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."
we're all gonna die! (Score:5, Funny)
dear lord, haven't we learned our lesson from Doom [idsoftware.com], Stargate [stargate-sg1.com] and Half-Life [sierrastudios.com]?!
science, it's done nothing but cause trouble.
Mike
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:2)
</shivers>
excellent, Smithers! (Score:5, Funny)
Since the dawn of time, Man has yearned to destroy the Sun...
Re:excellent, Smithers! (Score:3, Funny)
"I call it a Hawking-Hole"
"I'll just steer towards that Blackish-Holish thing"
Prof: "Fortunately, I had this wormhole installed in the middle of the table."
Fry: "Where does the other end come out?"
Prof: "You know, I don't know." [Looks through hole. Food splatters down from above onto his head. He reaches down through the hole and wipes his head off with a napkin.]
That's enough for now.
Dilbert (Score:2)
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:2, Flamebait)
That reminds me, where's my tinfoil hat?
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, we have!
Press the console key and type "+GOD MODE".
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no. It's "iddqd". Followed by "idkfa". And there is no console! You must be one of those young whipper snappers we've been hearing about lately. :-)
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... the goatse hole didn't quite get slashdotted.. but then again, that wasn't a front page story. Any Slashematicians who can ponder this delicate rump-roast of a question?
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:5, Funny)
Enjoy it while it lasts, goatse references that work are few and far between. Just like the man's cheeks.
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:4, Funny)
Call Buckaroo Banzai [imdb.com]!
Re:we're all gonna die! (Score:3, Funny)
Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Interesting)
I assume this won't happen, but can anyone explain why?
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Interesting)
I still would not like to know the exact time of this experiment :-).
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Interesting)
The hawking effect is only theory is in fact if your wrong we all perish. Sounds too risky for me.
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:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Interesting)
The temporal shear should only extend a few angstroms from the SR, so we don't really have to worry about it tearing stuff to pieces. Its gravity should only be a few nanometers per second squared any more than a few meters away from its surface, and that's barely detectable, so no worries there.
We could actually learn quite a bit about space-time by observing these black holes.
I have always wondered what happens beneath the Schwarzschild Radius. Since time dilation approaches infinity as you approach the Radius, wouldn't time be at a standstill inside the black hole? Therefore, material would accumulate at the surface and never move any further in because time stops for anything inside. You would get an infinitely thin layer of very high density right at the SR. Of course, since the more matter a black hole consumes, the more massive it becomes, the further its SR is from its center, so you wouldn't ever get a shell, you would find something more like a fog.
If anyone knows that any of the above is wrong, then please reply and correct me. It just seems to be what would happen based on what I know of physics and relativity.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:3, Informative)
As for your notion of a shell, see Susskind's article, Sci. Am. April 1997 p. 52.
You have duplicated part of his argument. Your fog notion is incorrect; the shell, as seen from afar, moves out with more mass accumulated. Susskind then notes that the shell does not appear at all to an observer following matter into the horizon, but that the she
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite. The curvature of space would be almost exactly the same at the orbit of the earth. If the Sun were to become a black hole, the curvature of space (or the gravitational forces at any point in space) would be the same for any point not inside the current surface of the sun.
To explain this a bit, first imagine a spherical cow with uniform density, floating in empty space. As you aproach the cow, the gravitational attraction towards it is proportional to the inverse of the square of the distance to the center of gravity of the cow. The density of the cow doesn't matter. An infinitely dense point-mass cow would cause the same attraction. Now, continue on your path, and you puncture the outside of the cow. At this point, it's easier to figure out the gravitational force as the sum of two force vectors. One force vector is for the sphere of matter "below" you, which is the sphere of matter with its center at the center of gravity of the cow and its radius being your distance from it. That one's easy to figure out, it's just some fraction of the mass of the cow, times your mass, devided by the square of the radius. The harder part to figure out is the force vector of the spherical shell "above" you. this involves some mathematics that I can't recall right now, but trust me, the answer ends up being zero. So, if you graph out the gravitational attraction from infinity to the center of the spherical cow, it will start as an increasing parabolic curve and continue that way until you hit the surface, at which point it will begin to decrease at a cubic rate that ends up equal to zero at the center of the cow. Now, if you collapse the cow into a black hole, the exact same equations hold true, the only difference is that the surface of the cow is now so much closer to the center, that the parabolically increasing rate has much more distance over which to increase.
