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Lab Created Black Hole?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the originally-dismissed-as-a-fart-in-the-air-conditioning dept.

Blarrrg writes "Humans may have created the first ever black hole in a lab. From the article: 'When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks and gluons. These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.'"

4 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Here by secondsun · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about instead of the beeb we get some papers?

    http://arxiv.org/find/grp_q-bio,grp_cs,grp_physics ,grp_math,grp_nlin/1/all:+AND+Nastase"+"Horatiu/0/ 1/0/all/0/1

    Direct link didn't work in the preview so you guys have to copy and paste.

    Not all are directly related to the article, but a few are.

    --
    There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
  2. duration? by Uncle+Kadigan · · Score: 5, Informative
    This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second,

    So, it lasts 10, 000,000, 000,000,000 / 1,000,000,000 = 10, 000,000 or 10 million seconds, or (lessee, carry the one...) almost 116 days?

    You know, scientific notation was created for a reason.

  3. Old news, black hole unlikely by TeknoHog · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Disclaimer: I'm studying/working on this stuff.

    AFAIK, there's a strong dispute over whether this is really a black hole. The most plausible explanation against black holes at RHIC is that you get similar effects (rapid thermalization) from the high acceleration only, and gravity is not needed. Google for 'Unruh effect' for more.

    The interesting/important bit about these heavy ion collision experiments is the creation of quark-gluon plasma, which resembles matter at the very early stages of our universe.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  4. Not a black hole? by Aielman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's not really a 'black hole', more of a 'singularity'. IANAPhysicist, but in my opinion a black hole actually lasts long enough to trap at least one photon (hence the word 'black'). During the 1E-25 seconds this singularity was around, a photon moving at a nice round 3E8 m/s has the opportunity to move about 0.0000003 Angstroms. 1 Angstrom is the width of a hydrogen atom. This kind of makes me wonder how fast the "jets of particles" are moving that are absorbed. Is it more that they just didn't appear when expected so were assumed absorbed?