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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)."

2 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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    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
  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...