I hope that made sense. It's late, and I'm going to bed now....
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Funny)
It's like taking an apple, or if you want, the biggest freighter on earth, and compressing it to a microscopic size...
The biggest freighter on earth isn't heavy enough to attract stuff around it... so the black hole it forms won't be either.
Now that being said, I don't know how they intend to "stabilize" the black holes... because as you noticed, anything that touches it *will* be sucked into it, so what comes to my mind is a black hole the size of an atom free falling all the way to the core of the earth, and starting to consume everything that touches it until it eats up everything...
And then we die. End of story.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:3, Informative)
The Schwarzschild radius is the distance from the center of something out to where nothing can escape it's gravitational pull. Everything that has mass should also have a Swarzschild radius. For all things, except black holes, that Schwarzschild radius is deep within the physical volume of space that the object occupies. Even for massive stars, the Schwar
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes. Read the article before posting, that's how. <rolleyes>
Because they are creating black holes smaller than the size of a proton, that lasts a fraction of a second. Since it's created in a vacuum, it dissipates before it has time to suck anything nearby in.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Yes, If all goes right.....
This is freaking me out.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Informative)
The reference to the Hawkings Effect is the key. Steve H. has a well accepted theory that black holes leak. The smaller they are the faster they leak. (It's basically a quantum effect, if the black hole is low enough mass the singularity is close enough to the event horizon to let some matter tunnel out and escape. The event horizon shrinks further until the black hole evaporates.) If all goes right the holes we could create with our limited technology couldn't last long enough to cause any problems. This of course is all just theory, if he's wrong there will be hell to pay.
First off, IANAQP (I am not a quantum physicist), but, that said, some corrections are in order... first of all black holes do not release matter as they dissipate, they release radiation (according to Dr. Hawking at least). Secondly, if he's wrong there won't be hell to pay, because the same theories that explain what black holes do are the theories that will allow this experiment to occur; in other words, we won't be able to create the black holes if the theories are wrong.
Here's an question- since we put matter into the black hole and get out only radiation as it dissipates (or so the theory goes) could we theoretically create black-hole-driven power plants where we feed matter into black holes and harness the energy as it escapes? Or is the radiation created as the black hole collapses unusable as a source of energy? I suppose it would also depend on the amount of energy used to create the holes. And from a P.R. standpoint, the fact that many people (in the U.S. at least) are still scared of nuclear plants, and apparently even many slashdot readers think that tiny black holes function like ultra-powerful vacuum cleaners, could mean a little trouble getting the local black-hole power plant approved.
By the way, I highly recommend Dr. Hawking's book The Universe In A Nutshell. You can get it here [amazon.com]. It's a lot easier to swallow than his previous book, and gets into many of the more interesting theories in science today without involving too much math. Topics covered include black holes, time travel, wormholes, etc.
I'd like to point out... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:2, Informative)
While blackholes do indeed "consume" matter, they also radiate energy (which via Einstein's E=mc^2 is the same stuff).
To understand Hawking radiation, image looking very closely at the event horizon of the blackhole. Everything on one side is doomed to be sucked in, while on the other, there is a chance it can escape.
Due to the massive gravitational field particles are being torn apart and there is a lot of energy floating around. This high energy region causes particle/anti-particle pai
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.
