Atom Smasher May Create "Black Saturns" 423
David Shiga writes "If we ever make black holes on Earth, they might be much stranger objects than the star-swallowing monsters known to exist in space. According to a new theory, any black hole that pops out of the Large Hadron Collider under construction in Switzerland might be surrounded by a black ring — forming a microscopic 'black Saturn'. This could happen if extra dimensions exist, as string theory suggests, and if they are large enough." An evocative excerpt from the article: "...there is an outside chance that in a few years in a tunnel near Geneva, physicists will make a black hole far smaller than a proton and circled by a squashed four-dimensional black doughnut."
4D black donut? (Score:5, Funny)
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"Captain! The warp drive just farted out a quad dimensional donut, possibly chocalate with cherry filling."
Re:4D black donut? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:4D black donut? (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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Pic from article (Score:5, Funny)
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The funny part is, even though the relation you are joking about is obviously not the original intent; the article doesn't do much better. The need to relate a look or description to a common object is very standard in media. Saturn is not the only object surround by a ring, nor does it really relate to the ring that the article is taking about. It just make a more personal relationship to the concept by stating that it's like Saturn.
Re:Pic from article (Score:5, Funny)
Note: Image has been heavily magnified.
Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Informative)
There are ways to test QFT, and there are ways to test string theory. For instance: Lorentz invariance. Just because nobody reasonably suspects that Lorentz invariance will turn out to not be a real feature of our universe does not mean that it is not a testable prediction. The frameworks of both QFT and string theory include Lorentz invariance.
Furthermore, string theory is not as purely descriptive as you seem to think. It begins with some quite simple and quite basic first principles, and then attempts to derive all of physics from those. If it turns out that they can't describe all of physics from those principles, then they'll have to go back to the drawing board and look for new principles. Those principles are hypotheses. They have left the observation up to other physicists, and are using the existing theories as a description of those observations. So, they are letting observation refine their hypotheses.
If they were merely looking for a way to describe all our known data, then they would just say "Well, our theory is: The Data Is As It Is." Such a theory would be absolutely right. It would even be science. It would be pretty poor science, but it would be science nonetheless. If they are truly looking for the simplest way to make equations that work out to cover all the physics that we know, then it is absolutely science. Simplicity and good description of data are what make a scientific theory good. And yes, they are trying to describe data. If they are trying to make particular limits of their theory match up with extant theories that are known to work in those same limits, then they are trying to describe data, simply because those extant theories are only extant because they themselves describe data.
Now, I don't much care for the particular approach that string theory takes, but that in no way makes it not science.
As I said, learn a little physics before you try and comment on physics. Learn a little bit more of the details of what string theorists actually do, and also learn a little bit more of the details of how every other scientific theory in existence was formulated. Not that they were all identical to string theory at some point, but at base, they all tried to find the simplest way of making equations describe data, and sometimes those data were represented by other equations.
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Insightful)
True. Regardless, a wide segment of the scientific community regards string theory as something which could very well be the most important thing since the relativities and QFT.
As I tried to explain previously, but you obviously either didn't read or didn't grasp, you are comparing apples to oranges. The SM is a particular instance of QFT. Nobody has yet found a comparable particular instance of string theory. You would in fact have just as difficult of a time disproving QFT as you would string theory, perhaps even more difficult of a time. For instance, suppose we did our searches for extra dimensions (these are done regularly at HEP labs) and found that our data supported a universe with 15 extra dimensions! This would rule out string theory without drastic modifications, but wouldn't hurt QFT at all. Wouldn't even hurt the SM.
If I shouldn't take it up with you, then you shouldn't be saying it in the first place. If you're intending to hide behind a shield of "I don't really know what I'm talking about," then actually behave as if you don't know what you are talking about. Keep your mouth shut unless you've really got something worthwhile to say.
Most of the scientific community that I am familiar with (experimental HEP) doesn't really much care for string theory, but neither do they think it is not science and is a waste of time. In other words, they and I largely agree. Now which scientific community did you want me to take this up with again? (and don't forget the concept of a vocal (and book-writing) minority. Only a tiny minority of scientists ever write pop-science books. Their opinions should not necessarily be considered representative.) In my opinion, it is the amateur public, who is easily and immensely swayed by a few popular books, and then who reinforce each others misconceptions by such things as posting to slashdot and saying "yeah, string theory, sucks doesn't it. I really hate it.", who need to be addressed.
