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."
Indecent Exposure (Score:3, Funny)
Ouch. Black hole puns. There's no excuse.
Viper Out
Re:Indecent Exposure (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Indecent Exposure (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry! That's just how my demented brain processed it
Mike
Re:Indecent Exposure (Score:2)
I'm curious how they can contain it? Would they use some kind of vacuum combined with a magnetic containment system?
If so, then it would really suck if the power went out...
Re:Indecent Exposure (Score:2)
There's a cosmic censorship hypothesis... (Score:2)
I remember reading A Brief History of Time [amazon.com] where Stephen Hawking talks about a "cosmic censorship hypothesis", which in its weak form states that singularities can only occur in places (like black holes) where they're decently hidden from public view. In its strong form, it says that singularities can only occur in the past (such as the Big Bang singularity), or in the future (such as with a singularity in a black hole)...
missile defense? (Score:1)
maskirovka
Re:missile defense? (Score:2)
The problem with a small black hole that eats up a balistic missile is that it suddenly becomes a much bigger black hole.
From the site may be able to produce miniature black holes on demand.
Notice they say miniature black holes - I'm presuming these are the sort of thing that you look at with a microscope (or not in this case since there won't be any light escaping...), not the sort of thing that captures a balistic missile.
Of course is you can manouver one of these things into the way of a balistic missile, then hold it in place against the kinetic energy imparted by said missile, you already have the technology required to stop the missile, so the black hole itself is rather pointless.
Pity really, it sounds like a good plot for a SciFi story.
Re:missile defense? (Score:1)
Check out the relatively unknown SciFi series called Star Wars. The newer books, telling the story approximately 20 years after the death of the emperor, already include using black holes as offensive and defensive weapons. Quite interesting, since it is suggested that these holes can also be controlled sizewize. Not impossible *if* you know how to extract energy from a black hole. Interested? Check out the "New Jedi Order" books.
Star Wars (Score:2)
Of course I wouldn't consider Star Wars to be 'hard SciFi'. Doesn't George Lucas say that the books (I'm presuming you mean the official books here) are second only to the movie in 'correctness' about the Star Wars universe.
Still I'm glad I don't live there, without midichlorines(sp?) in my blood, I'd be one of those extras that get killed off early for effect.
Re:Star Wars (Score:1)
Not hard sci-fi, but (Score:2)
So-called Hawkings Radiation is the only energy known to extract itself from black holes. The problem is that even if drastically accellerated, it would be a lengthy process and there is reason to believe that as a black hole might decay, it might actually eventually explode. Cool, we get rid of the ICBM and get something much more dangerous which will either:
1: Eat us and everyone else alive or
2: Explode with near perfect matter to energy conversion making the ICBM threat look pretty minor.
Either way, it would be a very bad idea.
Re:Not hard sci-fi, but (Score:2)
Hawkings Radiation is the only energy known to extract itself from black holes
This is not correct as a general statement about black holes. Hawking radiation is the only method of extracting energy from a stationary, static black hole (the Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrom black holes), meaning one that is not evolving in time. Hawking radiation is, however, a quantum energy extraction process, not a classical process. Angular momentum (and hence energy) can be extracted from a rotating black hole (the Kerr and Kerr-Newman black holes) by means of the "Penrose process" by objects passing through the "ergosphere" a region of space outside the hole with certain wierd and wonderful properties. Unlike the Hawking process, this is a purely classical energy extraction process, the only one known.
The idea is that you carry with you an object that you don't really care about, fly in the direction of hole rotation into the ergospere, throw the object you are carrying into the hole, and you will come out with more energy than when you went in. You net gain energy, so the hole has to net lose energy.
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.
Re:Black holes can eat anti-matter too (Score:2)
A static black hole (meaning one whose metric, which describes the structure of spacetime, is not evolving in time) is completely specified in terms of its mass, charges (electric, color, weak, etc.), and angular momentum, and these quantities are in a sense distritued "evenly" over the surface of the hole, as far as an outside observer can tell. I don't know if there are any other types of black hole solutions known that are non-static, and if there are, they may or may not have more "properties" that need to be described than the static holes need.