Next time, Read the Story FIRST! (Score:5, Informative)
"But wait", I hear you say, "Has anyone considered that creating artificial black holes might not be the best idea?" The idea of creating black holes in the laboratory has to give one pause. I mean, how can anyone resist the urge to imagine future headlines like "Artificial Black Hole Escapes Laboratory, Eats Chicago" or some such thing? In reality, there is no risk posed by creating artificial black holes, at least not in the manner planned with the LHC. The black holes produced at CERN will be millions of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom; too small to swallow much of anything. And they'll only live for a tiny fraction of a second, too short a time to swallow anything around them even if they wanted to. If it makes you feel any more comfortable, we're pretty sure that if the LHC can produce black holes, then so can cosmic rays, high-energy particles that smash into our atmosphere every day. There are probably a few tiny black holes forming and dying far above you right now. So I think we should all relax, fire up the Large Hadron Collider, and get ready for a view of the universe that we've never seen before.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:2)
There is a much higher risk of being sucked into a empty soda can.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:5, Funny)
If they make a black hole at the surface of the earth all the gravity runs out and we can fly.
Re:Is this dangerous? (Score:2, Insightful)
What if (Score:5, Insightful)
Then how are we going to stop them from eating us all?
Re:What if (Score:5, Funny)
Sue Hawking, duh.
Re:What if (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Gravitational Force = GMm/r^2
Where G is the gravitational constant of this Universe, M is the mass of the larger object, m the mass of the smaller object, and r the is the separation between the center of the two objects. [an objects gravity is "centered" at it's center, thus the gravitational force at the center of the earth is infinite (r = 0)].
It is true that black holes do not create increased distortions of the gravitational field by altering size (initially). They do so by shrinking the radius of the object. If you double the mass of the sun, but keep its radius the same, the gravity you'd feel on the sun's surface would only be doubled. If, however, you half the sun's radius, but leave the mass the same, then the gravity you'd feel on the sun's surface would be quadrupled (because r is 1/2, the denominator in the formula is 1/4).
I believe what you were trying to say is that the effective field of gravitation for these black holes would be so small as to be insignificant, and you're right. Gravity decreases exponentially with an exponent of 2 as the distance between the two objects increases; thus, for black holes of the mass these guys are creating, the field in which they would warp the space-time continuum would probably be atomic -- e.g., after about the radius of an atom, their gravitational force becomes insignificant.
Of course, this is all a shotty analysis of it, as Newton's Laws of gravitation don't even hold true for describing planetary orbits, and even Einstein's Theory of Gravitation (the warping of space-time) breaks down at a singularity.
Re:wrong (Score:3, Informative)
beg your pardon, but that's nonsense. the formula you quoted (Gravitational Force = GMm/r^2) is only valid for two masses m and M, if their centres of mass are distant by r, and both are spherical, or can be considered as point-like (e.g. if they are small compared to r). in particular, it is not valid if their smallest enclosing spheres overlap.
the case of a mass m within
Re:What if (Score:3, Informative)
Gordon, (Score:5, Funny)
It was Wile E Coyote (Score:5, Informative)
That was Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner, first introduced in the 1952 cartoon "Beep Beep".
I think the Acme corporation has the patent on them, along with Jet powered Roller Skates, Coyote-sized Slingshots, Dehydrated Boulders, Do-It-Yourself Tornadoes, spring-loaded Boxing Gloves, dropping Anvils from Tightropes, Jet-propelled Pogo sticks and Unicycles, and Fake Railroad Crossings.
Heh... (Score:5, Funny)
*rubs chin*
Naw, couldn't be...
Re:It was Wile E Coyote (Score:5, Interesting)
Then he's move onto the next plan.
I'd be yelling at the TV, "Try it again! It's a good bloody plan!"
The other amusing thing about this is I keep seeing the same situation in real life. Someone would try one thing, it would go wrong, and they'd decide it was obviously a bad idea, whereas thats not necessarily the case.
Re:It was Wile E Coyote (Score:4, Funny)
On a completely different note, years ago when I discovered the Warner Brother's store in Fair Lakes Shopping Center (around Chantilly, VA) I went in and tried to order anvils and dynamite. They didn't have any
Re:It was Wile E Coyote (Score:5, Funny)
I remember that cartoon (Score:2, Informative)
making pancakes. And he said
"portable hole" in a funny voice.
And he wore a bowler.
Portable Holes (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Portable Holes (Score:3, Informative)
Putting one near infinite storage facility into another near infinite storage facility causes a massive explosion, which destroys both storage locations, shuffles around every other storage location, and tends to kill the moron that did it, and those unfortunate enough to travel with
Re:Portable Holes (Score:3, Informative)
In most of the groups I've played in, extradimensional spaces became an artillery tactic rather than a storage space.
