LHC Lawsuit Dismissed

[Kanastrous]

A federal judge in Hawaii today dismissed a lawsuit raising fears about Europe's Large Hadron Collider, on the grounds that she had no jurisdiction over the multibillion-dollar project.

In a 26-page ruling, District Judge Helen Gillmor said that the world's largest particle-smasher was not subject to U.S. environmental regulations because the federal government didn't contribute enough money or play enough of a role in controlling the experiment.

After years of construction, the LHC was started up at low energy on Sept. 10, sending beams of protons around a 17-mile-round (27-kilometer-round) ring of tunnels beneath the French-Swiss border. On the day after the startup, however, the machine suffered a magnet malfunction, and more serious problems cropped up a week later.

This week, Europe's CERN particle-physics organization announced that the LHC would be shut down until next spring, due to the time needed for repairs as well as the experiment's previously planned winter break.

The LHC, which is arguably the world's biggest and most expensive science experiment, is expected to extend the frontiers of physics over the next decade. It could help scientists solve puzzles about the origins of the universe, the nature of mass and dark matter and the potential existence of extra unseen dimensions.

But the plaintiffs in the federal civil case - retired nuclear safety officer Walter Wagner and Spanish science writer Luis Sancho - voiced fears that the machine could create black holes or bits of exotic matter capable of destroying the earth. Experts have ruled out such scenarios in a series of safety reports. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs filed suit in March, seeking a suspension of operations at the collider until still more safety reviews could be conducted.

Among the defendants were the Europe's CERN particle-physics organization as well as the U.S. Energy Department and the National Science Foundation. Federal attorneys argued that the court had no jurisdiction over the LHC - and ultimately, Gillmor agreed.

She did not directly address the scientific issues raised by the plaintiffs, but said that federal court was the wrong place to consider the legal matter.

Gillmor noted that the federal government's $531 million contribution to the LHC's construction budget was less than 10 percent of the total cost, which has been estimated at between $5.8 billion and $10 billion. She also noted that the federal government did not play a part in managing operations at the collider. For those reasons, the U.S. role in the project did not constitute a "major federal action" under the terms of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, she said.

The judge said that Wagner and Sancho didn't provide any evidence sufficient to show that the court had the power to rule. "Plaintiffs appear to believe they invoked federal jurisdiction by simply filing suit in a federal court," she wrote. "They have not met their burden of establishing that jurisdiction exists."

Because of that lack of jurisdiction, Gillmor said she would not address the other claims and counterclaims contained in the hundreds of pages of documents filed over the past six months.

"It is clear that plaintiffs' action reflects disagreement among scientists about the possible ramifications of the operation of the Large Hadron Collider," she wrote. "This extremely complex debate is of concern to more than just the physicists. The United States Congress provided more than $500 million toward the construction of the Large Hadron Collider. But Congress did not enact NEPA for the purpose of allowing this debate to proceed in federal court."

Gillmor's dismissal of the federal civil lawsuit does not affect a separate, though similar, legal action currently under consideration by the European Court of Human Rights.


http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/ ... 57536.aspx

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Gotta love the reasoning, though - we don't know one way or the other about its potential to destroy the planet, but in any case it's outside our jurisdiction.

[bilateralrope]

Gotta love the reasoning, though - we don't know one way or the other about its potential to destroy the planet, but in any case it's outside our jurisdiction.

So you would prefer the judge to spend a lot of time on the lawsuit when the eventual outcome would not effect anything ?

By having the decision based on jurisdiction she kept it to within her area of expertise.

[Kanastrous]

Gotta love the reasoning, though - we don't know one way or the other about its potential to destroy the planet, but in any case it's outside our jurisdiction.

So you would prefer the judge to spend a lot of time on the lawsuit when the eventual outcome would not effect anything ?

By having the decision based on jurisdiction she kept it to within her area of expertise.

I am not questioning the judge's findings, at all. And this is basically the outcome for which I was hoping.

I just find that aspect of the ruling a little bit funny.

[PeZook]

I found it far funnier that some random American twit thought that filing a lawsuit in an American court could force a European research centre to shut down its biggest particle collider.

[Tanasinn]

It wouldn't, unless the Europeans concerned felt cooperative, and since moron Jesus freaks aren't running the LHC project, they wouldn't.

[Sriad]

This is fairly easily adjudicated, actually:

IIRC, the probability of All Modern Physics being wrong to the extent that the LHC will destroy the world works out to be about 10^-19.

The approximate value of The World (current assets plus probable lifetime earnings of all currently living people, with a generous assumption of 5% annual worldwide economic growth over the next 60 years) is $6.15 quadrillion USD.

By the powers vested in me by The Internet, I therefore order the operators of the LHC to award preemptive compensatory damages of ($6.15x10^15)x(10^-19)=$.000615 to the world.

Individual plaintiffs are eligible for one six-billionth of this amount each.