Re:Not hard sci-fi, but (Score:2)
A megaton of TNT releases 4.18x10^15 joules, so we are looking at a blast equivalent, in energy release, to nearly a 50 megaton warhead. And of course, a kilogram of matter in the warhead to start would be a very low estimate. 4 KG of matter (2kg matter + 2kg antimatter) releases nearly as much energy as a 100 megaton warhead, so you realize very quickly that this is a BAD idea.
Re:Not hard sci-fi, but (Score:2)
On the last Black Hole article on
Here [slashdot.org].
Re:Not hard sci-fi, but (Score:2)
Uh, it still applies. The star is not a single entity and can be (and is!) broken down into smaller chunks for easy digestion. An electron, as far as we know, cannot.
But why ? (Score:5, Funny)
Cool, but why? (Score:3, Funny)
Your own little black hole instead of a trash can.
Placing your black hole between you and your mother in law to suck in the boring conversation.
No more standing in line in shops or outside disco's.
A good excuse when your boss comes complaining about all the budget you are eating: "It wasn't me, it was the company black hole!"
Re:Cool, but why? (Score:2, Funny)
The only problem is that you'd hear news stories about people who produced too much trash and caused their "trash hole" to grow in size so much that it swallowed their whole house.
Of course, it would be a much better story for students who didn't do their homework. "Our black hole ate it."
Implications for future GUI's (Score:2)
Not to worry... (Score:2, Interesting)
(alos, if little harmless singularities are popping up all the time in our atmosphere due to cosmic rays, then how come those neutrino detector counts are always coming up short?)
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.
This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:4, Funny)
From the article: We've been trying for a century, and we still don't fully understand black holes," said Dr. Andrew Strominger. And then he goes on to conclude that we need to make some.
If they're going to do something which at least sounds dangerous, I would really like it if they could say, "Nothing can possibly go wrong", not, "Our understanding is incomplete."
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:3, Funny)
If watching movies gain any insight, these two comments are logically equal. Each time someone says "Don't worry, everything's under control", you bet it's time to panic and flee the scene as fast as you can.
- Steeltoe
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:4, Funny)
Nothing can possibly go wrong! (Score:2)
Real scientists know their understanding is always (and will always be, it is mathematically proven (by Gödel)) incomplete.
And they are not shy of saying so. "Our understanding is now complete" is no way to ensure funding for new reasearch. Think about it.
Re:Nothing can possibly go wrong! (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:2)
Doesn't matter, this is the United States of America, where anything that's man-made is bad, and anything that's "natural" is good, even if it's identical to the man-made.
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:2)
Suppose that one quantum black hole is safe, but that several tend to combine, and be less safe? Is this an unreasonable supposition? Presumably it could be calculated. One may hope that it will be calculated. But there could be effects that depend on the number of black holes that were created (well, on the rate of creation, unless you are somehow trapping them).
OTOH, I seem to recall that the effective temperature of a black hole is some sort of power law inversely proportion to the mass. So these things might just be a new standard for the maximum temperature. (What's the projected decay time? -- I ought to check the story, but my browser isn't creating multiple windows at the moment.)
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:2)
Thats a pretty scarry thought that they are ready to create one on ground because they "think" they might exist up there but can't detect them.
Small black holes aren't dangerous (Score:3, Informative)
The exact formula is rather complex, but for average environments, a black hole has to be more than a 1000 tons at creation to be of any danger. Considering that particle accelerators never handle material heavier than a few atoms, we are quite a bit on the safe side...
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:2)
Joke, sorry (Score:4, Funny)
Same argument applies, and it's ironclad. (Score:4, Informative)
If they're going to do something which at least sounds dangerous, I would really like it if they could say, "Nothing can possibly go wrong", not, "Our understanding is incomplete."
Actually, there's a pretty ironclad argument for this being safe - the same one that comes up every time the press starts fearmongering about more powerful accelerators:
Cosmic rays with energies far higher than will be produced by any accelerator any time soon have been striking the earth and the moon for billions of years. If high-energy collisioins could cause catastrophy, they would have already, because they've been happening in our neighbourhood for quite a while.
The fact that nothing around here has been sucked into a black hole yet leads us to conclude that if micro-black-holes can be formed, they don't do much.
Our current models of black holes suggest that micro-holes would evapourate in a burst of Hawking radiation almost as soon as they're formed. The smaller the hole, the more intense the Hawking radiation (and so the faster it loses mass).