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Anyway, QuantumG is the one who claimed to be an amateur in the first place. He further claimed that his status as an amateur meant that I should not correct his misunderstandings. This is ridiculous. If he knows he doesn't understand things, then he shouldn't be posting them unless he is asking for clarification. If he does understand
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:4, Funny)
A. Mr String Theory, can you give me some predictions so I can test this?
B. Well, no, waffle, waffle, waffle, waffle.
C. No, seriously, give me some predictions already.
D. Ok, here ya go, how about this?
E. That's fine, I'll go test that... hey, turns out my experiment gave me different results to your predictions.
F. Yes, that's right, String Theory doesn't just prediction what happens in the 4 spatial dimensions, it also has extra dimensions, which you can't observe, and my predictions are correct there.
G. I can't observe your predictions, so they're right?
H. That's correct.
I. Uh huh... got any predictions that I can observe and if my experiment differs from you would agree your theory is wrong?
J. No! All predictions come with this cavaete.
K. Well that's just psuedoscience.
L. No, it's descriptive.
M. And pointless.
N. Is not.
O. Is so.
P. Is not.
Q. Is so.
R. Is not infinity!
S. Is not infinity + 1!
T. You can't add one to infinity.
U. Can so.
V. Can not.
W. Can so.
X. Can not.
Y. Can so.
Z. If you don't mind, I'm busy working out complicated equations that can't reliably predict anything you can observe.. good day.
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's very odd that the math some physicists doubt can be seen as not science. According to an essay last week in Nature, some biologists reject the idea of mathematical laws entirely ("the data is as it is"). Yet despite that, there is no question that mathematical biology is science (before someone screams, it is).
The public does not understand the basic ~100 year old theories we base our experiments on (which were at one point unproven and controversial...). You can even get a physics degree (in some places) without needing to learn QFT. Imagine explaining genomics to people who didn't know what a cell is. That is the situation we are in. Baby steps...
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Science's definition depends a great deal on who you talk to. Most everyone who has studied would agree that Plato did a bit of science. In fact, Plato's science was pretty amazing for its time. You recall the "four (or five) elements"? Plato said that each element was in fact tiny tiny versions of the Platonic solids. For instance, fire was made of tetrahedrons, and it hurt because it was sharp. When things decayed, the reason they smelled strongly was that the elements were actually breaking up into little triangles (their faces), and those triangles were small, so they got into our noses easily.
Plato's science wasn't very predictive at all. Pretty much purely descriptive. And yet it was a sterling example of early science.
Quantum Field Theory in and of itself is barely predictive. Pretty much its only predictions are directly its assumptions, such as the Lorentz Invariance I mentioned previously. Perhaps it is not science (and if you say that QFT is not science, then I might well agree that string theory is not science either, but I would then argue that we certainly need QFT to get the SM, which is science), but most people agree it is.
It is of course difficult to come up with decent examples of purely descriptive science, because of course purely descriptive science is very poor science indeed, and is rightly largely ignored.
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Informative)
Two, as I said to another reply making this same objection, the "The Data Is As It Is" theory could be understood to implicitly say "Under exactly the same conditions as we did our experiment, you will get exactly the same results as we did", which is dead easy to falsify.
Three, a measurement which breaks lorentz invariance would destroy string theory (as well as much of the rest of the last century of physics). There is no "change the words of the proposer" here (although in general, if you change the assumptions of a theory, you pretty much have to change everything. They are assumptions because they are fundamental and necessary.). This is one regard in which string theory absolutely can be wrong, and lorentz invariance absolutely is testable and is frequently tested.
Four, QFT is just as much, if not more so, of a "calibration model". QFT can describe a huge number of conceivable universes, probably more than string theory can. For instance, string theory nails down a number of dimensions. QFT does not. It is possible for us to do measurements on the number of dimensions. They are indirect, and they have a difficult time ruling out more dimensions than we have yet measured, but they can fairly easily rule out fewer dimensions than we have yet measured. So, it is conceivable that we might do LED analyses at the LHC and find that it looks like there are at least 3,972 dimensions. QFT would have no problem with this. String theory would. Yet another way in which string theory is definitely falsifiable.
Five, even the SM, the baby of QFT and of string theory opponents, is very much a calibration model in all kinds of ways. In fact, that is one of the principal criticisms of the SM. It has far too many free parameters that can only be determined by experiment. Once a particular string model (and here I mean string model : string theory
Six, if we built a sufficiently powerful particle accelerator, we could probe down to string length scales (and no, I'm pretty sure that the string length scale is moderately fundamental, so the string theorists couldn't just say "well, ok, strings are smaller than that then."), and see whether we saw strings or point particles. QFT predicts points, string theory predicts (obviously) strings. This is a harsh test of string theory, which makes it falsifiable. The fact that today we do not have the technology to carry out such a test in no way affects the "scientificness" of string theory.
