NewsHammer Exclusive If anything is clear 51 days into the BP Spill, the battle for the Gulf is turning into a war on the Gulf States, with surprise, even more oil releasing from BP's latest fix.

BP's cloudy crystal ball forecast of 60% to 70% success for the Top Kill, turned out to be a perfect 0% along with its first big idea, cofferdam containment that took 2 weeks to build and a day to fail while the slick spread from manageable to catastrophic. Now the new Top Cap from Cut And Cap that was supposed to capture most of the oil from the leaking BOP a mile under the Gulf, may have increased the escape of oil.

If BP says the new Cap or LMRP is working and latest numbers show 15,000 barrels of crude are being recovered daily by the Cap and riser assembly to a surface ship, a huge gain over the earlier 2,000 barrels a day recovery, spill cams don't show the expected improvement. A UC Santa Barbara researcher, Dr Ira Leifer, part of the government's new response team to estimate flow, thinks the release is much worse than before. Dr Leifer told The New York Times yesterday:

“The well pipe clearly is fluxing way more than it did before. By way more, I don’t mean 20 percent, I mean multiple factors.”

BP had said it expected only a 20% increase in flux or flow when the old damaged riser was cut off from the BOP to install the Cap. But now it seems the mile-long tangle of bent riser pipe that fell down to the sea floor from the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig but still attached to the Blow Out Preventer, was producing much more back pressure that substantially limited the flow of oil into the Gulf. Now the Cap has to take way more pressure and oil.

The problem is the Cap to ship recovery is already working at about maximum 15,000 barrels a day capacity and still more oil seems to be escaping. Within a week BP will employ yet another system to capture 5,000 more barrels a day. A ship connected to a sea floor manifold, lowered earlier to inject 30,000 barrels of mud and some Junk Shot for the failed Top Kill, will be used to recover more oil. BP could be containing a total of 20,000 barrels a day by next week. Admiral Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander, says new estimates bump total capacity even higher, to 28,000 by next week.

It might not be enough if Dr Leifer is right. The earlier government maximum spill estimate before Cut and Cap was 25,000 barrels per day. As discussed in NewsHammer, BP Top Kill And The Oily Bottom Line, the actual spill could have been 50,000 barrels a day. BP originally said the Deepwater spill was only about 1,000 barrels a day.

There's still no accurate assessment, but Dr Leifer's government team is working on it. Their latest high end figure is about 43,000 barrels a day. In any case the government has decided that a quicker turnaround and more capacity should be on site just in case. Due to arrive in a few days, an oil barge on the way from the North Sea is being brought in to transfer oil to the mainland. The big news for extra capacity is the deployment of a new oil/gas burner to be installed on a rig by mid-June. The EverGreen Burner is designed to vaporize the oil/gas for a smokeless burn and could process another 13,000 barrels a day. If everything goes right, by mid-June BP could capture about 41,000 barrels a day from the leaking Deepwater well. In part, that seems to depend on another better sealing replacement Cap now in the works to maximize oil and gas capture. Knowing BP I'd say that's tempting fate. BP should know by now that BP Science has been shown to have limits.

Even so, there are other major holes in the damaged BOP itself and they will continue to leak though at a reduced rate, even if all the flow from the 21 inch cut-off riser is captured by the new improved Cap.


The real solution is the Bottom Kill, when BP drills way down into the well itself and plugs it permanently with mud and cement, hopefully in August. That won't be easy. Not even with a backup relief well also being drilled now.

The Top Kill failed because the pressure from the well was so great the heavy drill mud wouldn't stay down. When pumping stopped, the 30,000 barrels of mud shot up and out of the well into the Gulf. Pumping in still more mud was considered, then abandoned by BP. It could have ruptured the well pipe and casing, which was not a standard BP design according to BP's drilling engineer, Mark Hafle, during USCG/MMS Joint Hearings on the BP spill May 28.

Try more mud deeper down?

It's going to be a long hot sticky summer.

In an update June 9, Dr Ira Leifer interviewed by Democracy Now! (alternate video link and transcript) ballparks his estimate on total oil flow to over 100,000 barrels a day. He goes on to say that earlier government estimates of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day were only low-end in any case, and there was no upper-end as data was too poor for evaluation. Yet somehow or other those figures were misconstrued and reported by the media as the full range of the spill.

Like the other unsubstantiated 5,000 barrels a day that was reported for weeks, all we've been hearing since then are more wrong numbers.


With just about everything going wrong with the BP Spill, now including the numbers, you begin to wonder if there's a conspiracy theory to cover it? Why didn't BP or Admiral Thad Allen or President Obama or Robert Gibbs at the White House brief the Press that this was clearly the low end, 12-25,000 barrels a day? Is fudging the numbers the only way to minimize the spill? Or is this the best we can do? Win the PR war? Everything is being done, is it? Not exactly.

This is what Dr Leifer says about the level of science going on, again worse than you would expect, and what the real potential of the BP Spill could be:

"During the event of a spill, typically, as we’re seeing now, the scientists are kept away. We have to stop the spill right away; we don’t have time to let the scientists come in and take a look. We scientists will come in after the fact, much later. There’s government support for a few years, and then it completely dries up. And little bits of research still continue, and new developments are made; however, these tend not to be implemented. . . .

