UKC

I read that scientists are going to make mini Black holes in the LHC some time soon.

I was under the impression that a black hole singularity once created is a permanent fixture and even if the event horizon is tiny anything that passes this is lost forever. A drifting mini black hole sounds pretty scary to me. Do these things grow?

Are we sure these guys know what they're doing?

In reply to The Crow:

Well no we're not *entirely* - or else there would be no point in the LHC.... This is the fun of science.

But all black holes lose mass due to radiation, and the smallest ones lose energy the fastest so theory apparently says that these black holes would evaporate into a puff of elementary particles in a fraction of a second.

Guess we'll find out if they're right in a few months.

In reply to The Crow:

Aren't they going to last for about 0.3 nanoseconds or something? I agree if you were taking a stroll around the LHC with yer brolly around the time, it could be a little worrying. Be pretty awful to see your own image stuck there for all time. But I don't think you're in huge danger otherwise.

In reply to Different Steve:

Yippee! :o$


So we're depending on these holes to lose mass through radiation faster than they might gain mass from attracting things in?

What's the threshold size I wonder?

In reply to The Crow:

The Lifeboat Foundation are taking the Large Hadron Collider very seriously! Have a look at their site

http://lifeboat.com/ex/particle.accelerator.shield

In reply to Neil Kazimierz Sheridan:

Oh very reassuring!

In reply to The Crow:

lol I doubt we will feel a thing in the event of ".. particle accelerator mishaps including quantum vacuum collapse, mining the quantum vacuum, formation of a stable strangelet, and the creation of artificial mini-black holes.."

It's all a bit beyond my a-level mathematics! Is there enought time left for the Open University 'Quantum World' course? Probably not. Best just re-read brief history of time.

http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01SM358

Doubt I'll lose any sleep. I'm not entirely sure if the lifeboat foundation site isn't a bit tongue-in-cheek!

In reply to The Crow: Last I heard,Hawking had shown Black Holes are 'grey', and fuzzy, and small Black Holes last a VERY short time.
You need a Galaxy size hole for it to last any length of time...

In other words, don;t worry, Switzerland isn't going to suddenly disappear any time soon.

In reply to The Crow:

>What's the threshold size I wonder?

Yes, I'd be interested to know that. Guess it depends on the density of stuff around the hole to be hoovered up?

So calling all those UKC Hawking radiation experts....

In reply to Tim, the Grey:


Bugger!

Actually, I think it would be poetic justice if we managed to destroy our planet by making it disappear up it's own ar*e! There would definitely be a degree of symmetry for a few people who post on here.

>Puts claws away and wonders off into the antipodean night.<

In reply to Dave C: In reply to Different Steve:

OK a brief stab at some theoretical physics here. I am most likely very wrong but here is my understanding.

To create what we think of as the classic black hole requires a star several times more massive than our sun suffering a catastrophic collapse at the end of its life with the resulting singularity having a gravitional escape velocity faster than the speed of light, thereby creating a black hole with an event horizon past which only Hawkins radition is posited to escape as a type of thermal evapouration (although I have very little knowledge of the specifics). I seem to remember reading somewhere that a star with a mass of 3 times our own sun would have an event horizon of just 4km. Given that any LHC black hole would be created by particals around the sub atomic level then the resultant event horizon would most likely be measured in terms of less than nanometers ie 1×10 to the power -9 and have such little mass (again around the planck mass of 2 x 10 power -8) that they would be so unstable as to last the briefest divisions of a nanosecond.

In reply to The Crow:

Didn't they create a little star in the basement of Imperial College in about 1995?

In reply to Blue Straggler: it's pretty easy to create fusion
http://www.brian-mcdermott.com/fusion_is_easy.htm

factoi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba, the largest manmade explosion ever, had about 1% of the power output of the Sun

In reply to Blue Straggler: .....ok

when does the LHC actually go off/start? Is there any chance it could be delyed til after my life time?

In reply to The Crow:

High-energy cosmic ray collisions in the upper atmosphere are orders of magnitude more energetic that the LHC. They've been going on for billions of years, without creating a catastrophe. So I think we'll be OK.

In reply to Anonymous:
I had to go and look at your link. 1% of the sun's output sounded unlikely to me. But it was only for 39 nano seconds.
Still could be 1% of the sun's energy that hits the Earth though.

Like the bit where the Russian device is the most powerful ever at 50 megatons. Whereas the second was the US.
Who 'accidently' detonated a 15 mt device. It should only have been 5mt.
That'll be 10mt of friendly fire then ?

I hope they stood well back.


Disclaimer: Not everything on Wikipedia is true.

This lifeboat society website, are these guys for real? look at these pages
http://www.exitmundi.nl/vacuum.htm
http://www.exitmundi.nl/quantum.htm
http://www.exitmundi.nl/strange.htm
http://www.exitmundi.nl/blackholes_lab.htm


They also have plans like this
http://lifeboat.com/ex/alien.shield
http://lifeboat.com/ex/personality.preserver

What are these people on about?

In reply to Neftechalar:

I think you'll find they're not!

its a piss take then?