Man-Made Black Holes Looming? 300
camusflage writes: "The New York Times has a story that some physicists think it might be possible to make black holes at the under construction Large Hadron Collider at CERN, slated to come online in 2006. Trying to allay concerns about a man-made black hole blipping us out of existence, they say "The same calculations ... predict that around 100 such black holes a year are `organically' and apparently safely produced in the earth's atmosphere in cosmic ray collisions." As long as we can keep critters from building nests in the singularity, we should be okay."
Worst idea ever (Score:1, Insightful)
On the other hand if it turns out not to be temporary, you just destroyed earth.
Negative risk just slightly outweighs the positive doesn't it?
Re:Not to worry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since these high energy cosmic rays will have the same types of collisions as they want to produce in the lab, you would expect them to produce black holes if that is possible. Any such black holes that might be produced obviously haven't destroyed the Earth thus far, so these energies are probably safe to use in a lab. Of course this may just mean that they never actually create black holes.
Regarding your other issue, nuetrinos. The reason they didn't come out right is because Super Kamiokande and the other 1st generation experiments could only detect electron and muon nuetrinos. The next generation results, which came out in the last two years, show that when you account for the number of tao nuetrinos, the total flux from the sun turns out to be right where it should be according to the theories for what goes on in stellar fusion.
The surprise here is that nuetrinos of one type can apparently turn into another type. We knew from theory how many electron nuetrinos to expect but they were hidden by changing into the other two varieties. Thus the appearance of low nuetrino counts. Flavor mixing, as it's called, is exactly what is predicted and required if nuetrinos have a non-zero mass. So we simple have to accept that nuetrinos have small but non-zero mass and figure out how this revises the "Standard Model" of particle physics.
Re:End of the World. (Score:2, Insightful)
I might suggest that you learn a thing or two about quantum field theory and relativity, before assuming that your opinion on the formation of quantum singularities is even remotely relevant. Given that this goes against the entire spirit of slashdot, I guess I forgive you
Seriously, though, these do apparently occur naturally, and evapourate quite quickly (generally speaking, a black hole evapourates more quickly as its radius shrinks). The problem will not be preventing the hole from growing out of control and consuming the planet, but keeping it around long enough to learn anything from it.
But then again what are the odd's two jumbo jets would run into the WTC.
Well, the odds are pretty good when they're being willfully directed to do so by the person at the controls. You can hardly claim it to be a random event.
Regards,
Michael
Re:How would we get rid of it (Score:3, Insightful)
Typical atomic matter at rest has a de Broglie wavelength on the order of 10^-15 m and larger. So if the first blackholes have a 10^-19 m threshold size then they can't eat anything when removed from the beam.
Secondly the beams are highly charged by nature. We fully expect that black holes can carry electrical charge if there is a charge imbalance in what they eat. So we will presumably have a charged black hole which is a very good thing because charged objects can be trapped in magnetic bubbles and moved according to electrical forces.
In any case I fully expect that the things will boil off due to Hawking radiation far faster than they can grow from eating matter. Hawking effects are small for large holes but IIRC go as something like 1/R^4 which gets big very fast when R is near 0.
Re:I know everyone needs a hobby... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever hear of the Penrose extraction mechanism? It's a way of getting energy out of a black hole. Hardly possible with the objects being created here, but this research might be relevant decades (more likely centuries) from now, if (a big IF) and when we are capable of manipulating larger holes (or stabilising smaller ones). The amount of energy one can extract from a black hole is enormous, by any standard; more than enough to power the entire planet currently (if you'll pardon the pun).
Anyway, even disregarding such far-off potential applications, it is worthwhile to remember that quite a few of the technologies we consider invaluable today were originally questioned as being "impractical" by mundane contemporaries of the underlying basic research. The laser is a notable example, as is the electromagnet. Always a good thing to remember.
Cheers,
Michael
Re:End of the World. (Score:2, Insightful)
People seem to think that nuclear plants are introducing a hazard to our planet. Perhaps it is prudent to remind ourselves that prior to nuclear power, the stuff was covering the planet. The reason it's hard to find these days is that it was mined out. It's similar to the gold rush, but everyone knows where it is.
Think about it, if someone told you that dryer lint was valuable tommorow, your lint trap would never be full again, you'd sell it all right off. It's just that instead of having radioactive mountains & deserts, we have radioactive risers.
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:5, Insightful)
As another poster pointed out - if this kind of black hole creation were going to cause any problems, it already would have. If these high-energy particles they will be making will produce black holes, then there are about 100 black holes produced per year as a result of cosmic radiation - and they haven't been detected yet, so obviously they have a pretty small effect, and there's nothing to worry about.
People often worry excessively about Nuclear phenomena. This is, as far as I can tell, because very few people actually know what natural levels are.
There is a natural background level of radiation which varies by 10% from place to place. Nuclear facilities are typically permitted to increase the level by 1%. By contrast, international flights usually involve triple the normal background level of radiation - it's cosmic radiation that doesn't reach the ground.
In one mole of carbon - 12g, about what you might find in a fruit - you get about 100 decays a second; this is from the tiny fraction of naturally produced 14C. How radioactive do you think you are? (grin)
Rachel Butt
Nuclear Physics PhD student.
Hatefull coward (Score:1, Insightful)
Black holes can eat anti-matter too (Score:2, Insightful)
Suppose on their way to the singularity a proton and anti-proton meet. Bang! Gone in a flash of gamma radiation. But the gamma can't get out, so its total energy (equal to the mass of the P+ and P-) still counts towards the hole's mass.
And the singularity itself isn't really matter at all. It can have a charge, but if you smash a positive one and a negative one together, you just get a big neutral one.
Someone tell me if I'm just spouting - I'm not a physicist, just a SF enthusiast.