"This reservoir is massive, and it could easily flow that kind of oil for the next twenty or thirty years, if it was left to go unattended. So the amount of oil that could end up in the environment if measures are not successful is at what I would call unimaginable. . . ."

See the US Government's Ongoing Response Timeline since the Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Fire, April 20, 2010.

More news and updates from Deepwater Horizon Unified Command.

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive 34 days and counting at the Deepwater Horizion Blowout. Just a stone's throw from the last major disaster to hit Louisiana, the FEMA/Bush relief effort before and after Hurricane Katrina rolled into New Orleans in 2005.

Apart from Obama's rhetoric which always sounds great, the biggest offshore oil spill since Mexico's IXTOC I, has blown away a big chunk of Obama's credibility, at least a million tons of media inspired paper since Yes We Can.

Obama Strikes Oil

Not only did the Obama Administration approve without any review, the BP permits for offshore drilling at the Deepwater site, a month before the BP accident Obama called for an end to the 20 year moratorium on offshore drilling in most US coastal waters. Or Blast foreign oil. Fire all torpedoes. Not the environmentally friendly Obama we expected, but the way out of left field way beyond more oil, the new let's go nuclear Obama. What? What happened? No nukes but go nuclear?

Time for a rethink. Here's half the answer, through the Wall Street backdoor to the dirty BP Meltdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Do we need the other half, a big bucks nuclear meltdown to stop being stupid about energy?

Back to square one: New offshore drilling on hold pending a 30 day review says Obama. Exciting turnaround, but a bit late for Deepwater spewing death in the Gulf. Then let's not get too serious in Washington when there's a slew of new permits to approve anyway, another 30 odd for more offshore drilling. Now granted according to The New York Times despite the new emergency moratorium. Not a real moratorium on drilling, just one for Public Relations purposes it seems. Frightening coming from the government, when as Obama said back at his Inauguration "Words mean something." Even old Deepwater-type do your own thing permits to be outlawed still handed out lately like candy thanks to the same loophole in permit regulations that covers exemptions like building outhouses from government scrutiny, that covered BP and Deepwater Horizon.

Shows you can't make policy when you don't know the industry in question. Whether it's Oil & Gas or nuclear. Same problem in Congress when lawyers and moneymen (the usual credentials for office) want to improve things or muddle into war. Worst of all, is the lame billions of dollars more of public money to be thrown at a nuclear renaissance because nuclear is the Green Option to energy independence and carbon capping. Wrong again, Mr President. Sorry. Stick to law on this one, like "certain unalienable Rights...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


BP or MMS in Deepwater

Though the old Obama surfaced for awhile and kicked some ass at Mineral Management Service which collects Oil & Gas royalties for DOI (the #2 US revenue source after the IRS) while awarding permits for exploration like it did for Deepwater. Obviously a federal department based on conflict of interest, money or safety, should be split. Obama ready to swing the ax, got a bonus when the Head of deep sea oil exploration, Chris Oynes, rolled out of his MMS office on May 18, a month after Deepwater Horizon blew up. Now a followup report on MMS shows just how cozy the relationship to Big Oil was, with freebies and other incentives for some staffers, some resigning, some fired, others up for criminal prosecution.

Hope some of the guys at BP's Head Office noticed that for a disaster of this size, fallguys are mandatory. So far there haven't been any pleas of Mea Culpa at BP. No they're all doing their best. Always have, goes without saying. It's all over the BP corporate website if nowhere else. No one at BP seems to be remotely responsible for what happened in the best of all possible PR worlds. An "incident" or PR jargon for accident we're investigating. We're on it. We'll clean up every drop of oil. There's that at least. BP is doing everything it can (34 days later).

What is BP Doing?

"22,000 personnel deployed"
Says the BP website. Yeah? Where? Whose personnel? BP's? Has everybody in BP London or BP Houston been schlepped over to the wetlands of Louisiana in Wellington boots? Doubt it. Maybe if you count the Coast Guard, NOAA, maybe 800 or so crew on 10 BP ships and platforms at Deepwater now, maybe a thousand BP engineers world-wide on cell phones, but there's still a big shortfall. Well, add thousands of BP made redundant Louisiana fishermen donating their time to lay boom and contain the spill. I guess you've still got to add the Louisiana State Legislature and Congress too, plus a few thousand concerned citizens wringing their hands in the neighborhood. Oh yeah, and just how many rapid response 12 man teams from BP in the Gulf? One fat guy?

"1,100 vessels on site"
Says the BP website. That explains it, not BP vessels, not 22,000 BP personnel, but BP takes the credit. Terrific PR!

If BP has bleached its record clean on its website, past and present, and in soundbites for the media, Obama has been in Make No Mistake mode, knocking BP for lack of transparency and action. It's BP's oil spill and BP will pay. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who might be the cowboy in charge of this BP mess, has his boot on BP's neck he said. But so far government heavy breathing hasn't been effective either on the oil spill or on BP. But Obama is gearing up for more effective invective with a new bipartisan commission to investigate BP. Good luck. Last time the EPA investigated BP in 2006 for negligence on the Alaska North Slope BP pipeline spill, BP buried the investigation with 62 million pages of documents. Blink, it's no typo. And that was for a small BP spill of 250,000 gallons.


