Man-Made Black Holes Looming?

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."

Comments

David Brin

[weaselgrrl]

Perhaps we should send these guys a few copies of David Brin's wonderful novel "Earth", 1990.

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

[RollingThunder]

And, ironically enough, Switzerland (where CERN is, if I remember correctly) is a major feature in Earth. Mostly as glow-in-the-dark melted mountains, admittedly. :)

A fascinating book, very depressing view of the future that is probably all too accurate.

Extensions on Blackholes.

[Niscenus]

No, we are not talking about black holes capable of swallowing matter, nor are we talking about the ability to "place them" at any particular point. Though, it does make for an interesting bit of science-fiction.

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, 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".

Another book...

[b1t r0t]

Thrice Upon a Time has a plot thread about an experiment that generates tiny black holes that don't show themselves as growing until a few months pass (with wierd unexplainable holes in things until people figure it out). But don't worry, their trusty DEC PDP-21 will help fix things!