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.
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
The e-print of Nastase's paper.
Actually, at scales this small gravity is not the dominating force (thats from the article). A gust of wind would literally blow the black hole apart. Its actually pretty interesting from a research perspective. You can see how black holes work, throw something in, see how it comes out, etc... The only thing though is that in order to have some real fun you really do need massive blackholes because then you can warp spacetime and have well defined event horizons etc...
Regards,
Steve
If I understand this correctly, the dual is meant in the sense of the "AdS/CFT-correspondence", which is a mathematical correspondence, or "duality" between a gravitational theory (which may contain black holes) and a "Gauge theory", which is the kind of theory that is used to describe quarks, electrons etc.
The duality means that calculations on black holes may (possibly) be used to understand certain things about this "fireball", but it doesn't mean that the fireball is actually a black hole.
You will need: a microscopic black hole having enough mass not to evaporate instantly.
Actually: You need one big enough to evaporate more slowly than it absorbs matter on its trip. Given the tiny cross-section of even quite massive black holes and high radiation rates when they're small, this is a moderately large - and extremely massive - object.
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 might come to rest at the core due to the resistance of the matter it passes through, [...]
As it absorbs the matter it also absorbs its momentum. If it absorbs any non-trivial amount of material on its way through it doesn't get near the surface even on the high point of its first half-orbit.
[...] but it'll have riddled the planet full of holes long before then
Except very near the surface the planet will have collapsed the holes as fast as they form.
Also, it has to be moderately large by the time it gets to a near-stop at the core. While it's orbiting at about planetary diameter it's passing through lots of stuff. Once it's at the core it's depending on the pressure to push stuff to it. So it has to be big enough by then that the absorbtion from pressure beats the losses through hawking radiation.
But even if it evaporates it will have converted a significant mass to energy. Do this enough and something that wouldn't detectably affect the planetary radius could cause a LOT of volcanism - at some geologic time later when the heat makes it to the surface.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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
"... 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
If one did make it, there would then be 73 virgins waiting.