EPA and BP: Clash of the Titans

According to CNN the other day, the EPA is on BP's case again, this time ordering BP to stop using a toxic dispersant that's been airplane sprayed over the gigantic oil slick, and injected by ship into the undersea plume, about 715,000 gallons so far. BP has disputed the order saying that Corexit is better than what the EPA has approved, yet BP had already purchased an EPA recommended substitute, Sea Brat 4. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of this less toxic dispersant are idling on the mainland in the hot sun, waiting for who knows what as the oil slick moves into the wetlands of Louisiana where it has already fouled 65 miles of shoreline there.

The injection by BP of Corexit into the undersea plume of oil, also ordered stopped by EPA, is potentially the more serious problem long term. BP has always minimized the amount of the spill, relying on surface oil slick and sheen to estimate the flow, ignoring the outflow from the ruptured riser and the Blow Out Preventer. That BOP malfunctioned and failed to stop the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform from exploding when a giant bubble of gas ruptured it and caught fire. The BOP a mile down on the seafloor still capping the wellhead still doesn't work. Otherwise it would have been possible to simply shut off the well.

Besides BP and the BOP, MMS is also in the loop for blame. It granted BP's drilling permit without any impact or safety study on a very deep well in very deep water, a mile down to the seafloor and drilling another 4 miles down to the oil. That's five miles of rock and water pressure on the BP oil under the seafloor.


BP's Top Kill Next

Stopping the leak with mud, cement and junk shot, what BP wants to do as early as May 26, chances are will only plug the BOP. Is that enough to stop an extremely high pressure leak? Probably not. It might reduce the flow. Though BP will try to go down deeper below the BOP and plug the well itself. If the well can't be filled with mud and cement, then a partial BOP cap could blow out of the water. Tremendous oil pressures, 5 miles of rock and water on the oil bed, could pop a few tons of plugged up BOP clean out of its way. Then we could have a much bigger eruption of oil, totally out of control. Deepwater could spew for months and destroy the the entire US Gulf of Mexico coastline.

The IXTOC I spill of 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico ruptured for 9 months before it was finally plugged. And it was a much easier to control 2 mile well in 160 feet of water west of the Yucatan. It wound up fouling Texas beaches 600 miles away.


Underestimating The Deepwater Spill

Initially BP claimed the spill was 1,000 barrels a day. Outflow based on surface water conditions analyzed by NOAA was revised to 5,000 barrels a day. BP disputed NOAA's figures. But BP said it was also impossible to measure the undersea flow, and the actual flow was irrelevant. Now BP is siphoning off about 2,000 barrels a day from the leaking well to a surface ship--and yet that's only sucked up a modest amount of what is still leaking out furiously. How wrong can you get BP? Try 50,000 barrels a day.

Other estimates in the NYT based on analysis of video of the leaks have gone as high as 100,000 barrels a day of oil/gas mix leaking, though as the flow seems to be about half gas/ half oil according to BP, the oil volume has been adjusted down to about 50,000 barrels of pure oil escaping into the Gulf per day or maybe twice the oil spill of IXTOC I.

So why does the still enormous spill look smaller on the surface water than it should be if we do have 50,000 barrels a day leaking? Enter Corexit. As a dispersant it acts on oil to break it down into small droplets by binding to the oil molecules. But Corexit is itself toxic according to the EPA. The resulting droplets although more easily biodegradable than liquid oil, are even more toxic to marine life breathing it in like fish do. Using Corexit doesn't reduce the amount of oil pollution. It's still there. Diluted oil should be less likely to foul shorelines and birds though it still does as we've seen from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's presentations, fouling 65 miles of shoreline so far while BP and the Feds dither about what to do next. In an emergency you've got to have action as Katrina should have demonstrated. Instead according to Jindal there's a terrible shortfall in equipment needed while some resources available are tied up in approval procedures so committees can sit around calling for studies before they approve anything Jindal wants to do.

Dead Zones Underwater

If there's some surface benefit to dispersants, injected directly into the undersea plume of oil there are other effects. It's happily preventing more oil from reaching surface waters, but at the same time this oil is now trapped under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico where it may persist for a much longer time. Oil under water doesn't biodegrade easily, in the absence of sunlight, mechanical wave action and bacteria. Huge plumes of treated oil from Deepwater have been discovered underwater 20 miles away creating giant dead zones. They too could move into ocean currents while some of the oil may be settling on the seafloor contaminating shellfish.

This trapping of oil probably occurs even without dispersant applied, as the BOP leak is a mile underwater, the deepest oil spill yet. As oil/gas mixture rises in extremely cold water, the temperature is so cold and the pressure of water so high, that there is already a tendency for oil to congeal and in the case of gases like methane involved, for the methane and seawater to freeze forming methane ice or hydrates as they're calling them on the news. Hydrates formed in the containment cofferdam over the BOP in BP's first attempt to seal the leak and the cofferdam was abandoned.

The EPA did order BP to stop such injections of Corexit. But BP continues to use it underwater and on the surface spill. If the oil spill looks better that way, appearing to be a much smaller spill, all the spilled oil is still there underwater or on the surface except for some natural evaporation of volatiles like gasoline in the oil. By underestimating the flow and stubbornly refusing to measure the actual outflow from the leaks, by using a lot of dispersant, BP may be counting on not only better public relations fallout from a smaller looking spill, but less liability if it comes down to eventual court actions including possible criminal charges filed by the US government or by other claimants for damages. It's cover your ass time at BP and in Washington.


