CERN's Black Hole that can eat the earth

[CaptainPanic]

The new Large Hadron Collider is coming online soon. It is said to be able to create micro black holes.

 

I immediately admit that any knowledge I have about micro black holes comes from the main stream media (including wikipedia), and is therefore not very good.

 

So, I read about the Hawking radiation, which states that the speed at which a black hole is emitting matter (the rate at which is loses weight) is inversely proportional to its weight. According to this theory, the micro black holes are harmless, because they will in fact lose all their matter so fast, that it might seem a small explosion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_black_holes

 

But, I also read that this is still debated. Maybe these black holes don't cease to exist quite so soon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_hadron_collider.'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_hadron_collider.

(from wikipedia) Although the Standard Model of particle physics predicts that LHC energies are far too low to create black holes, some extensions of the Standard Model posit the existence of extra spatial dimensions, in which it would be possible to create micro black holes at the LHC [25][26][27] at a rate on the order of one per second. According to the standard calculations these are harmless because they would quickly decay by Hawking radiation. The concern is[attribution needed] that Hawking radiation (which is still debated[28]) is not yet an experimentally-tested, or naturally observed phenomenon, and so micro black holes might not decay as rapidly as calculated, thereby accumulating inside the earth and 'devouring' it.

 

 

And I also read about the possibility that "strangelets" are created, which can turn other matter also into strangelets, thus catalyzing the destruction of the earth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_hadron_collider - under "Safety concerns")

(from wikipedia) Professor Frank Close (Professor of Physics at Oxford University, England) has stated, with regards to (dangerous) strangelets being created in a particle accelerator, and destroying the earth, that the 'chance of this happening is like you winning the major prize on the lottery 3 weeks in succession; the problem is that people believe it is possible to win the lottery 3 weeks in succession'.

- In the Netherlands, there are examples of people winning the lottery twice.

 

Can anyone guarantee that no stable black hole is created? I mean, even atomic bombs cannot utterly destroy the earth, there'll always be some microbe who will survive that. But all my knowledge about black holes says that it's the one thing that can in fact destroy everything.

 

Why do we even allow someone to try this experiment, when there is a even a very small chance that a black hole created that can eat the earth? In risk assessment, the risk is defined as: chance of something happening multiplied by its effects.

 

Or did I finally become a victim of the media (who generally try to scare people)?

[insane_alien]

you're a victim of the media. micro black holes will evaporate nearly immediately. and there have been observed events with thousands of times more energy occuring naturally. if it was going to happen, it probably would already have happened.

[Klaynos]

A micro black hole has already been observed, although having said that it evaporated to quickly to be properly observed... it was REALLY fast...

[swansont]

The events to which insane_alien refers are cosmic rays, which can have a much higher energy than the LHC will achieve.

[CaptainPanic]

Do you guys have links to more info (I'd prefer something with more authority than wikipedia, if possible)?

 

You guys all seem very confident that everything is very safe... where do the widespread doubts come from then? (And why do we even test it, if we already know what will happen?)

[insane_alien]

the widespread doubts come from the medias susceptibility to sensationalism.

 

it often happens that they take something nearly insignificant and blow it all out of proportion. it is more commonly seen with the 'THIS FOOD CAUSES CANCER ZOMG!!!!' news items.

 

there is a scientific study that sort of hints in a vague way that people who eat one type of food get slightly higher cancer rates than another group. the media clamps on to this and swaps all the maybes to certainties.

 

this is what the media does, they do it to get ratings/circulation/whatever which gets them more money. if they told the truth they would go bankrupt quite quickly i would imagine. though i would start watching it more.

[BhavinB]

Perhaps its important to note that Micro Black holes themselves are an unproven concept.

So, so, many "if's".

[timo]

Do you guys have links to more info (I'd prefer something with more authority than wikipedia, if possible)?

http://askanexpert.web.cern.ch/AskAnExpert/en/Accelerators/LHCenvironment-en.html#3, not exactly the page I was looking for; there is a more explicit answer on the CERN homepage iirc. But probably more authorative than WP.

 

You guys all seem very confident that everything is very safe... where do the widespread doubts come from then? (And why do we even test it, if we already know what will happen?)

There is no widespread doubts, at least not if "widespread" means "a lot of people". I've actually only heard those doubts twice:

First time on the CERN homepage where I read a comment similarly to the one I linked above. It was directly after the question if CERN really has an X33 plane, I think. So I took it as kind of a joke.

Second time I heard about it was on the german Wikipedia where someone wanted to add these concerns to the LHC article. The cited source was an interview with a researcher on non-linear dynamics (i.e. neither a particle physicist nor an astrophysicist or anything you'd expect for someone familiar with the topic) on an internet page for computer programmers. So in some respect that would indeed fit the term "widespread" .

 

@Klaynos: We have detected evaporating black holes? Where and when?