Seven, as I've said above, string theory can be wrong, and it is science. It is not science that I personally like, but it is science.
"It is not science" is the principle criticism of string theory coming from the non-physicist public. I have very rarely heard this criticism coming from physicists. Please keep in mind that pop-science-book-writing physicists are a tiny tiny minority of all physicists. Trust pop science no farther than you can throw it, as it is practically necessarily fraught with errors. If you wrote a pop-science book without errors in description, you would find that you had in fact written a science textbook, and it would not be very accessible to the pop-science reading public.
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True, but once it is disproved, you do have to come up with a new theory. The framework still holds, but the instance of it is different. That's pretty much how science works.
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But to call it "not science" is just ignorant. People used to laugh at individuals who thought the Earth was round you know..
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Lorentz invariance. Could very conceivably be observed to not hold. Especially since we haven't studied it yet at the high energies the LHC will give us. If Lorentz invariance fails at any energy, string theory (along with most 20th century physics) fails completely.
Number of dimensions. If we do extra dimension searches at LHC (and believe me, they will be done) and find that there are 7,342 dimensions, string theory will be ruled out. Interestingly, Quantum Field Th
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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length
width
height
time
QED
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime [wikipedia.org]
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Science is a process, not a body of knowledge. There's no reason Christianity couldn't be a scientific paradigm except for the methods by which it is developed.
For a counter example, take a look at string theory. It predicts a bunch of things tha
Re:Now wait a minute.. (Score:5, Informative)
Physicists create string theory test
PITTSBURGH, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Scientists have long questioned the validity of "string theory" and now U.S. physicists have created a test for the controversial "theory of everything."
[... click link to read article]
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Ringed black hole (Score:4, Funny)
Hm. Maybe google [google.com] will help me to remember what it was. Oh yes. There [slashdot.org] it is. Darn. CyberSitter blocks loading that page. I know, user prefs, threshold 5. There we go. Now I can at least see the summary. Click, read, yep, that's the one I remember. Now, Samir Mathur, I remember a very nice
Someone please tell me how the current article lines up with these from years past. Please try to do so without profanity so that I can click my comment and read the reply without CyberSitter dumping the page.
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From flatlander's point of view, a sphere does not exist anywhere in his 2D universe; however a projection of it does (a circle or a point.) The article is correct to say that a certain 4D object can not exist (such as being fully contained) within a 3D space, just as a 3D billiard ball can not be contained within a 2D sheet of paper. Even a flatlander can't deny existence of billiard balls if he can conjecture the possibility
Re:Ringed black hole (Score:5, Informative)
Suppose you had a rectangular prism-shaped room with 2 doors, exactly opposite each other on the North and South walls, respectively. Actually, better yet, suppose that the entire North wall and the entire South wall are completely taken up by their doors. Now, suppose that when you walk out the North door, you are simultaneously walking in the South door. This doesn't happen normally (obviously), but with a sufficiently weird topology of space, it could. It is certainly imaginable. The North door and the South door are actually the same place. Now, of course, you can measure this room, length height and width. You might say "but North to South it would be infinitely big!", but it isn't. Take meter sticks, and lay them end to end, starting in the middle of the room, with them oriented N-S. Eventually, because the North and South doors are the same place, you'll wrap back around, and find yourself laying the last meter stick on top of the first one. The number of sticks that you laid down is the length of the room N-S in meters.
Now imagine that your room is that trash dump in Star Wars, where the walls start closing in. Move the North wall closer and closer to the South wall, so that you can only lay down two meter sticks before they start overlapping, and then one meter stick, and then your one meter stick starts overlapping itself, so you switch to centimeter sticks. The size of your N-S dimension has decreased, say to 50 cm. The East-West and Up-Down dimensions are still plenty big, say 5 meters, and they have hard walls, ceilings, and floors, none of this wrapping around nonsense.
Now, suppose that you have a stick 25 cm long. You can orient it in whatever direction you like in this space. It has no trouble existing. Now take one of those meter sticks you had before. You can't orient it however you want, because if you try to turn it to point exactly N-S, it will run into itself. Now suppose you have a 25 cm diameter beach ball. It has no problem existing. But try to imagine a 1 meter diameter beach ball. It can't happen. No way no how. No matter how you turn the thing (unless you deflate it, of course), it will run into itself.