The BOP and BP's Safety Record

Fixing blame might never happen. Who did what? Besides BP, Transocean the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that was destroyed in the accident, Halliburton which did the cement work on the well and the maker of the failed BOP, Cameron International, are blaming each other. Yet it's clear from the recent House subcommittee investigation of the accident that there were many defects in the BOP, from poor modifications to it to improper maintenance. Its failure has to be the main cause of the explosion and fire that killed 11 workers, and for the continuing disastrous oil spill as well.

There's a lot of anger and grief too as the oil washes into wetlands and birds, potentially a greater tragedy in the wings if the oil isn't stopped soon. So far BP has been getting all the heat, partly because of warnings before the Deepwater Horizon fireball and their US corporate record on maintenance and safety, the worst by far in the entire industry.


BP makes more money than 90 Oprahs in a bad year. $19 Billion profit in 2005, $25.59 Billion in 2008 and $13.96 Billion in 2009. It has pursued an aggressive expansion of its business and has never been much impressed with government meddling in its affairs. Being big is good and drowning in money helps. Its PR machine and army of lawyers are up to any environmental challenge as BP has demonstrated twice over the last 5 years.

Besides the 2006 Alaskan North Slope BP pipeline spill due to maintenance issues, BP's Texas City refinery explosion and fire of 2005 killed 15 people and injured another 180. BP negotiated a settlement with the Bush Justice Department of $20 Million for the first accident, and $50 Million for the second. Chump change, considering the seriousness of the violations that the lead EPA investigator Scott West wanted to pursue for the BP Alaska spill. At that time the EPA was considering damages of $672 Million from BP plus possible felony charges against some BP executives just for the Alaska spill.

If that was then and this is now, here's what the BBC reported recently on Deepwater:

In BP's 2009 exploration plan for the well, the firm suggested an oil spill was unlikely or virtually impossible, AP news agency reports.

Breaking News

CNN reports that 51 minutes before the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 20, there were several warnings of trouble on the rig. Witnesses said there were 3 ruptures of fluid and pressure on the drill pipe "unexpectedly increased".

Read The New York Time's account of the Deepwater Horizon's last troubled hours, based on reports from the Congressional Committee investigating.

In the Los Angeles Times, Kent Wells a senior BP Vice President said that the Top Kill could start Wednesday May 26 or later this week.

See the CNN animation of the Top Kill for what to expect if it works.

Live BP video of the Top Kill attempt, in some doubt until Capitol Hill pressure was applied, will be available on the BP website and CNN Live.

--Alan Gillis

Waiting For Tom Hanks

NewsHammer Exclusive No question the Large Hadron Collider scored a brilliant success with its first collisions at 7 TeV. Considering the extreme complexity of the detectors/ reactors this was a breathless performance. Soon after the 1 PM Geneva start, all four massive experiments were delivering data during the 3 hour window.

The first particle tracks and jets that were recorded surprised and delighted the physicists at CERN. At 7 TeV something new was going on that hadn't been seen before at any other collider, the signals of a New Physics. Though if you managed to sit through CERN's live webcast all day March 30, (video highlights: LHC First Physics) at least an interminable 27 km long, you still wouldn't have found out what that New Physics was or what CERN physicists were thinking. The only relevant comment I heard was that some muons were produced, and as they are decay products from heavier particles, some massive particles should have been produced, what CERN hopes for including the massive Higgs.


Great To Be Alive

With everyone so dazed and happy for the collider, by the time the CERN Press Conference started even the mostly 20-something journalists forgot to ask any new or relevant questions. It was one of those great cathartic moments where you're thrilled to have survived the biggest physics experiment ever when it's a hundred meters under your feet.

Confusing anyway to get focused on results with a loud echo for the first half-hour and more loud simultaneous French translation overlapping. Good thing CERN A/V wasn't running any important experiments. On camera four spokespersons and "two people waiting in Japan" weren't deterred. Another spokesperson for CERN PR coordinating the spokespersons and reporters while walking around the wireless mic kept tripping over the "two people" on the live video feed. "Two people waiting in Japan" who maybe had a comment? What were "two people" doing in Japan? What "two people"? The not just any "two people" turned out to be Sergio Bertolucci, CERN's Director of Research and Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer, but anyway they were happy enough splitting a bottle of 1991 red collider wine, the year CERN started thinking about the LHC.

The only memorable quote of the day came from Dr Bertolucci:

"The most exciting thing is we are just mapping the unknown. And so the most striking things will be the unexpected things we might find there."

Fabiola? Wrong Control Room

Though we've heard variations on this theme from just about everyone. For the "unexpected things" well they're unexpected but at least we should be told just how much time we have before they arrive. CERN knows more or less but CERN won't say in so many words. Not even what the March 30 departure point was or where's the blasted finish line. Is today a sprint or the stage one of the marathon? What stages exactly? 7 TeV doesn't really cover it but it sounds great, another collider record. Get the camera Fabiola!

