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Investigating Artificial Black Holes
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."
What if hawking was wrong, and hawking radiation doesn't kill them off?
Then how are we going to stop them from eating us all?
I remember years ago a scientist warned about the dangerous in performing atom accelerator experiments, which might lead to total disaster. I forgot the details but move along this line, someone might create a mishandled black hole and all of a sudden we suck into a tiny dot. Then we might hear something like that:
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.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Natural cosmic ray (probably created by supernovae or hypernovae) are far more energetic than any puny little collision we can muster. Concerns about doing something bad because of our particle collider experiences is unwarranted; if something bad were potentially laying in wait, it would have already been sprung billions of years ago from cosmic rays events. The most energetic cosmic ray -- consisting of a single proton -- had the kinetic energy of a hard-thrown fastball.
from all the other reasons, it's because a black hole doens't have any magic "sucking powers"
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.
Matter is mostly empty space, so much so, that every time you touch something, there is a small amount of overlap before the electromagnetic repulsion of the electron shells is enough to stop it. If they are dealing with what I think they are (no I haven't RTFA yet), these are probably micro black holes that are subatomic in size.
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.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
IAAP -- I am a Physicist.
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."
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.