Nothing new... (Score:3, Funny)
Boooooom (Score:3, Interesting)
a) How long does it take one of these micro blackholes to decay. and...
b) Are they positive that a blackhole will just decay nicely. The big bang only took one particle supposedly, so...what happens when a blackhole pulls in upon itself? Boom?
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.
Whoa... (Score:4, Funny)
It must be the Slashdot->Goatse.cx->Giver thing. I need to get out more.
Obligatory Event Horizon reference (Score:4, Funny)
"Liberate tutemet ex inferis."
No wonder the Christian Science Monitor picked this one up.
Already been done (Score:5, Funny)
Almost.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow! (Score:2)
What would be worse, a gray goo scenario gone bad in the laboratory, or a home-made black hole gone bad?
I choose the black hole.
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:Doesn't this seem dangerous (Score:3, Informative)
But this news that CERN might create black holes IS distrubing. Even if they do have a short, short half-life - what
Re:Doesn't this seem dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
Second, unstable black holes, of the sort being made here, occur all the time on earth. Cosmic radiation creates them. They are just trying to make one the same way that they occur all over the place so they know where it will be and have recording equipment ready for it.
--
Evan
Re:Doesn't this seem dangerous (Score:3, Funny)
I believe that's the point.
--
Evan
Re:Doesn't this seem dangerous (Score:5, Funny)
--
Evan
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."
Cartoon (Score:2, Funny)
At least they can't patent it, as there is clearly a lot of prior art.
Old News (Score:5, Funny)
In all seriousness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In all seriousness (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, the origin of 10^20 eV cosmics is not at all understood. The Auger experiment [auger.org] for example is investigating this question.
Second, those very high energetic cosmic particles crash into earth (or whatever object in their path), which is basically at rest (compared to the speed of the cosmics). In particle physics, this is called "fixed target mode". Since both energy and momentum are conserved in the crash, the particles produced in the collision are not at rest but must carry the momentum of the cosmics (think billard). Thus, only a small part of the energy of the cosmics is avalable for forming new objects, namely sqrt(E), which is only 10 GeV, well within range of terrestral accelerators since over 10 years. The rest of the cosmics' energy just propels the new objects.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN will crash protons at 7 TeV energy against other protons of the same energy/speed but opposite direction. This is called "collider mode", and the entire energy of 2x7=14 TeV is available for new objects.
(Well, not really, since protons are themselves compound objects, made of 3 quarks and lots of "gluons" which glue the quarks together. So really its only a quark-quark or gluon-gluon collision with less than a sixth of 14 TeV but still more than the 10 GeV above.)
There is of course the possibility of a cosmic particle colliding with another cosmic particle, but given the rate of 5 of those cosmics per 1000 km^2 per year, and the very low cross section of these high energetic particles, this isn't going to happen very often
That's all folks (Score:3, Funny)
Black hole in the cellar (Score:4, Funny)
"We used to have a grandpa and he was getting pretty old. One day in July - early morning -
he went into the cellar - to get a pitchfork
for haymaking. But he never made it back, it looks like that he has vanished for good.
Chorus: "We have a small black hole in the cellar.
It eats everything it finds and it has no restraint. Grandma, please don't go there for coal - or it will eat you too - and police will never ever find you!"
Scientists came from far away - and from near too, grandma is nervous and beats us all, the kids. She is all alone there to do the cleaning and taking care of kitchen - while grandpa sits in the cellar and is infinitely heavy.
Chorus: "We have a small black hole...
Don't worry grandma, please don't despair, my wife is making the lunch. Her food is usualy quite terrible and I am gonna use it to feed the black hole. So I fed the leftovers from lunch to the black hole and it threw up everything including the grandpa. Then I took the chaisaw and cut the hole into pieces. And so the man won again over mysterious forces.
