Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All

cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole." That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.

The rise of ignorance...

[meerling]

It's amazing how so many people who never passed a high school science class (or their schools 'science' class hadn't gone past basic atomic structure) are utterly afraid of crackpot doomsday predictions about something scientific that they don't even have the faintest inkling of comprehension of, while all the experts in that field aren't afraid or worried in the slightest.
(Now there's a run-on sentence.)
Of course those scientist don't say it's impossible, though my understanding is that it's probability of destroying the earth is a bit less than that of a winged monkey to fly out your ass leading a miniature brass band.

Funny thing about all those colossal energies involved, on the cosmic scale, they don't even qualify as peanut crumbs. If they do produce a black hole (of the extremely miniature variety), it's lifespan will be horrendously short, it's event horizon freaking minuscule, and at that scale the distance to the nearest thing to gobble (assuming it can actually suck it in) is the equivalent of light years away. It's just not going to be a threat. If something that like that could be created by these cosmically insignificant energy levels and actually survive long enough to eat planets, the universe would already be pretty darn empty. There are an uncountable number of energy events that far exceed the LHCs energy levels around us constantly, and if you want the really big ones, just point your telescope pretty much anywhere in space and you'll be pointing at several. If that kind of stuff has been going on for billions of years, and we haven't gone poof yet, you're better off buying a flying monkey proof undies than worrying about calling the LHC the 5th horseman.

Please remember

[diewlasing]

While this very well could be true, I'd just like to point out that a computer simulation is no substitute for an actual experiment.

Also, while I'm no expert in the subject of string theory, if one could reach the Plank energy, wouldn't it then be possible to find these supposed strings about which everyone's been talking?

the infinity irony

[fermion]

Here is the irony to me. Einstein won his noble prize for the Photoelectric effect. This effect has traditionally been see as on that requires the quantization of energy for sub atomic particles. This was 1905. This was based on idea of Max Planck in which he limited the available oscillations of light to solve the ultraviolet catastrophe, a mathematical result in which the unrestricted energy of a black body radiator would result in infinite energies. This did not any sense.

But someone, Einstein's other work, general relativity, that does result in infinities is assumed to be true. I was thinking we would have this fixed by now, and 2001-2010 would be as productive as 1901-1910. Perhaps the year 2000 was the beginning of a little dark age,and will have to wait a while for science to restart.

Re:Ignorance, plain and simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Uhm. Point taken. I should have read your post instead of just moved my eyes quickly over it. Indeed, if we could produce black holes of 2 proton masses, we'd have found them already. The guys we are talking about here would be order 1000 more massive.

Re:Yes

[JustOK]

saw one that said "Bad Wolf"

Re:few atom balck holes evaporate instantly

[meringuoid]

(3) Particles dont interact gravitationally in practice. Other atomic forces are 38 or more magnitudes larger.

Now this is a part I find interesting, and I don't think I've ever read a serious treatment of it. Collide two protons at CERN and create a black hole of mass (2*proton mass + collision energy), and charge +2e. You now have an extreme Reissner-Nordstrom black hole, whose electric charge predominates over its gravitational field. Are we looking at a naked singularity here?

Or if not; even so, let the charged black hole interact with matter nearby. It approaches some atomic matter in the wall of the particle accelerator. The first thing it encounters is the electron cloud that forms the surface of the wall. Now, does it swallow electrons into its event horizon? Unlikely. Surely instead it will pull the electrons into orbit about itself, like any other particle? You'd get a black hole with two electrons orbiting it, it would look like a rather overweight helium atom. And that would be the end of it. So its nucleus has an event horizon, what of it? Nothing approaches the nucleus because it's shielded by the electrons.