Listening very closely that day some of us were sort of warned. Piecing it together from the friendly banter the LHC was still taking its first "baby" steps. Mama and Papa CERN were very proud. If there was a buzz word through that exhausting day, it was "baby" and double that for "new babies" from our excited Italian hostess, who was doing nearly all the talking for everybody in her webcast from control room to control room while two guys were chatting in a loud French voiceover, like at the back of a church. They had some interesting things to say if you could hear them. Thanks CERN A/V, a division of CERN PR, leaving us hankering for Tom Hanks in the final analysis.

Instead of a nice clean start, say 2 minutes of CERN's objectives for the day or a Press Release on that: how many bunches of protons, how many protons per bunch for this first 7 TeV experiment -- a lot of happy and excited people at CERN were telling us over and over again how happy they were for and hours and hours. Sure we're glad they're all happy. But being so very happy about all the ''new babies" the collider was having, our hostess and her physicists forgot what millions of people out there wanted to know. Was she going to bring them coffee?

Even 40 Live Status LHC Pages were no help with how many bunches were loaded into the collider that day: The CERN variation on Russian Roulette.

Bits of what we needed to know did come out in gurgles. ATLAS was having fewer "babies", only about 30 per second, while CMS was having 100 "babies" per second, and LHCb went from 50 to 60 "new babies", but we never did find out if ALICE got knocked-up down the rabbit hole until we saw the "baby" scan and hers were certainly hairier than any other "new babies", so Wow.


ALICE Hairy Baby Scan

The "babies" were collision events of course, 2 protons making one collision "baby", but the mother of all colliders obviously wasn't making "babies" the way she should. Where were all the other "babies"? Once upon a time CERN was forecasting 1 million collisions per second per experiment. Later on at the mighty ATLAS we got the new ultimate forecast: 40 million "babies" per second in each detector or times 4 making 160 million per second overall.


Squeezing More Babies

Evidently for now something was wrong. Not enough squeezing going on, or a low proton count. Both as it turned out, but you had to beam down via the Internet and watch the naked collider in action. The first clue was March 29, NewsHammer "CERN Fires The Collider" when only 2 bunches per beam made it into the collider round. Then bright and early March 30 there were 2 aborted ramps to get stable beams and with millions of people getting bored CERN tried square one. With the "baby" machine feeling testy, the absolute minimum 1 bunch per beam was knocked in instead of 2 or the nominal 2808 bunches per beam we were told to expect for years and years.


10 Billion Protons Instead of 561,600 Billion Protons

Then how many protons? The maximum per bunch is 100 billion according to CERN. Nobody said how many protons before, during or since March 30, but one of the two French guys in the background voiceover did mention "5 milliards de protons" or 5 billion, or 1/20 the nominal number of protons per bunch. So at most there were 10 billion protons that could have collided, or in overall terms the very rock bottom minimum or the lowest possible luminosity next to zero. The maximum intensity would have been 2 x 2808 x 100 billion for a very large number of protons circulating eventually or 561,600 billion. Versus 10 billion protons March 30, meaning the LHC achieved 1/56,160 of its potential in protons. Far less than that when it comes to LHC luminosity or the ultimate shootout at CERN's OK Corral.

During the webcast we did catch 2 other related facts. At 10 billion protons in the collider, maximum collisions in any one detector would be 11,000 per second where at CMS with the most "babies" there were 100 per second. ATLAS was aiming for 40 million collisions per second in any detector, but not today.


CMS On Top

CMS with the best score achieved 100/40,000,000 or 1/400,000 of what it can do at 7 TeV. Or at the per second OK Corral Rehearsal 200 bullets smashed into each other vs 80 million that will smash one of these days.

If all goes well late next year we might see maximum luminosity at 7 TeV or 400,000 times more collisions per second. In 2013 the ultimate proton fireball at 14 TeV will be over (no typo) 100 billion times the core temperature of our sun or ~ 10^16 °C.

Step 4: "Don't panic." Good advice from an LHC operating manual.

Hot enough for ya? will be something to brag about if there's anyone left at CERN.


ATLAS Trying For Better Days

So the big event March 30 was a very small physics experiment, though with some risk to the LHC machine. Because of the way CERN handled it and the media reported it, there's a general sigh of relief. We're still here, the LHC is safe. Nothing more to worry about after the Barnum and Bailey Collider Test.

Nothing wrong with going for the smallest possible test at 7 TeV. The smart and prudent way to go, except when you don't disclose the facts clearly and let people imagine they're getting the full Big Bang for their buck. Echoes of "There's one born every minute."


LHCb: What You Say?

Belatedly offering soundbites to the media on increasing collisions to 300 per second and a stab at luminosity, again after the brouhaha of March 30, is more you-knew-all-along sleight of hand through the back door for millions of empty chairs who won't complain. Making lame excuses before the collisions like the LHC would be colliding beams together over the Atlantic, in case of PR failure, was rather embarrassing, though a genuine attempt at some false modesty.

Canceling the Tom Hanks Show at the collider was the biggest CERN event. It finally dawned on CERN that the most important physics experiment since Trinity should be treated seriously. The live interactive video/data player for the webcast was first rate and another positive step. But being hustled into CERN's Big Top for a handful of firecrackers like this is it, The Greatest Show on Earth, is another sad comment on how easy it is to fool people.

