it turns out you got lucky, because white dwarf stars do end out clinching the argument. But if there’s a facet of the argument you don’t understand, or there’s even a tiny possibility there’s a facet of the argument you don’t fully understand, you don’t go saying there’s zero probability.
Although I had considered the fact that the LHC reactions are closer to Earth-stationary, I hadn’t actually bothered to try and find out how likely multi-particle production from 10^12ev+ cosmic rays would be, and I wouldn’t even be sure how to calculate that in, in order to find out how likely ~Sol-stationary production events are, starting from very high energy cosmics.
Not millions of times. Not even just billions of times.
From a back of the envelope calculation they’ve been tried >10^16 times a year.
For the past 10^9 years.
That’s 10^25 times
And that’s probably several orders of magnitude low.
So yes, treating it as something with a non-zero probability of destroying the planet is silly.
Especially because every model I’ve seen that says it’d destroy the planet would also have it destroy the sun. Which has 10^4 times the surface area of the Earth, and would have correspondingly more cosmic ray collisions.
Read page 848 of http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0912/0912.5480.pdf
I’m guessing you weren’t aware of all the technical intricacies of this argument nor the necessity of bringing in white dwarf stars to clinch it. Now, it turns out you got lucky, because white dwarf stars do end out clinching the argument. But if there’s a facet of the argument you don’t understand, or there’s even a tiny possibility there’s a facet of the argument you don’t fully understand, you don’t go saying there’s zero probability.
Voted up, because you raise a good point.
Although I had considered the fact that the LHC reactions are closer to Earth-stationary, I hadn’t actually bothered to try and find out how likely multi-particle production from 10^12ev+ cosmic rays would be, and I wouldn’t even be sure how to calculate that in, in order to find out how likely ~Sol-stationary production events are, starting from very high energy cosmics.