So, an essentially 1-d object, the meter stick, can exist in this space, but only if you turn it certain ways. It can exist even though it is larger than the smallest dimension. However, the 3-d object, the beach ball, can only exist in this space if it is smaller than the smallest dimension, otherwise it runs into itself.
This is precisely how the "black saturn" can only exist at microscopic scales. It is a 4-d object, and all our theories of extra dimensions (at least all of them that have any real following) have no more than 3 dimensions which are actually macroscopic. So if you have an object which is roughly 4-spherical, that is the same size in 4 dimensions, it can only exist if it is smaller than the 4th largest dimension (the three largest being our normal 3 space).
Another way to look at the room I described is that at scales above 50cm, it is actually a 2-d space. Only at small scales (< 50cm) is it really 3-d. Only at really really tiny scales is our space 4 (or more) dimensional (in most extra dimension theories), at any larger scales, it is 3-d. (Of course, I'm not counting time here. Only spacial dimensions.)
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An interesting theory . . . if only we could find a way to test it . . .
Mmmmmmm universe! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mmmmmmm universe! (Score:5, Funny)
Fry: No fair! I saw it first!
Hawking: Who is The Journal Of Quantum Physics going to believe?
Even more dangerous, the LHC could create... (Score:4, Funny)
That is something you don't want anywhere near you.
Or, we might be eaten by strangelets... (Score:2)
Questions from the Peanut Gallery (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article:
... a black hole far smaller than a proton and circled by a squashed four-dimensional black doughnut ...
I get the impression that the "small size" thing is supposed to be reassuring. But aren't all black holes comparatively small, compared to what they've had for lunch? How big would a black hole be that, say, had accidentally swallowed the Earth? And I suppose mass should also reassure me. But the thing is, my gradeschool science oversimplification of black holes said their defining characteristic was not their mass but their insatiable, chain-reaction-like desire to swallow more mass ... like a rolling snowball.
And it's all well and good to say some theoretical rays we've never seen before will magically swing in at the end and save us, but... Since this is testing an unproven theory and not applying a well-understood theory, what are the procedures for evaluating the level of risk?
And what is the recourse of those who don't agree? Science has ethical guidelines for not experimenting on humans because of risk. Does the fact that humans are in the next room ... or the next building ... or the next city, "safely away" from the black hole being created, mean that there is no ethical obligation for informed consent? It would seem like there are more rules governing putting make-up on a rat than there are on this kind of experimentation...
I don't know the details of this kind of thing. I just have to trust someone doing them does. But I wonder exactly what I'm trusting. Anyone know?
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Re:Questions from the Peanut Gallery (Score:5, Informative)
All black holes emit "Hawking radiation [wikipedia.org]", which causes them to slowly lose mass. For black holes below a certain size, this evaporation due to Hawking radiation will be so fast that they won't even have a chance to grow through matter accumulation before they evaporate into nothing. I know this doesn't match up with the pop-science description of black holes--where they consume all matter around them until nothing is left--but suffice it to say that the pop-science explanation leaves out many of the important details.
So, again, the creation of micro-black-holes is nothing to worry about. Remember that although the energies in the LHC are really massive, there are other similarly high-energy natural events occuring throughout the universe, and they appear not to routinely form micro-black-holes that consume everything around them. Creating stable (i.e.: big) black holes appears to be a comparatively rare event.
Some people are not appeased by the above arguments and point out that our current theory of particle physics may be lacking in some unforseen way, and we will destroy ourselves. Then again, the only reason to think a black hole will form at all is because of the current theory of particle physics. If that theory is wrong, it's more likely that... well... no black hole will form at all. (Again, look around the universe and notice the distinct lack of universe-consuming mega-black-holes.)
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On the other hand, if the scientists accidentally produce a constantly growing black hole that orbits above and through the planet and makes holes in everything then at least these scientists' theories will be proven wrong, and they will be ashamed of their stupidity for the rest of their lives.
Alway with the bloody String Theory (Score:2)
This could happen if extra dimensions exist, as string theory suggests, and if they are large enough.
"""
Why is it that every single time that something suggests something that string theory "predicts" but has many many other explanations, it's touted as a victory for evidence of string theory? (btw this is similar thinking to that of "Intelligent Design" folks) In this case, there are many other theories that have more dimensions.