You can make allowances for any live event, that the excitement overtakes the action and the facts. But CERN has had years to get the facts across and a week since March 30 for revisiting unfortunate false impressions. The postmortem CERN Press Release "Yes we did it" makes no corrections.

Of course there are no bragging rights if CERN simply stated in advance and during the March 30 demonstration that the 7 TeV test collisions were slated for about 1/400,000 of design efficiency. Then of course nothing of LHC safety would be proved either, except that the LHC is apparently safe to operate at an extremely tiny fraction of its potential. Now that the public is satisfied with safety CERN can go to the LHC maximum. Not right away, as the machine is unreliable. Failures since start-up including this week are common. Luminosity consequently has to be coaxed up in stages or there will be no more "babies"and no more collider.

Go slow is commendable to save the collider from another accident. But why not tell us? It was no secret inside CERN, just outside.

The biggest safety issue has always been the LHC's New Physics. Now apparent safety (of small numbers) of 7 TeV collisions will be taken as a proof of safety for what is to come.

Actual physics results even from March 30 may never be fully known. Dangerous sorts of Collider Objects might have been produced and might have gone undetected during the 3 hour run of March 30 of about 1/2 million proton collisions recorded. What will happen in 2011 in a proton fireball of 40 million collisions per second? When the truth is known, you can fly.


CERN's Smoking Gun

CERN had already predetermined that First Physics at 7 TeV would be 1 proton bunch per beam, 1 x 1 for the first three days of collisions, then a week of tests on multi-bunches, then a jump to 4 x 4 or 4 bunches per beam colliding for another 2 days. Then a bigger jump to 12 x 12 collisions for 2 more days. Then who knows? Though CERN hasn't been able to achieve these results due to ongoing machine failures.

Down the road: "BEAM PARAMETERS AND MACHINE PERFORMANCE TO BE REACHED IN 2010"*.

What we can expect now is less machine risk as proton bunches are gradually maximized in stages. It will take until the end of this year to reach about 800 bunches per beam out of 2808, another lucky fact blown out of CERN's windy webcast. Luminosity will still continue climbing next year to the maximum.

The obscure but essential CERN document (above) "Pilot physics run at 3.5 TeV"* should have been released to the public before March 30 or summed up in a CERN Press Release. Just a reminder to CERN that Press Releases are for the Press and provide the Press with tools, not more hot air to analyze. This short document would have made CERN's intentions clear on going slow (adding the rationale: the minimizing of machine failures and damage) and that would have pre-empted all the phony suspense of March 30. We could have got some more sleep instead.

The Future At 7 TeV

So we're not much further ahead in knowing what to expect from the LHC. The preliminary data and continuing collisions will give physicists some ideas, but data analysis isn't that easy. It could take months to see some New Physics papers on what happened.

Even so physicists will be reluctant to draw conclusions from a few collision events, which is why they want to see 40 million per second.

The funny thing is, because of the enormous amount of data these collisions produce, CERN's entire computing power can only record 2,000 events per second. So CERN will filter all data, discarding nearly all of it, hoping their filters will capture only the significant events, whatever they are.

For now and since CERN decided to blast us with Collider PR 10 years ago, we're in another prolonged state of suspense. When is the axe going to fall? Certainly it looks like there is a better chance for safety in terms of shutting down before hazardous events arrive, if data analysis can determine the next threshold where New Physics might spin out of control. Though there are no guarantees that we'll have any bumpy warnings. Just ask ALICE when she's 10 feet tall.


LHC News: Doomsday Postponed

As to the future, the only real news out of the Press Conference was delivered by Steve Meyers, Director of Accelerators and Technology who talked about some long term goals and difficulties, announcing the next planned shutdown in Autumn 2011. After a year of upgrades to safety systems for another $235 Million (not mentioned) the LHC should be ready to start 14 TeV collisions in 2012, though giant bending magnets will still be difficult to retrain, some 1/3 of about 1,800 (not mentioned) needing 25 to 30 ramps and quenches. The much fabled LHC might have to settle for 13 TeV.

*Note to CERN Techies: Put dates on all your documents. If Plan "A" is PR Mystification, your Plan "B" Common Timeline Confusion will mystify everyone else at CERN who needs to sift through a mountain of links to a mountain chain of documents that might save your life.

This is Part 7 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high energies starting March 30, 2010. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

NewsHammer Part 3: Higgs Discovered At The Large Hadron Collider / More Delays

NewsHammer Part 4: Scrubbing CMS Data At The LHC

NewsHammer Part 5: LHC Lords Of The Ring

NewsHammer Part 6: CERN Fires The Collider


--Alan Gillis

Nice Collider. What's it do?

NewsHammer Exclusive The big question today for tomorrow at the Large Hadron Collider is what happened to Tom Hanks? He's the guy CERN asked to push The Button at the last Collider Party back in 2008, the media splash before the 2008 accident. Tom said he wouldn't miss it and since then has been doing some serious hanging around.

Last year Tom rolled back in with his Angels and Demons tour at the LHC, trading a honey wagon full of A&D T-shirts for a million dollars of free publicity. The cover story for the secret button rehearsal probably, as there are a lot of buttons at the LHC including "retry" "ignore error" "clear error" and "kill"on the BadAstronomy Tour.

