Slashdot Mirror
Lab-Made Fireball May Be a Black Hole
MoogMan writes "BBC News reports that a lab fireball may be a black hole.
From the article: "A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said. The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter falls into a black hole and comes out as "Hawking" radiation." More information available from the NewScientist article (subscription required)."
Some time ago, I had one of my minions to compose a list of possible ways of destroying the Earth. Back then, he rated the "microscopic black hole plan" as follows:
You will need: a microscopic black hole having enough mass not to evaporate instantly. Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick. This is left as an exercise to the reader.
Method: simply place your black hole on the surface of the Earth and wait. Black holes are of such high density that they pass through ordinary matter like a stone through the air. The black hole will plummet through the ground, eating its way to the centre of the Earth and all the way through to the other side: then, it'll oscillate back, over and over like a matter-absorbing pendulum. Eventually it might come to rest at the core due to the resistance of the matter it passes through, but it'll have riddled the planet full of holes long before then. Then you just need to wait, while it sits and consumes matter until the whole Earth is gone.
Earth's final resting place: a singularity of almost zero size, which will then proceed to happily orbit the Sun as normal.
Feasibility rating: 2/10. Highly, highly unlikely. But not impossible.
However, now it seems that we're a step closer to accomplishing this, so i might have him revise the list.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Does anyone else think assassins should be called in to prevent this experiment from creating a real black hole that swallows up the whole planet in minutes?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Euh? Does that make it 10 million seconds?
mund freud.
welcome our new Kwisatz Haderach Blackhole overlord!
we should all know in about 4.2 minutes whether it is really a black hole or not. It was nice knowing all of you. Thanks for all the fish.
We eat everything we can find, then something else come out from the other end?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
These tiny blackholes will fall into the core of the earth, and slowly grow one quark at a time, but at an accelerating rate. In a 100 million years or so, it'll come back to haunt the descendents of the super dolphins that'll overthrow the advanced alien race that'll conquer the robots that'll destroy us.
The same thing happens when I eat at Taco Bell, but no one has claimed my stomach is a black hole.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
This sounds familiar....Pass me the crowbar
Look!
I just want sharks with frikken laserbeams attached to their heads!
That sucks...
if John Titor predicted this...
Is it just me or someone else thinks that a high bishop will steal this, kill the Pope and plant it inside the Vatican ?
We all know the only way to get rid of a black hole is to detonate a nuclear device less than 20 feet away from it. This will cause the wormhole to jump to another stargate and the world will be saved.
This sounds very similar to my arse. It is dark. Particles disappear, later to re-emerge through the hole as thermal radiation, which I too have been calling "Hawking Radiation". The other guys in the lab love sending probes to "Uranus" to check it out first hand.
I for one welcome our new singularity overlooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....................
who can save us from these "scientists" that are bent on terrorizing the world with black holes
I'll sleep soundly tonight knowing the black hole formed in NY is "not thought to pose a threat". Very comforting.
Well heck, it *could* be an Oreo. Or a vulture. Or an alternator from a '58 Chevy. Or the warm fuzzy feeling you get from doing an anonymous good deed.
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.
Here is the proof that time travel is possible; an article posted on April 1st, 2005 has taken a trip thru a blackhole and found itself on posted on March 17, 2005. If my theory holds true, expect April 5th's dupe on tomorrow's Slashdot queue.
I sig, therefore I was.
Better not get your necktie caught in one of those!
Does anyone else think assassins should be called in...
I definitely vote for Ninjas. They're way cool. And as a side bonus, (1) they can move fast enough to avoid being sucked into the black hole, and (2) they can slow their heartrate to zero if the blackhole starts to pass through their bodies. With those two skills alone, they're clearly best for the job.
Well great. We've got in our hands the most destructive force in the universe, and we're playing with it. I hope we survive long enough so I can buy a "Anti-wrinkle black hole" for my wife some day. Or maybe a "Tonka Wormhole" toy for my kid. I don't even want to know what Barbie and barbie toys they come out with.
This technology is not a toy. May cause suffocation, asphyxiation, paralysis and may crunch you into a singulatity if you stand to close when in "action" mode.
...cacodaemons and imps start crawling out of your rift in the space time continuum.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
USA, USA, USA, USA...
Hawking: I call it a "Hawking Hole."
Fry: No fair! I saw it first!
Hawking: Who is The Journal Of Quantum Physics going to believe?
