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CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment
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| Contributor | kal |
| Last Edited | kal Jul 30, 2011 06:31am |
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| Category | News |
| News Date | Saturday, July 30, 2011 12:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | What do these results mean? Not allowed to tell you
The chief of the world's leading physics lab at CERN in Geneva has prohibited scientists from drawing conclusions from a major experiment. The CLOUD ("Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets") experiment examines the role that energetic particles from deep space play in cloud formation. CLOUD uses CERN's proton synchrotron to examine nucleation.
CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter Heuer told Welt Online that the scientists should refrain from drawing conclusions from the latest experiment.
"I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them," reports veteran science editor Nigel Calder on his blog. Why?
Because, Heuer says, "That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters."
The unusual "gagging order" could have been issued because the results of CLOUD are really, really boring, muses Calder. Or, it could be that the experiment invites a politically unacceptable hypothesis on climate.
The CLOUD experiment builds on earlier experiments by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who demonstrated that cosmic rays provide a seed for clouds. Tiny changes in the earth's cloud cover could account for variations in temperature of several degrees. The amount of Ultra Fine Condensation Nuclei (UFCN) material depends on the quantity of the background drizzle of rays, which varies depending on the strength of the sun's magnetic field and the strength of the Earth's magnetic field.
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