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Lab-Made Fireball May Be a Black Hole

Posted by Zonk on from the slurp! dept.

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)."

4 of 699 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm.... by gowen · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Except black holes are gravitational beasts, and this doesn't appear to be. It's just an extremely destructive thing. Alternative headline would be :
    Atom smasher smashes atoms
    From the BBC article, it sounds like "could be a black hole" is the simile "behaves a bit like a black hole", that's gotten all out of control.
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  2. One flaw by gr8_phk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The black hole would not behave as a pendulum for long. As it takes in new matter the system must conserve momentum. So if it fell half way to the center of the earth and then gained some mass, it would lose velocity, and hence not have enough speed to make it back to the surface on the next oscillation. The resulting black hole floating around the earths core would be very interesting. Just think of all the earthquakes we'd have as the planet slowly shrank - or not so slowly...

  3. Re:Yet another milestone in my Earth Destruction P by Rei · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I once heard a remark at some long forgotten source of unknown credibility that stated the amount you would have to jam together to consume earth before it radiated itself away in Hawking Radiation was about the size of Mount Everest. Take this with a couple kilograms of salt, mind you, as I don't recall the source.

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  4. Re:hmm by JoshRosenbaum · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think professors should be called in to teach you about black holes.

    Which one? :) Aren't there a few different theories about black holes? Seems to me that something that warps space/time so drastically that it causes standard equations to get messed up is not something to tread on lightly.

    Now, for my disclaimer so I don't get flamed too bad if I'm out of touch with research here. :) I am not a professor, black hole expert, relativity expert, physics expert, or yadda yadda. This was just my opinion based on my poor memory about black hole research I've read. If someone has more information on this, I'd be interested in hearing it.