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
They already have. They're scrambling to pull out stuff they've already written. Predicted sequence of events:
First we'll hear about the new black hole movie
Disney will re-release "The Black Hole" on DVD
Scientists will explain that it wasn't really a black hole after all, but the major media will not pick up the story because the movie and tv series have already been started and Hollywood will lose too much money
TV mini-series comes out just before the movie
Movie comes out
Dept. of Homeland Security informs everyone that to keep safe from a black hole, buy duct tape and plastic and cover your windows.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
"Is it just me or someone else thinks that a high bishop will steal this, kill the Pope and plant it inside the Vatican ?"
That would suck!
"Derp de derp."
---You can't mend a broken heart by pretending it's not broken.
No that takes beer.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
nt.
You can't handle the truth.
Did no-one pay any attention to SpiderMan 2? I mean I know Kirsten's nipples are distracting and all, but come on - it's all there!
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
*arms flailing*
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Don't forget the SciFi channel direct to video: Anasquitto vs. Pythlack Hole!
I drank what? -- Socrates
This is really scary. What if Al Qaeda were to get a hold of this technology? Could they use it to achieve their ultimate mission of destroying Western civilization? Sure, they'd take themselves out too, but there would be 72 virgins waiting for them in heaven, just like there were for the 9/11 hijackers.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
We just discovered how all the black holes in the universe formed...
Simple
Making black holes occurs sooner in a species technological advancement than interstellar travel.
There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!
So much for Illudium Q-32. Perhaps Illudium Q-33 will work.
--Marvin
articles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation
In technical terms, we call that "burning items to generate heat."
Software Wars
I doubt that many slashdotters will make it to heaven.
Can we get a picture of this thing please? Thanks!
Turns out, anyone can slow their heartrate to zero if a black hole starts to pass through their body.
"... it is not thought to pose a threat"
I can't tell you how much better that makes me feel.
Next you're going to tell me the possibility of a resonance cascade is extremely remote and that you're seeing predictable phase arrays.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
It was a short story in N-Space called "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven. Here karma karma, come here karma
Oh look, the karma is running away. Bye karma, bye bye karma.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
"Creating a microscopic black hole is tricky, since one needs a reasonable amount of neutronium, but may possibly be achievable by jamming large numbers of atomic nuclei together until they stick. This is left as an exercise to the reader."
My God! It's every physics textbook I've ever read!
"World-wide catastrophe, *phfff*, don't be ridicu
Table-ized A.I.
If one did make it, there would then be 73 virgins waiting.
No, you just defined Hell: the 72 virgins ARE Slashdotters - all male.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Hmmmm...wonder if they could be convinced to move their labs closer to Redmond.....
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
You just wasted a lot more than a sig's worth of bandwidth.
I really hope that this is just a joke
The bit about the evil minions didn't tip you off?
-mkb
Prof. X: So, have you finished writing your thesis yet?
Graduate student: Uh... no.
Prof. X: And how is that?
Graduate student: Um...a black hole ate my data?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Well, this will be my final post. I'm creating a nuclear powered egg to send my child off in, then I'll retire to the South Pacific to wait for the black hole to swallow us all. I tried to warn them- I TRIED! But I can't leave now and cause a panic.
I can only hope that my son ends up on a planet where the solar radiation allows him to fly around, fighting bad guys and getting hot chicks.
Everyone knows you just need duct tape.
The particle accelerator has 2 miles of maintenance corridors, 3 miles of wires, a 4 terabyte of data storage, and is held together with 11 miles of duct tape.
A 'Super String' was discovered yesterday in a quantum-super-electron microscope. It appeared to be a flat ribbon-like material that was sticky on one side and silvery on the other.
Just what they needed to create the quantum computer: A mini black hole as /dev/null
If one did make it, there would then be 73 virgins waiting.
well... while 73 is a very cool prime number, i personaly find 72=2*2*2*3*3 more interesting one, becouse it can factorized in so many different ways (ex: 9*8, 6*12 2*6*6 and so on) - it can be considered as an advantege. For example you can assign your all 72 virgins into equal groups to do something - the task imposibble with prime number 73. Such a possibility can have an adventage over just having 1.3888% more virgins.
Alternatively one can argue that you can take one virgin apart to play with her in any way you want and at the sami time assign the remaining 72 virgins into some equal groups, but it puts you in the situation of choosing one over all others which brakes this beautyfull symetry of number 72.
The question "what is better: 72 virgins in the heaven or 73 virgins in the heaven" seems to be a very thoungh one.