Investigating Artificial Black Holes 713
Robber Baron writes "I remember years ago watching a cartoon in which an inventor had managed to create 'portable holes.' Now along those lines, according to this story in the Christian Science Monitor, scientists are on the threshhold of developing the 'do-it-yourself black hole' (Well, no, it's not quite do-it yourself as you need a pretty large collider to pull it off.) They're hoping to use the new Large Hadron Collider at the European Center for Nuclear Research to create many tiny black holes and observe the Hawking Effect as they dissipate. Keep your shotgun handy though, as they are more than likely going to open up a portal into another dimension and all sorts of nasties are going to come pouring out."
What if (Score:5, Insightful)
Then how are we going to stop them from eating us all?
Doesn't this seem dangerous (Score:2, Insightful)
This could easily wipe out every living life form on Earth. Why? just for some stupid experiment.
Maybe the reason why seti has not found any alien life forms is because they run experiments like this and wipe themselves out.
We should not play with the fabric of time and space.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, stop him! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the scientist is completely wrong. There are much higher energy reactions going on naturally with cosmic rays and such. Quantum black holes, wormholes, etc are created all of the time. And destroyed just as quickly.
this is insane (Score:1, Insightful)
in another words, we don't know if the space really contract into a singularity - because for one, a singularity causes all kinds of problems for all kinds of theories.
Just a few monthes ago people were expressing immense interest in gravistars (I forgot the name) where instead of collapsing completely into a singularity, after the neutron stage the space being crushed will exhibit strong force outward (due to some quantum mechanics thing) where it would balance out into a "shell" or somesuch - though the shell diameter is still smaller than the event horizon.
IF the above turned out to be true, though - no blackbody radiation (as the radiation will gets trapped onto the shell) and no dissipation, which means the end of earth, etc.
Even if they are really singularities, if they emit black-body radiation is merely a theory by hawkings. We simply don't know if regular laws of phisics holds up at singularity level (that's the reason we call them a singularity, after all).
Man... I know nobel prize is a million bux and all, but risking the entire human race on it seems kinda sketchy.
I never thought there are real "mad scientist" types out there. I guess I got proven wrong on this.
In all seriousness (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside (Score:5, Insightful)
Beyond the event horizon, it acts as any other massive body.
A black hole the same size mass as the sun would be much smaller, but at our distance from it, gravity would be the same, so the earth would continue to orbit...
That kind of thing.
So would a little black hole be dangerous? Sure.. you have to have a way to keep it in place, with electric fields or whatever... but other than that... it's not really a big issue.
Beyond it's event horizon, a black hole is just another massive object.
Re:Boooooom (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just that if we follow the maths backwards, we end up at a point where all 4 dimensions (Or more, depending on your theory) are infininitely small, and there is no such thing as time or distance.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though the mass has colapsed, the black hole still has the mass of its creation (from the hadron collision). Think of it this way, if the sun suddenly collapsed in on itself and became a black hole (It doesn't have enough mass to do it itself, but lets just say.), the earth and all the other planets would still orbit it. They would not spontainiously be drawn to it more, for the sun, despite its change of state, still has the same mass.
Taking these two points, the gravity effect on the surrounding matter is not enough to draw it into the black hole because gravity has very little effect on the subatomic level. So, the black hole would have to practically wander into other particles in order to gain mass. Except matter is mostly empty space, so that it is unlikely. Even if it does gain mass by colliding with another subatomic particle, the chances of it not disapainting before it smacks into another are very slim. I am not exact on the theories, but I think the probability is a technicality kind of like the one where it is technically possible to run through a wall without disturbing the wall (it is how diodes work).
You may have a point if it does not dissapate, but even then, it is not as bad as you think.
Re:this is insane (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, maybe IHBT, IHL, HAND.
Does anybody remember Larry Niven's short story "The Hole Man"?
Re:We need the email addresses of funders for cern (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, if you have a degree in Physics, it might be different, but as it is, you are just misguiding the public. There have always been fears of disasters from new experiments: for example, many movies were made about monsters being formed by radiation. And furthermore, the fear of genetic engineering, etc. Most of these are caused by the lack of education in the public about such things, and people who think they know more than they do. Please, don't speak so strongly about things you don't understand. It can have very unfortunate effects --- such as spreading fear of genetically modified foods, and of radiation, to look at the past.
Had to point this out (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to be a mistaken idea that the gravity of an object is determined by its density. This obviously isn't so. Two electrons collided in a collider at high energy still have the mass of two electrons. Even if they are crunched into a "black hole" the gravity is not enough to suck everything into it anymore than two electrons sitting next to each other could suck everything up.
Re:this is insane (Score:3, Insightful)
My cousin is a physicist at Brookhaven. I'll try to get you a heads-up if the world is about to be destroyed by the eggheads.
By the way, it's great to see you posting again, Charly. How's Algernon?
Re:Proven? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've read at least four independent derivations of Hawking radiation, using different methods. They all agree. There is also experimental evidence of Hawking radiation in analog models of gravity. (These are physical systems -- solid state, acoustic, etc. -- that reproduce the kinematics, but not dynamics, of general relativity. Hawking radiation depends only on the kinematics, at least for large holes that don't shrink appreciably.)
Who was the presenter, and who were the people in the audience who "couldn't poke holes" in this claim?
Re:God's Black Hole (Score:1, Insightful)
When God divides by zero, it damn well divides, physics be damned.
(Hence Black holes)
Re:Doesn't this seem dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
Environmentalism is leaking to the cosmic ray / subatomic particle world! Pretty soon, they will be saying "Save the muon!" and "Stop abusing our natural resources -- don't harvest photons!" I can't wait for the day when they will try to elevate the particles to be on par with humans, like they are doing with monkeys, dogs, and fish.
And that whole "we shouldn't play with the fabric of space and time" crap -- Okay. Let's stop playing with the fabric of space and time. Everyone, you must cease existing immediately, but without releasing any radiation at all. Any attempts at motion -- even very slight or slow, will also disrupt the fabric of space and time, so you must do this without moving any parts of your body. There, now that we have prevented anyone from disrupting the space time continuum, we should probably move to eliminate the earth, the sun, and all the planets as well. There's no telling what their enormous gravitational fields could do to space-time around them!
Why am I being so foolish? Because everything you do -- everything you are -- disrupts the space-time continuum. In fact, some physicists believe that matter and energy are just folds or tears in the space time continuum. It was Einstein who discovered that space-time wasn't as continous as we had hoped, both from a Relativistic notion, and from a gravitational notion. But it is these inconsistencies that make life, and all existence, possible.
I think it is really sad that so many uneducated people want to get involved in this discussion, when they have nothing to add and gain nothing from hearing the experts. It's like 40 years ago when the mention of "radiation" and "radioactivity" would send common folk running in fear. Now it's just "black holes" and "particle accelerators".
Let me rephrase that in plain English: Don't tell me what I can and can't do unless you take the time to learn about it. After all, you would hate to have the Pope come and say "You shouldn't clone in Java and other programming languages. Cloning is wrong."
Re:Next time, Read the Story FIRST! (Score:1, Insightful)