Basically, IF this is happens, it is only a HINT that some theory that has
This sounds like a 70's Blaxploitian Movie (Score:3, Funny)
"Thrice Upon A Time" (Score:3, Informative)
There is a very low chance of a much larger hole (Score:4, Funny)
e-mail (Score:2, Funny)
priority: highest
re: micro saturn black holes
1. Formation confirmed
2. Evaporation confirmed not!!!!!!!!
Hey! That's the name of my new band (Score:2)
We're really small. Our music sucks you in, and we're growing.
Wow! Finally an experiment to validate string ... (Score:2)
Get a brane [wikipedia.org]! -- String theory humor
Spinning in which direction? (Score:2)
Perhaps I'm too Newtonian in my thinking here but, in order to conserve the angular momentum (presumably zero) of the particles that went into the collision, wouldn't the central black hole have to spin in the opposite direction of the ring? In that case, since we've got two objects dragging space-time in opposite directions, what happens to space-time in the space between?
Or, since we are t
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Not that easy (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Prof Hawking said that a collider capable of making black holes, would be the size of the solar system.
But could it create... (Score:3, Funny)
Funny how some childhood skinemax memories can stick in your brain.
John Titor Anyone?? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/the_john_tito
An interesting interview with Larry Flynt:
http://www.larryflynt.com/notebook.php?id=95 [larryflynt.com]
I have my fair deal of scepticism against John Titor and the claims he has traveled from the future to fetch an old IBM machine besides testing the time-machine, but so much that he wrote about in 2000-2001 thereabouts, has in fact come true. These are just the broad ones:
http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com/ [strategicbrains.com]
This is yet another drop in this mans pretty hefty prediction bucket. At the time of this link, there were no mentions of black holes being generated in the new smasher, but now it seems that this too will come true (if possible), and very much in the same timeframe as predicted too!
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread124980/
This is the person who even told Hawking was wrong, and later Hawkin conceded he was wrong on the subject!
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.net/cgi-bin/forum
Time Traveller The Movie. John Titor doesnt HAVE to be proven correct. WE can DO something about it, starting with ourselves!
http://www.fasttrackproductions.biz/TimeTravel_0.
A site that is covering news in the media and corelating it with Titors predictions:
http://www.johntitor.com/ [johntitor.com]
I dont claim any of this is true, in whatever what you regard as truth, but when reading this, it is startling how accurate the person who wrote those messages in 2000-2001, is describing the trends of our society, problems of the US, Mac Cow Disease, CERN beginning to experiment with mini-black holes, and much more.. For the sake of our planet, and our future, it is worth considering living as THOUGH weve already been through this, than not. He describes a more primitive, but also a more enlightened society if you read the archives from the first link.
Re:You know all those unexplained gamma-ray bursts (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You know all those unexplained gamma-ray bursts (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, not me. I tend to respect what precious little science knowledge I have by not using it to make up random shit.
No you big wuss! (Score:2)
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Then the Cyberdemons would invade. Doom had black holes on Mars didn't they? My memory is fuzzy.
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Re:Dangerous mini-black-hole (Score:5, Informative)
You're not the only one worrying, but trust me, there's no danger of this whatsoever. First of all, they will dissipate almsot instantly due to Hawking radiation. Second of all, they are so tiny that they will rarely (if ever) get close enough to swallow something else. Remember, on an atomic scale there is mostly space. And these things are not just small -they are so small its hard to fathom. They are formed by smashing together protons moving at 99.999999% the speed of light. A black hole (might) be formed, if, during the collision, the resultant density of the object is greater than the density required to form a black hole. The gravity will be no greater than the mass of the objects combining it, so you don't need to worry about it sucking things in. Let me jsut give you an example. A basketball could, theoretically, become a black hole, so long as you compressed its mass into a small enough area -but it would still have the gravitational pull of a basketball. And here, we are talking about turning protons into blackholes! In short, nothing to worry about chap!
Third of all... (Score:5, Insightful)
Third of all: The kind of (and energy of) collision in question occurs with non-trivial frequency when cosmic rays hit atoms in the atmosphere. If it created a long-lived black hole that could suck down a planet in a geologically short time we would have been down the drain LONG ago.
Re:Third of all... (Score:5, Informative)
This is not scientific thinking, and it shouldn't be granted any credence. You need to get some evidence to support your views. Your cautionary assertion is on par with the following: never write the letters "CKGJSHDFKLNJNSDFH" on a piece of paper -we don't know what would happen since it has never been done, and it might end life on earth (you can't rule it out completely). Both claims are just about equally substantiated.