Though the big deal, rumor has it, was Ron Howard bringing along his lucky Happy Days lunch pail to sneak through CERN security, both in and out, in case of an A&D 2 where a mad scientist at CERN takes home some serious micro black holes, you guessed it, and drops off his less suspicious by several orders of magnitude Hannah Montana lunch pail at the Vatican.

Did CERN run out of anti-matter already? A lot of people will be disappointed, at least if Tom doesn't show up tomorrow. Who else would you trust to push The Button? I'd go with Kevin Spacey for an ambiguous real life touch, the slightly nervous button, the wisp of a smile, the you asked for it Boom so here it is.

Or Jim Carrey for some real collider frenzy.

In any case, don't worry about tomorrow. CERN isn't, CERN has it all figured out. If CERN loses we all lose. End of story. If CERN wins, CERN will be back to try it again at full power later this year, full luminosity as it's called but never explained by CERN on 20 websites promoting the LHC. Call it maximized beams at 2808 proton bunches per beam, the maximum bunches, the max protons, but all that still at tomorrow's half-power 3.5 Trillion Electron Volts times two for 7 TeV collisions. If maximized tomorrow (no way) that's about the momentary focused power of 1400 Nuclear Power Plants.

A la carte: Two Proton Potatoes Per Beam

Last December's record 2.36 TeV collisions were also not maximized, a paltry million collisions recorded by CMS. What we'll get tomorrow in terms of luminosity could be small potatoes again. CERN could inject as little as 2 proton bunches per beam out of 2808 as in a test today, March 29, 2010 at 20:40:17 (above image) with bragging rights as all flags turned green. Wow, Stable Beams, 4 bunches through the LHC, Beam 1 about 3000 GeV or 3 TeV and Beam 2 at about 2400 GeV or 2.4 TeV. So tomorrow looks suspiciously like a repeat of today except there will be collisions of a minor order while CERN claims success and safety with as little as 4 bunches. Might be more, though will CERN tell us how many?

Recall last time when CERN did not even accelerate protons in September 2008, using just their injection energy of 0.45 TeV per beam, not even colliding beams, yet claiming a great success on the non-accelerating non-colliding LHC and safety of course. Doomsday a bust. Collider a bust days later without beams.

Well impossible anyway with no collisions for one thing, and no danger at low power collisions when the Tevatron has been safely colliding (not official however) at 2.1 TeV, not the 1.96 TeV reported by CERN when CERN claimed its 2.36 TeV record this December finally. Go figure.

March 30, 20110: The Day Something Or Nothing Happened

So what will happen tomorrow? According to CERN's crystal ball, we will have safe collisions at 7 TeV. Take it away Tom Hanks: Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today. If maximum collision energies were tried at 7 TeV or about 75 times the power of the Tevatron, this could fry the collider and 200 journalists there for the worst thing of all, a PR disaster. If safe at low luminosity CERN won' t advertise that fact as it didn't in December at 2.36 TeV or more recently this month when CERN claimed 3.5 TeV test beams.


We could be left to assume (wrongly) that the collisions of tomorrow will be maximum luminosity at 7 TeV. Only a handful of science journalists with some physics will know what luminosity is, some won't ask and none will tell us, as they never have bothered before. It's not their responsibility to question the value of this experiment, just report what CERN says. In the end with 10,000 physicists, CERN must know what it is doing. Though it may be one of those quantum counter-intuitive problems. You think CERN knows but CERN doesn't. Or the answer is under CERN's nose, 27 km of collider built by CERN to find out what CERN doesn't know.

What happens tomorrow? If things go wrong, it will be all over eBAY at least:

CERN And Toyota Deals

Used collider with some front-end damage, about $8 Billion to fix. Original Toyota Accelerator Warranty transferable. New owner can sue.

The Giddings and Mangano Cosmic Ray Argument is finally being put to some good use. Micro Black Holes safe, Toyota Microchips not so safe. The mania for microchips has gone so far that the latest generation of micro-microchips relies only on a hundred electrons to push gateway data, too small to fight Cosmic Ray battles launched from Space. And by the way, what happens to all the non-radiation-hardened microprocessors and other electronics and equipment CERN forgot to shield or redesign at the LHC when the extreme ionizing including nuclear energies produced by the LHC blast the collider day after day? Your mounting radiation hazards suddenly discovered at the LHC after 10 or 15 years. In comparison Toyota Cosmic Ray bombardment is insignificant except for Toyotas.

What happens tomorrow? CERN tells us via the CERN cypher. Closer, closer and when CERN copy becomes a blur, read between the lines. The four major experiments will have webcasts, meaning from their control rooms, as the underground LHC is off limits during hazardous beam events, including the standard radiation events they produce like heavy X-rays for one type of trouble right around the 27 km ring, a consequence just of forced magnetic bending of proton beams.

Webcasts from CMS, ATLAS, LHCb, and ALICE, plus from computer central, the LHC CCC, CERN's main control room. Or in other words there will be collisions in all four main detectors/ reactors. So why not say so? Is it a secret? A surprise? Will Tom Hanks mysteriously transport from Arcturus, the movie, through the LHC Stargate from Lost to push The Button after all?