[Mike Dubbeld]

No black holes will be created at CERN LHC unless they can come up with 10^15 beyond the energy of LHC. Creating microscopic black holes at LHC is only possible if gravity is leaking into other dimensions per Scientific American. Even if they do create one it will last on the order of trillionths of a second and be vastly smaller than the size of a proton. They can create energy in LHC to come up with a 10^-23 KG but the smallest black hole possible theoretically is 10^-8 kg. Out of time.

 

Mike D.

[Riogho]

The smaller it is the faster it will evaporate, the interesting thing is the temperature of a black hole is inversely proportional to it's mass, therefore the smaller it gets the faster it radiates, and these will be so small, it is inconceivable that they last long.

 

Of course, that is the standing theory, we need a true theory of quantum gravity before we can make anything but assumptions.

[Daecon]

And I also read about the possibility that "strangelets" are created, which can turn other matter also into strangelets, thus catalyzing the destruction of the earth. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_hadron_collider - under "Safety concerns")

 

Strangelets are a hypothetical form of strange matter that contains roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks and are more stable than ordinary nuclei. If strangelets can actually exist, and if they were produced at LHC, they could conceivably initiate a runaway fusion process (reminiscent of the fictional ice-nine) in which all the nuclei in the planet were converted to strange matter, similar to a strange star[/url'].

That sounds like fun, I'd like to see that.

[CaptainPanic]

Thanks for the links. I guessed already that there was some scifi-journalist who started the idea of the black hole that eats the earth.

 

There is one thing that still concerns me. The CERN guys seem to use the reasoning: what we do is less powerful/violent than what nature throws at us from space. Earth still exists. Therefore we do safe things.

 

It is not the reasoning I was hoping for. CERN's reasoning is a a workaround-reasoning. "Look, birds can fly, they still exist... therefore, flying is safe... therefore, let's jump off this building", in stead of some calculation which takes aerodynamics and a force-balance into account. (Ok, not my best analogy, but I hope you guys see what I mean. Are we 100% certain that what we're trying at CERN is happening all the time in nature, under the exact same conditions?) - btw, I am merely saying that the CERN website does not seem to give me the info I want. Perhaps it is available, but I haven't found it.

 

p.s. Why are all h [ce] <-> [/ce] e ? Did some joker hack the website, or are the mods having a nice 1-4-2008 joke? - Think I will leave the forum for today and come back tomorrow when this is over. I can't be bothered to read posts when someone deliberately makes typos in every post.

[timo]

p.s. Why are all h [ce] <-> [/ce] e ? Did some joker hack the website, or are the mods having a nice 1-4-2008 joke? - Think I will leave the forum for today and come back tomorrow when this is over. I can't be bothered to read posts when someone deliberately makes typos in every post.

Probably a joke by either the admins or the authors of the underlying forum software. A bit annoying, indeed.

[Daecon]

I'm guessing they set a swear filter on...

[Royston]

Apparently a physicist (or so he claims) is attempting a lawsuit against the LHC, I kid you not...

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342854,00.html

[ydoaPs]

The link is from Fox News. Got another source?

[Sayonara]

The link is from Fox News. Got another source?

 

Here is the text of the lawsuit.

http://www.lhcdefense.org/LHC_Legal_Defense_Fund.html

[timo]

The link is from Fox News. Got another source?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Teh l33tspeak mod sucks.

[Daecon]

I suspect they have a religious agenda. Maybe they're creationists or scientologists...

 

Oh, my mistake. They're pseudoscientists.

 

Mr. Sancho, who describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory...

[Geogal]

Last I'd heard that CERN is not under the authority of anything Hawaii or American law can throw at them, especially in Geneva, and want sounding like they were even going to answer this suite.

 

I just found a picture of the inside of this thing....

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/27/823924.aspx

[CaptainPanic]

A Lawsuit before even trying out the Large Hadron Collider...

 

Imagine the lawsuits and claims they get after they destroy the earth! Hahaha!... oh, wait...

 

Apologies.

[bombus]

If the LHC at CERN does create mini black hole(s) and in the race between hawking radiation and matter munching the latter wins... How long would it take for the Earth to be destroyed?

[insane_alien]

a long time as the chances of it hitting any particles and absorbing them is very small. once it gets bigger, say to a few micrometers across, then quite soon.

[Severian]

A micro black hole has already been observed, although having said that it evaporated to quickly to be properly observed... it was REALLY fast...

 

No it hasn't.

 

It is a bit peculiar that people are so panicy about black holes. Why do they think black holes are dangerous? After all, a black hole weighting 1 kg would have no more gravitational attraction than 1 kg of iron, so it wouldn't "suck you in".

 

Admitedly very large black holes such as those thought to be at the centre of our galaxy, might be very dangerous, but that says nothing about very small ones. By analogy, neutron stars are very dangerous if you get up close, but neutrons are completely harmless (lots of them in my body!).

[Klaynos]

I was thinking of this article:

 

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18524915.400-black-holelike-phenomenon-created-by-collider.html

 

My memory of it appears to have been shaking re-reading it though.