Re:This does not inspire confidence.. (Score:4, Funny)
Fermi Lab (Score:1)
"Dr. Greg Landsberg, a Brown University physicist who works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., is part of a team planning for black hole production."
Batavia is also the home of Aldi [aldifoods.com]. It's interesting that we're expecting a city to control the black holes the make, when the most disgusting refried beans ever produced come from the same town!
I was *just* discussing this (Score:1)
Still, the synchronicity is interesting...and now that a method seems to exist all that remains is shrinking the power source. Which is a problem this may incidentally solve.
And forget cemetaries!
..... (Score:1)
What if, in the future, they have the ability to make bigger singularities...Maybe not "star sized"...But big enough to get started on the world...what then?
Will we be held hostage by a terrorist, threatening to "eat the world?" It seems farfetched...but, christ, we're talking about black holes, here.
David Brin (Score:3, Interesting)
For those of you who haven't read it, its a story about a group of scientists accidentally dropping a lab-made black hole into the center of the earth. Whoops! Quite a good deal more goes on which and it all makes quite a good read.
Re:David Brin (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:David Brin (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:David Brin (Score:3, Interesting)
A fascinating book, very depressing view of the future that is probably all too accurate.
Another book... (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
How would we get rid of it (Score:2)
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:How would we get rid of it (Score:2)
That's prevailing wisdom. Problem is, gravity is the one remaining fundamental force that hasn't been reconcilled with the others. The strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces all "play nice" in a theoretical sense, but we don't have a quantum theory of gravity that fits with the standard model. We don't really know, in other words. Still, I tend to think it would just "boil off" via Hawking radiation before it became a problem.
Your point about electric charge is a good one. Presumably, if the beamline was tuned just right (and that's by no means trivial), the black hole could be accelerated back out of the accelerator, and probably into orbit. I suppose it could be contained by magnetic fields until we were ready to launch it (or we could just wait until it boiled off). Not sure whether it would hit much stuff on the way out--I'm too tired to do the calculations. Also, LHC isn't my specialty--I was just working at a cyclotron, which is a horse of a different colour.
Gravity is a really weak force... (Score:5, Informative)
As everyone knows, gravity is the weakest of all the fundamental forces by a very very long way, something like 40 orders of magnitude weaker than the weakest of the nuclear forces. I remember reading an article here long ago (can't find it and put a link to it because Slashdot search is down...grr) that talked about some speculation that gravity is so weak because the universe has more dimensions than the four that we see (this is also a prediction of superstring theory), and while the other three forces are only capable of propagating there, gravity is able to propagate through these extra dimensions, making it seem weaker. These dimensions are supposed to be curled up small so we don't normally notice them, so one of the implications of this theory is that the value of the universal gravitational "constant" should shoot up dramatically when you try to measure it at smaller scales; the smallest scale at which gravity has been measured so far is on the order of centimeters only. Another implication is that it should be possible to create low mass black holes with less energy than the weakness of gravity as we know it predicts. So if these scientists are successful in making such small black holes, it could go a long way to validating this theory.
Re:Gravity is a really weak force... (Score:3, Informative)
I seem to remember having read somewhere that the whole point of the multiple dimensions in string theory was that they were incredibly tiny and curled up on themselves. And they were supposed to be less than the planck length in total size, if I remember right. I understand how the dimensions could dissipate the force of gravity, but how does the gravitational force increase at small distances? Wouldn't the multiple dimensions of the two particles somehow have to collide/interact? And wouldn't that only occur if the two particles were closer than the planck length, which is closer than they could possibly get anyway? I know I am missing something here, and I am interested to hear exactly what it is.
Re:Gravity is a really weak force... (Score:5, Informative)
The original theory expected curled dimensions on the order of a Planck Length (10^-33 m), but some people later showed that is was possible to modify the theory for dimensions of arbitrary size. The question then falls to experimentalist to say how large they might be. As it turns out, it's easy to show that they aren't as large as a meter (unless you modify string theory in some really weird ways that few people consider plausible). Thus we can easily confirm everyone's ordinary perceptions that life at our scale is 3D. However the types of experiments to test this don't scale well, so the best that experiments can say so far is that there are no hidden dimensions on the order of a millimeter.