Second, the only reason we have to believe in black holes is because of our scientific models, and now you are jumping up and down warning us that our models might be wrong? You would be standing on firmer philosophical ground by rejecting the notion that a black hole will be created at all (there you are just being a skeptic about theoretical entities). But your position as it stands is contradictory -you claim our models might be wrong and black holes might eat the planet, but yet you trust those theories in predicting the appearance of a black hole.
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Theoretical Hawking radiation.
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Re:Dangerous mini-black-hole (Score:4, Funny)
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Their knives are teh r0xorz!!!
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Besides, the resultant black hole would be absolutely minute - much much smaller than a proton. At that scale, even the densest of earthly materials is just so much empty space. The mean free path of any such hole would be absolutely
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How does one go about disposing of a black hole?
I guess it could be used to safely store radio active waste.
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Easy. You just roll it up [wikipedia.org] and take it with you.
I doubt many Slashdotters are old enough to remember (or otherwise spend their days watching old Looney Toons cartoons), but the Calvin Calculus guy who invented the portable hole I thought was brilliant, but his invention gave me nightmares throughout most of my childhoold. No fear of the dark, fear of strangers, or fear of monsters under my bed -- just a fear of black holes, and before they became fashionable
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Re:Dangerous mini-black-hole (Score:5, Informative)
Earth-cosmic ray collisions occur at an absolutely fantastic rate, higher than the LHC would ever even dream of. The energies of cosmic rays are distributed across an extremely broad spectrum, extending both above and below LHC energies. If there is any chance of the LHC making an Earth swallowing black hole, then there is precious little chance of the earth being outside of a black hole by tomorrow morning, much less any chance of the earth having survived 4.5 billion years.
Furthermore, pretty much everything in the galaxy, and presumably in the universe, experiences a cosmic ray flux comparable to what the earth sees. If the LHC were going to make planet or star swallowing black holes, then the sky would be mostly nothing but black holes.
Re:Dangerous mini-black-hole (Score:5, Informative)
Cosmics have energies spread out over an absolutely huge range of energies. Their timing and location are nigh unto impossible to predict. We don't get anything like a 0 net momentum collision between a cosmic ray and an atmospheric atom. The upper atmosphere is an incredibly noisy place, primarily because of cosmics. We would have an awful hard time telling the difference between a particle that originated from a cosmic-atmosphere collision we were interested in and a stray particle that came from the hadron shower of some other cosmic-atmosphere collision.
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Meh. Probably not a bad way to go.
Re: your sig (Score:2)
Your markup is invalid. Any element or attribute name beginning with the string "xml" is reserved by the spec.
(This is actually a simplification of the truth, see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#dt-name [w3.org] for details.)
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Look, buddy! SOMEONE has to get sucked into this black hole, why not you? Huh? Are you too good to get pulled into a string of spegetti and your date erradicated from all exsistance? What makes you so important?
My grandfather was abducted by aliens, the least you could do is get devowered by a massive black hole.
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Look, it's bad enough that you want him to get devoweled by a black hole...
(And why would a black hole only take his vowels, anyway? Is it a conspiracy by the Balkan states, to get us all on an even linguistic footing? But I digress...)
But you have to insult people of Chinese heritage, too?
Geez, At least you didn't say he should be "devowerd by a massive black hore", which would insult another whole group of poeple.
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Apparently nature doesn't because if the LHC can produce black holes the Cosmic rays do too so were they that dangerous we would not be here to debate the point.
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Re:mmmm (Score:5, Funny)
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But it does answer the question... (Score:2)
"Is there a Ring of Debris around Uranus?"
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"Finally" implies a temporal dimension, leaving only 2 dimensions for "crap." but for "crap" to be manifest, it must pass through a hole, which necessarily implies at least n + 1 dimensions! Congratulations, you have established the existence of *gasp* the 4th dimension, which we refer to as the "anal dimension."
(My silly comment got me wondering, if a "hole" exists and is orthogonal to the 3 spatial dimensions, then the c
Re:Creating black holes is always a bad idea. (Score:5, Informative)
A larger star collapsing will form a larger black hole of the SAME mass.
A molecule collapsing to form a black hole[forced to] will form a black hole of the same mass of the molecule.
The smaller the black hole [smaller mass], the faster it will evaporate due to Hawkins Radiation.