You are very welcome. — The [[ ]] notation in the last paragraph is meant to denote a footnote in the original. (The US Government has something like the opposite of the UK’s Crown Copyright. All US Government-published materials like the above decision, are free to copy. I’m not sure if that applies to the court papers of others if filed in Federal court.)

Wagner’s original 2008 lawsuit named multiple entities, including CERN, collections of inanimate objects (like Fermilab) and multiple US Government departments. But Government lawyers heroically whittled down the case.

Covering this trial gave me an excuse to go to Hawaii. The highlight of the hearing for me was when Wagner tried to compare his stint as a VA hospital worker as longer than Judge Pregerson’s Federal service which started in WWII. I believe the US Government lawyer for the appeal, a Mr. John Arbab, was encouraged by this gaff to give Wagner and Sancho more speaking time.

My comment on the previous entry has a link to follow to find the appellate transcript (unofficial) and audio of the hearing, as well as links to the 2008 decision and summary of the original case.

To answer rpenner’s question, yes, all non-sealed filings in U.S. Federal Courts are free to be copied and quoted. Anyone may open an account on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system and download them for $.08/page.

So, is this Wagner guy one of these fruitcakes who thinks that LHC is going to create a black hole which will suck the earth into itself or just destroy space-time altogether? I had heard about people like that and, perversely, always wanted to meet one.

I think Walter had his best moments on The Daily Show:

http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/2009/05/01/john-oliver-visits-the-large-hadron-collider/

As Wagner has not been able to satisfy the court on topics like the Hague convention (for serving foreign entities in US Federal Court) or the limited power of courts and thus the need to establish standing to sue under Article III of the US Constitution, I doubt the courts are going to see eye-to-eye with Wagner on the topic of what constitutes evidence. In a letter exchange to the US Appellate court begun after the final hearing, Wagner asserted that everything on arXiv.org was peer-reviewed and non-speculative science, and offered a brand new article which cited but misunderstood the main gist of Giddings and Mangano (2008), and had fear-mongering hyperbola in the abstract which was not supported in the paper itself.

Also, in parts Wagner seems to want to rely on himself as the star expert witness despite having no relevant background to be discovered in a voir dire. In other parts Wagner seems to claim that every speculative idea gives rise to an actual non-speculative risk, even when the ideas are contradictory or self-contradictory. That’s no way to do science or run a courtroom.

If anything, the laundry list of speculative ideas on ways the LHC might pose a risk which are never explored deeper than naming them, makes Wagner’s side seem on the face of it to be less credible than someone who explores an idea deeply. This is why the Giddings and Mangano paper succeeds on so many levels — it wipes out a class of objects as possibly being dangerous despite their being nearly magical in their lack of correspondence with known physical analogues.

Other coverage:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/27/wagner_appeal_fail/
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/08/lawsuit-against-particle-colli.html

Steven B. Giddings and Michelangelo M. Mangano. “Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes” Physical Review D78 035009 (2008) http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.3381

I wrote: “… Wagner asserted that everything on arXiv.org was peer-reviewed and non-speculative science, and offered a brand new article which cited but misunderstood the main gist of Giddings and Mangano (2008), and had fear-mongering hyperbola in the abstract which was not supported in the paper itself.”

Ptrslv72 asked “which one” …

I don’t want to drag Professor Doyeol (David) Ahn, Director of the Institute of Quantum Information Processing and Systems at the University of Seoul into this, so let me just point out that the abstract below (since revised) was mined by Wagner for arXiv under the (false) premise that it was the product of peer-reviewed publication.

Timeline:
June 11 http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.2198v1 goes on arXiv
June 17 Honolulu appeal hearing before a 3-judge panel
June 18 Wagner pens a letter mentioning paper
June 25 Letter appears on Docket for case 08-17389
June 28 http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.2198v2 is revised — still doesn’t look like Giddings and Mangano (2008) was understood.
July 12 Government lawyer cites arXiv pages indicating arXiv is not synonymous with peer-reviewed
July 13 My initial coverage of post-hearing exchange http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2582658#post2582658
July 20 Wagner writes another letter claiming Government (and arXiv) is wrong on above point
July 26 My coverage of the merits and flaws in Wagner’s last letter, which prompted Wagner’s complaint that I should laboriously retype his filings and papers and post them verbatim, when he already runs a webpage devoted to such filings which hasn’t been updated since 2008.
August 24 Court delivered a terse ruling
August 26 Government asks Sancho and Wagner to pay their Xerox bill.
August 28 Luis Sancho reacts to ruling and press coverage of story.

My thanks to the comments moderation team at Symmetry Breaking. I know a vanishingly small percentage of your readers are interested in the law, where fundamental physics is rarely directly observed, but some of us are very interested.

Thank you for inspiration. The discussion about “Black holes (mini) – application” at the Galaxy Zoo Forum was really fierce.