Europe Stop! (Score:2, Funny)
Why are electrons not black holes (Score:4, Interesting)
So, why are they not black hole singularities with infinite mass? Why don't they evaporate in a puff of Hawking radiation?
wow (Score:4, Funny)
People almost sound as if ms were trying to make these black holes.
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.
Eddington limit (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that in the process of evaporation, a black hole emits radiation, at some point the radiation pressure from the evaporation would balance out the force of gravity pulling matter into the black hole so then the black hole might stabilize in size.
Surely they'll have named that limit already, but I don't think it's the same as the eddington limit.
Or perhaps there won't be a limit here because the cross section area of the acretion disk would be so small compared to the surface area of the event horizon. (yes, I think that incoming matter would have to form a disk and not form an acretion shell)
insane (Score:3, Informative)
This is a bad idea.
Oh my. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, to address another issue. Hawking radiation is a pretty solidly entrenched idea. Particle and anti-particle pairs do form in space - the existance of the particles which are a part of it have been experimentally verified through the Casimir effect, which is Googleable. So worries about that not happening are pretty unnecessary. And, as many others have stated, these microscopic black holes have been forming and evaporating all the times due to cosmic rays right above our heads.
For those who wish to learn more about black hole physics, I have to suggest an excellent source for the layman: Jillian's Guide to Black Holes. [dragonweave.com] She can explain things in simple terms, and has some hefty gravitational wave and Penrose diagrams for the really interested.
Oh, and P.S.: If the world really is sucked up by a black hole, it'll be a saving grace for all of the physicists who have been extraordinarily wrong for the past three-quarters of a century. ^-^
And yet another P.S.: For those physicists out there, what interesting things start to happen with black holes at scales this much past the Planck length? I believe that I've read somewhere about quantum gravity showing up heavily, but I'm unsure. =)
God may not place dice (Score:3, Funny)
Anybody care to bet whether the black holes will be stable? I'm betting they will simply dissipate.
If they gobble up the whole universe, I'll pay one million dollars to each any every one of you, honest. If not, then you'll owe me.
Proven? (Score:5, Informative)
Not long ago, I attended a symposium where the presenter made a decent case, using some of the same arguments from QM that Hawking used, plus some other bits (sorry, don't have the notes), that Hawking Radiation would actually be forbidden by other physical laws. While the stuff at Ph.D. level and beyond me, it wasn't for the rest of the audience - and they couldn't poke any holes in it right away. Or by the end of the Q and A session.
Is it fringe? Sure. Be nice to verify, though, in the face of what could be a world-ending event. If black holes exist sans Hawking Radiation, we'd be in quite a bit of trouble upon the production of even the smallest one. Probably wise to check that little problem out. I'm not advising doing anything wacky and superparanoid, like building it on the Moon
Scientific method is great, but when it comes to doing planet-wide experiments, you get a sample size of 1 and no control group. Oh, and no "do-overs." This is Chicken Little, signing off.
Re:Proven? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've read at least four independent derivations of Hawking radiation,
Re:Proven? (Score:3, Informative)
As is oft said, if black holes produced by a collider are dangerous, then it is already too late as the cosmic rays striking our atmosphere all day, every day, carry more energy by orders of magnitude than the energy of the best collider. Thus, these cosmic rays would already be producing a shower of black holes all day, every day. It must already be too late (if hawking radiation is incorrect).
The only reasonable conclusion is that if they manage to produce any quantum black holes, which is what we're
Not likely to happen (Score:4, Informative)
The paper that started all this speculation (which is now presented as fact more often than not) is http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-ph/0106219 [lanl.gov]. In that article, the authors explain that the model requires a version of the universe that has ten dimensions, arranged in such a way that the Planck mass, where gravity merges with other forces, is about 10^3 GeV. Standard physics says that the Planck mass is at 10^19 GeV. Their assumption is 16 orders of magnitude different from the conventional wisdom.
The paper above concludes with the comment, "Collider study of black hole creation would certainly be an astounding pursuit". Indeed, the authors and experimentalists would be guaranteed Nobel prizes if black holes actually form.