Scientists that think that hidden dimensions are really only just beyond the horizon of where we know they aren't are a pretty scant minority right now. Most people expect that they probably are down near the Planck Length and well out of reach. However, the neat experiments and effects (such as black holes) that could be done with access to large extra dimensions make them worth looking for, just in case.
Re:Gravity is a really weak force... (Score:2)
A typical 1 TeV particle has a de Broglie wavelength of 2.0*10^-19 m == 2.0*10^-17 cm, which means that LHC will just about reach this threshold while no other machine ever has.
In all fairness they may have other reasons to believe in 10^-17 cm, but my experience with high energy particle physicists has typically been that if they don't know when something will happen then they'll tell you that the next big machine certainly has a good chance of seeing it.
The curled dimensions would actually have to be much larger than this. If a black hole is to form then the modification of the gravity from 2 to (n-1) will have to grow so important that it overcomes the typically much larger repulsion of nuclear and electromagnetic forces, which would tend to prevent gravitational collapse. Also they need to gain enough kinetic energy from falling through the modified gravitational well that their mass (E=mc^2) is large enough to create a black hole, given the other properties of the particles.
A maze of teeny, tiny dimensions all curled... (Score:2)
Re:A maze of teeny, tiny dimensions all curled... (Score:2)
And what if my Aunt had balls, then she'd be my uncle.
"What if" is the very beginning of science, but only if you then proceed with some science.
Re:A maze of teeny, tiny dimensions all curled... (Score:2)
It would be nice, but I also recognize that I don't have the math or physics skills. Nor do I have the time/resources to acquire them at the moment or near future. I must also admit that it may well be beyond my capacity to do anything orginal or meaningful on this, no matter how hard I might work.
But it's fun to read about, and at best if I post ignorant comments on Slashdot, hopefully someone more skilled or knowledgable would respond, even if to set me straight.
>And what if my Aunt had balls, then she'd be my uncle.
She/He could be a hermaphrodite in that case, too. It does occur at some rate in the general population. Normally they are 'corrected' by surgery, but that is being questioned. (I withold judgement on the whole matter, but I do know that being 'abnormal' is terrible for a child to live through.)
Re: non-organic black holes (Score:2)
For all the vaunted energy of our accelerators, we're still not in the same league with cosmic rays. So they estimated some 50 "organic" black holes per (forgotten time interval) created in the upper atmosphere by cosmic rays, and have a fair mathmatical confidence and better empirical evidence to support that.
Obvious Experiment (Score:5, Funny)
Place two matching socks in a washer machine. turn the washer machine on, wait for it to finish. Remove the single sock. Voila. Black holes.
Now place that single sock into the drier. Turn it on, wait for it to finish. Remove one entirely different sock, which you have never owned. Kazow. Alternate Dimensions.
The field of pairingsocks physics solved the Black Hole question years before the cosmologists or those silly particle physicists. This article is old news.
Re:Obvious Experiment (Score:2)
Re:Obvious Experiment (Score:2)
But, of course, her disappearance is far more conventional and easy to explain.
--Jim
Perfectly safe, yeah, uh-huh... (Score:2)
How We Lost the Moon, A True Story By Frank W. Allen
This is a sci-fi short-story about some scientists who "accidentally" created a black hole.
whoops...
Re:Perfectly safe, yeah, uh-huh... (Score:1)
Extensions on Blackholes. (Score:4, Interesting)
You must understand that every individual type of particles and radiants have their own, what may be referred to as, gravimetric frequency. You may note in the article that Dr. Giddings' calculations suggest that the interactions of cosmic rays and sub-atomic particles produce, what he calls, "organic," black holes, referring to naturally occurring black holes.
This team is producing the black holes from specific, fully separated subatomic particles, those being gluons and quarks. Black holes produced by collapsing stars result from still-integrated subatomic particles (matter), which remain connected gravimetrically to other large sources of gravity (fuel), are not anything to worry about here; in fact, they couldn't even be produced on the surface of the planet (the core, however, is a different idea altogether). The "man-made" varieties will only be able to effect other nearby gluons and quarks. In an vacuum-sealed accelerator, they will not be able to "find" that source of energy and will evaporate relatively quickly; though, I disagree that the result will be an abundance in the spawning of similar sub-atomic particles.