Why bother with this media event? Isn't this a science experiment? Even if there is no accident, no apparent trouble, we will see no results. It will take weeks to analyze computer data. That's all we have. No one can eyeball these experiments that will generate the momentary heat of our Sun magnified X times. No X value from CERN. The low power RHIC collider at Brookhaven produced 4 Trillion C or 7 Trillion F temperatures in a flash of fusing gold ions at a minuscule 0.2 TeV, or way hotter than the core temperature of our Sun or any star.

No CERN talking heads at the scheduled Press Conference tomorrow will know what happened, not even the CERN computer systems will be able to report on the production of new Collider Objects, like Black Holes or Strangelets, not in real time. If they are produced and if they are detected they might destroy Geneva before we get the computer data.

Why bother convincing us again and again it won't happen? Didn't we buy this collider? Didn't we pay $10 Billion? Why try to re-sell us on it? Do we have buyers' remorse? Do we need Collider Therapy? Just having some fun are we? Collider Roulette? Then what's wrong with the LHC? Why the endless sales pitch in the media from CERN? Every week The CERN News: Why We Fight The Collider War. Are we losing? What's wrong now?


Hey ALICE Call LHC CCC

Plenty if you look at the data to date. The CERN screenshots on this page from LHC systems performance since March 21, 2010 tell the story. Click to read.


Cryogenics Twilight Zone

LHC Cooldown Status since January, tells us of recurring cryo glitches in the same Twilight Zones, Sector 1-2 and Sector 2-3, or along 1/4 of the LHC ring of 27 km of wonky machine. Anybody notice? Nothing to worry about, but click on the screenshots to read the graphs and the comments from CERN Control Center on daily machine failures including unscheduled or real Emergency Beam Dumps.

Can't say I like the look of these dozens of monitors, at least the public ones on the Internet, that CERN uses too, that don't tell us or CERN of overall machine status. Unless they were on fire, they quietly say nothing you want to know Now. CERN had the same problem with access points where personnel didn't know if there were or weren't any hazards going in (kid you not) not even a Green-Yellow-Red flag system in place before the 2008 accident. Same thing with all these screens. How safe are we? Condition Red? Yellow? Green? How about a bright Status Bar on every screen? Flashing Idiot Lights? Automatic Woopee Cushions for all that collider control room fatigue.

How many bunches per beam? Actual luminosity per beam vs maximum? Actual TeV per beam though we have that in fine print. Graph the beams properly. Relying instead on a Fast Beam Current Transformer to graph Intensity on a shifting scale with tiny numbers? Re-jiggle that in your head? Ever heard of human error? Collisions when, where? See LHC3? What is happening NOW? Is this a $3.99 Collider at Target?

For some Keys to reading CERN codes on these screenshots of LHC1 pages see LHC Portal. Then CERN's own modest attempts. For ATLAS decoded and CMS decoded on SymmetryBreaking. For 20 pages of LHC Live Status starting with LHC1. And 19 multi-screen live views starting with LHCDataWide.

Watch Fire The Collider March 30, 2010 Live From The LHC

CERN webcasts from 08:30 to 18:15 CEST or Geneva Time or 6 hours earlier in New York or starting at 2:30 AM. Go to this CERN page for Twitters and Links to Schedules and Live Webcasts.

If we all make it through tomorrow, CERN has a series of cliffhangers lined up that will spook us maybe for years to come, all the way up to maximum-maximum 1150 TeV lead ion collisions maybe in 2013, after the LHC shuts down again for a year to fix problems not fixed yet for safe 14 TeV proton collisions and the 1150 TeV lead collisions. In September 2008 the LHC was on a roll and almost ready to go all the way CERN kept insisting, at least to 10 TeV until the $40 Million 2008 accident. Now a year and a half later it's another $235 Million to go all the way or maybe not, maybe if there's more money.

Get Stallone. CERN Wants Another Cliffhanger

Altogether we're another 3 years away from the original Stage 1 of the LHC experiment which is currently 4 years behind schedule.

Stage 2 is radiation hardening of equipment (neglected for 10 to 15 years) and moving vulnerable power supplies for more civil engineering for lots more money CERN wants (well over $100 Million) to bring the collider back to a Safe Long Term Stage 1. Stage 3 is to upgrade luminosity massively for way more power with 3 new and/or improved pre-accelerators for something over $1 Billion more. At least some old LEP equipment needs to be scrapped in any case, the LINAC and PS and the 6 year old SPS doesn't make the grade either if you replace the LINAC and PS. At least CERN isn't in a big hurry now. Buys us a little more time to freak out before 14 Terra Firma.

Upgrade The New LHC

The new improved Super LHC? Yeah and what's this one supposed to do?

What bank would give you a dollar if you told the manager a story like that?

This is Part 6 of a series on machine safety and potential risks of expected Collider Objects like mBH at the LHC when the collider jumps to very high unknown energies starting March 30, 2010. "Doomsday Report: New Physics At The LHC" will appear in The Science of Conundrums.

NewsHammer Part 1: Large Hadron Collider Waiting For Doomsday

NewsHammer Part 2: Fantastic LHC Energies May Be Higher Than Expected

NewsHammer Part 3: Higgs Discovered At The Large Hadron Collider / More Delays

NewsHammer Part 4: Scrubbing CMS Data At The LHC

NewsHammer Part 5: LHC Lords Of The Ring

--Alan Gillis