Unfortunately, popular articles gloss over the speculative nature of these predictions and we are told that the LHC "should be enough" to create black holes, and that cosmic rays are "probably" creating them right now. The levels of certainty implied by this wording could not be more misleading.
Picture of a black hole event... (Score:5, Informative)
Many people have already pointed out that black holes are not going to destroy the earth, but I guess people might be interested in this [hef.kun.nl], which is a simulation of what a black hole event might look like. It shows an end-on view of the the ATLAS detector (picture [web.cern.ch]), with most of the noise and rubbish taken out.
The curved, coloured lines are tracks left by charged particles. The green ring is the electromagnetic calorimeter, whilst the red ring is the hadronic calorimeter. Calorimeters just measure energy - so the histograms radiating out show how much energy was deposited at each point. So by looking at the histograms you can get an idea of how energetic the track was. Hope that makes sense!
Incidentally, the picture is zoomed to show the interesting detail better. The detector is extremely large! Look here [atlasexperiment.org] for a picture that shows people standing next to it
Re:Christian Science Monitor? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Christian Science Monitor? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Christian Science Monitor? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, it is a news organization associated withis a small religious group known as "Christian Science" (offically "The Church of Christ, Scientist"), which has very little in common with Christianity.
Well, right up to that last part. Christian Scientists are Christians; after all, they believe in the resurrection of Jesus. That ultimately is what sets "Christians" apart from "non-Christians." They also consider the Bible to be canonical, they simply have in addition a book - almost a commentary - ca
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.
Re:No, stop him! (Score:2)
Re:No, stop him! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/docs/rhicreport.pdf
It it titled "Review of Speculative 'Disaster Scenarios' at RHIC".
However, they did shut it down for a bit to "upgrare some detectors". Probably true, but I did notice that instead of banging gold ions against gold, they are banging gold against deuteron. Makes you go "Mmmmmmm". I, for one, am glad that someone is thinking about this and perhaps weighing on the side of caution.
I still would feel better it was done beyond the orbit of Mars or further!
Re:this is insane (Score:3, Informative)
However you are correct in that we have no idea if Hawking radiation even exists. If it did, we would observe GRBs of a specific type, yet we haven't. I think we should look for these GRBs
Furthermore (Score:2, Informative)
FOr any given energy density, there is a diameter at which there is an event horizon.
Things no more get sucked into a black hole than thigns get sucked into a star, or any other gravity well.
Re:this is insane (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, the idea is that black holes dissipate via Hawking radiation, not blackbody radiation. It's been a few years since I read Hawking's papers on the subject, but they are quite different things. It has something to do with quantum fluctuations and virtual anti-particles being pulled INTO the black hole being the same as normal particls falling OUT of the black hole. That's how I remember it, but read his works, it's explained pretty well.
Second of all, higher energy impacts occur all of the time in space and in the upper atmosphere (which the article points out!) so either 1. Even that much energy is not enough to actually create a micro-black hole, in which case no problem or 2. They evaporate somehow, in which case, no problem.
Finally, these things will have very little mass. A penny does not attract near by mass towards it with any noticable effect, so these won't either. Just because they are very dense does NOT mean they have an immense gravitational field.
Here is a simplified way to look at it while ignoring blackbody and Hawking radiation. A black hole exists because at some point enough matter got together so that its gravitational field counteracted electrostatic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces, and it collapsed into a mathematical point. It remains a point because its gravity remains strong enough to counteract these other elementry forces. Now, if the blackhole was created by something else counteracting these forces, such as a high energy impact, then, once it is created, the gravitational field is NOT strong enough to counteract the elementry forces, and the black hole would dissipate.
IANAP
Re:hawkings / blackbody / information theory (Score:3, Funny)
Ah, now I undestand the real reason of those experiments. Politicians all around the world are certainly eager to destroy information they don't like. Now finally, physicists seem to have found a way to reliably do so - therefore there's certainly a great interest of manufacturing those devices, as well as researching if they indeed destr
Re:this is insane (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, maybe IHBT, IHL, HAND.
Does anybody remember Larry Niven's short story "The Hole Man"?
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:Anybody read much David Brin? (Score:3, Informative)