I recommend The Elegant Universe [amazon.com], by Brian Greene. You'll learn about how the universe works according to ideas as old as "General Relativity" to as recent as the "M-Theory".
Re:Extensions on Blackholes. (Score:2)
While you've got a good number of the important ideas right, you might want to work on the presentation. It took me several reads to get what you meant, and I know what you are talking about.
FYI, you get the strean of particles coming out because the intensity of Hawking radiation gets dramatically large as the hole evaporates. All that's needed to create particle X is for the hole to be putting out enough energy equivalent to the mass of particle X. It has a large reserve of energy (and this part is key), because of the theorized change in the gravitational attraction law that makes the whole process possible.
Ordinarily gravitational potential energy goes as G*m1*m2/r but if the rate law changes energy may go as G*m1*m2/r^(n-2), where n is the number of actual dimensions. Or even some other strange law. Since the effective minimal approach is at least the wavelength of the 1 TeV particles (10^-19 m) and probably considerably less, the fact that the powers of r increase can give a dramatic increase in the kinetic energy of the particles as they approach and thus allow for enough energy to create the black hole and lots of energy for it to then radiate away.
Other books starring black holes and the like (Score:2)
the cool part here... (Score:2)
We're doomed. (Score:1)
critters aren't what i'm worried about (Score:2)
i'm more worried about evil sadistic demonic things torturing me and then taking me with them back to another dimension that resembles hell [imdb.com] [us.imdb.org].
-BlueLines
hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Waste Disposal possibilities? (Score:2)
wait a frickin minute! (Score:2)
I hope they remember the basic rules... (Score:5, Funny)
//wild spec: Not just physicists. (think CS) (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-
http://singularitywatch.com [singularitywatch.com]
http://singinst.org [singinst.org]
for the love of Life!
*(r)
memes don't exist. tell all your friends.
(enlightened by na-fun)
If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked in (Score:4, Informative)
Black holes have a reputation for being mass-gobbling irreversible singularities, and they are. But this doesn't mean a black hole where the Sun is would swallow the Earth. I'm not an expert so someone can correct me if they know it better or more accurately.
Any amount of mass can be turned into a black hole - you just have to crush it into a small enough space. This is because every bit of matter has an event horizon, including the Sun (or the Earth for that matter). The difference with the Sun and most things is that the event horizon for the amount of matter in the sun is smaller than the Sun. If you crushed all of Sun's matter into a sufficiently tiny space that it was all inside, then everything else that moved inside would collapse and not return.
What most people don't realise is that if the Sun spontaneously turned into a black hole, we wouldn't die from being sucked in. We'd die from lack of solar energy. Because the Sun-black-hole would have the same mass, everything orbiting it would continue to orbit it the same way it is at the moment. The only big difference would be when something happened to wander inside the event horizon at which point it wouldn't leave, if you ignore all the wierd relativity things that go on at that point at least.
So I guess the point is that just because someone says they might be able to make a black hole, it doesn't mean you'll be instantly sucked in tommorrow without any warning.
Re:If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked (Score:2)
Thanks for confirming it. One thing about this that I'm not sure I understand is where you say it emits radiation.
One definitive concept about black holes is that nothing can escape from past the event horizon including light and other radiation. Do you mean radiation from other things that come near it without getting too close?
Re:If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked (Score:2, Interesting)
Since the energy for these new particles has to come from somewhere, the black hole loses mass. Fucked if I can understand it! But that's the explanation for folks without the deep maths to really understand it. Still, if the Earth were a black hole we'd definitely be dead, and that I think is the worry some people have expressed.
Re:If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked (Score:2)
Re:If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked (Score:2)
I think you meant
The Hawking ... temperature ... would be ... orders of magnitude lower than ... 2.4 K ...
Since it would absorb more than it emits only if it's colder than the bath it is immersed in. Anywho, the Hawking Temperature of a 2 solar mass black hole is around 3 x 10^-8 Kelvin (from John Baez; do a google search for "hawking temperature solar mass")
Re:If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked (Score:2)
Re:If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked (Score:2)
That is to say, the black hole would punch a hole into the ground, and start oscillating about the center of the Earth. It'll eat up all the matter in its path, and keep growing. We'll have some fun with earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc. before the end of the world finally arrives.
No, you're missing the point. A black hole only has as much gravity as the mass that makes up the black hole. The gravity from two protons (to pick an example) is nowhere near enough to actually "eat up matter". A black hole would have to weigh about 1000 tons or so to do that. So creating a black hole from an atom or two won't do a thing.
In fact, it'll only exist for a fraction of a second, because it'll evaporate into Hawking radiation. It not only won't have enough mass to gobble up particles, it won't actually have any time to do it in anyway. At that size, the time that the black hole will exist is so close to zero that it makes no difference. All that you see is a bunch of weird particles and wavelengths formed from when the black hole evaporates away, because it evaporates away at more or less the same instant it was created.
Re:If Sun were a black hole we wouldn't be sucked (Score:2)
It'll eat up all the matter in its path, and keep growing.
While I replied:
The gravity from two protons (to pick an example) is nowhere near enough to actually "eat up matter".
Thus answering your point. It won't fall thru the ground and oscillate around, because it's too small to actually suck matter inside it. Get it?
~Why Black Holes Go Away~ (Score:5, Informative)
Fast forward a few years, scientists make a black hole. Why doesnt it destroy the earth?
1) The black hole weighs no more than the particles slammed together to make it. It has essentially zero pull on anything. A grain of salt would make an incredibly more effective attractor.
So you say, yes, but the black hole will persist and continue to grow in mass by swallowing more and more particles.
But the scientists in the Times article say the black hole will "evaporate".
The following paragraph, from this page [microsoft.com], states it well:
Since the 1970s, it has been known that black holes are not completely black. In fact, they emit very low-energy radiation called Hawking radiation. The lower the mass of a black hole, the higher the energy of the emitted Hawking radiation. As a black hole radiates, its mass decreases, and it starts emitting more and more radiation, causing it to evaporate more and more rapidly. Eventually, it shrinks to around the Planck mass, the point at which its DeBroglie wavelength is equal to the Schwarzschild radius. At this point, we no longer know what happens, since to describe physics at the Planck scale requires a theory of quantum gravity.
Re:~Why Black Holes Go Away~ (Score:2, Informative)
The origin of Hawking radiation is not due to the fact that something actually escapes from the black hole; this is still impossible. What's essentially believed to happen is this: something weird happens at the event horizon, causing particle/antiparticle pairs to be created. Most of these pairs are destroyed immediately, but some are aligned in such a way that the particle is ejected outside the event horizon, while the antiparticle falls inside. The antiparticle destroys a particle inside the black hole, while the outside particle escapes and is measured as Hawking radiation. The net result of this process is that something has been "relocated" to the outside of the black hole, even though nothing technically "escaped".
If this happens faster than the black hole can acquire new matter, then it will eventually evaporate.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but... (Score:2)
I.e. with any solid object?
I'm assuming that they meant to say "when travelling at extremely high speeds toward each other, it is possible that they would enter extra dimensions"... but still, isn't that just a vague idea that we really have no basis to make an assumption on?
"leap of faith" is an understatement. This is more like a "we have a rocket here that can put you into orbit on 2L of gas!" leap of faith.
And they "predict" by the same leap of faith that we have 100s of these forming in the atmosphere, so why can't they just go there to do their tests? If what they say is true, that the disintigration pattern is unmistakable, then it should not be difficult at all to perform this in the atmosphere, or at worst in space itself (i.e. the space station)... no?
Therefore we have nearby blackholes (Score:2)
as night the day, that a small number could last a long time if they found matter to absorb before evaporating?
Perhaps we have some near the Earth's core, or maybe there is a much smaller but more accesible number
in the Lagrangian Points [nasa.gov]. IANA astrophysicist but it would seem quite likely that the moon's core would have such black holes. If so, might black holes in the lunar core be detected through perturbation of neutrino density during lunar eclipses?
On another note might microscopic black holes be able to change the ratio of neutrino flavors seen when solar neutrinos are viewed after passing through the Earth? Fascinating subject!
Can't wait to store my data in those extra dimensions.. hard disk will never get full! (not)
correction (Score:2)
physicists have found that neutrinos oscillate between three "flavors" during their trip from the Sun to us, and that a different ratio of these flavors is found when they are detected after passing through the Earth. For neutrinos, ordinary matter is as thin as air is to us, but I'd imagine a black hole would put a kink in their travel plans! Some physicist help!
TV Infomercials (Score:2)
Science Fiction Novel On the Topic (Score:2)
James P. Hogan, Thrice Upon a Time. It's actually a time travel novel, but one of the subplots involves a particle collider which is making lots and lots of tiny black holes. This was written a couple of decades ago, I believe. A good read if you like Hogan's stuff.
-Rob Knop
atom bomb ignite the atmosphere! (Score:2)
tests some scientists were afraid an open air
nuke explosion would cause the oxygen and
notrogen in the air to burn into nitric acid.
And a chain reaction could burn all the air.
However very little of this happened.
It is thought the friction of large meteors
do a similar thing.
Aacckk!!! (Score:2)
Let's see what kind of conspiracies you guys can cook up with that little tidbit. ;-)
Found It Already (Score:2)
We've already found that. It's called a "lost cluster". That's where crucial elements of your data (you know, the small stuff like system files and important documents) go when you have to reset Windows 98 for the upteenth time.
Perhaps we've already seen 'em! (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't diss pure science. (Score:1)
If you'd like to criticize mis-allocated resources, I strongly recommend that you examine the cosmetics industry.
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:I know everyone needs a hobby... (Score:2)
Okay, Doctor Drumlin [imdb.com]. This is pure science at its best. Thanks to ever-advancing particle accelerators, we have more of an understanding now than ever about the world (and it is a completely different world) that forms us and our universe. From that understanding, we come up with the practical applications.
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: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:End of the World. (Score:2)
in 1992, the world produced 125,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel. now it's about 200,000/yr, and the International Atomic Energy Agency speculates it will by 450,000/yr by 2050.
despite this huge amount of shit produced, and people speculating on what "could" be done with it, the fact is, no one knows what to do with nuclear waste.
bury it? have fun drinking contaminated groundwater.
shoot it into space? a challenger-type explosion (or a terrorist with a rocket launcher) and you irradiate all of florida.
there's really no real solution now...not to mention what will theoretically happen when the time comes to shut down a nuclear power plant. best suggestion anyone's got about that is just encasing the entire building in concrete.
ppl like you should take a look at the _real_ consequences of nuclear power, and put some thought towards the future of the planet...no doubt a solution/replacement for carbon-based fuels is needed, but for now, nuclear power is not it, so might as well keep looking.
Re:End of the World. (Score:2)
This is off topic, but as a scientist I can't stand for this type of misinformation, so I feel that I must comment....
the fact is, no one knows what to do with nuclear waste.
Actually, scientists and engineers know of many ways to deal with nuclear waste; it is a political issue driven by individuals like yourself that don't know what they are talking about that prevents the technical solutions from being implemented. I mention only one elimination method: breeder reactors can be fed low and high level nuclear waste, and that waste is transmuted from high level/long term waste to high level/short term waste (meaning hours or days of radioactivity, as opposed to tens of thousands of years). Such a solution is technically feasible and has been demonstrated at large scale.
best suggestion anyone's got about that is just encasing the entire building in concrete.
No, the best solution that politics has allowed is encasing the building in concrete. There is little to no technical difficulty in pursuing a host of other solutions; again, uninformed anti-nuclear activists are teh biggest stumbling block to safe and effective methods of dealing with the remains of a reactor.
And although you didn't address this issue, let me point out that operating nuclear plants release no greenhouse gasses (no methane, no carbon dioxide, etc), no toxic heavy metals (cadmium, mercury, and lead, for example), no long-lived hydrocarbon carcinogens, certainly no soot, have a very small footprint (as compared to wind, water, and solar power), and much lower cost, when controlled for regulatory cost, environmental impact, and litigation. In fact, all operating nuclear plants in the world have released less nuclear contamination into the air and water than is released yearly by many individual coal and oil fired, "clean" power plants in operation today. You worry about a few hundred thousand tons of nuclear waste, while I worry about a few hundred MILLION tons of carbon combustion products released by conventional power plants, not to mention the millions of tons of soot and ash that are generated and must be disposed of.
Nuclear power does have its downsides, but on the whole, there is NO cleaner, more environmentally friendly, low impact method of generating electrical power available today than nuclear fission reactors. And that includes wind and solar power.