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Concern Over Creating Black Holes
Maria Williams writes to tell us about worry surrounding the impending startup of CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Some fear that the device, in creating mini black holes, could jeopardize Life As We Know It. While the tiny black holes should evaporate quickly — throwing off so-called Hawking radiation that can be detected — CERN software developer Ran Livneh reminds us that "Any physicist will tell you that there is no way to prove that generated black holes will decay." The LHC site assures us there's nothing to worry about. The flap is reminiscent of the time the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider went live. The worry then was that "negative strangelets" could gobble up the world.
Being cautious about a potentially real issue is one thing, but of course the big issue here is that collisions of similar energy happen, if not commonly, at least not entirely rarely due to cosmic rays. If the world could be destroyed by the side-effects of such a collision, we wouldn't be here to be nervous about it.
I've had this sig for three days.
I don't think I buy that reasoning. That's like saying that a {particle beam, laser} won't work because the hole at the end of the tube is only big enough for one {atom, photon}.
Except it's worse than that. As soon as things shift around a little so that a single atom goes in, the event horizon is now slightly larger. Repeat ad infinitum. All it takes is an occasional atom getting through.
A microscopic black hole either dissipates or it doesn't. If it does, great. If it doesn't, we have a problem. It may take millennia to become a serious problem, but....
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So what?
If it doesn't destroy the world, scientific knowledge advances.
If it does, no onw will be around anymore to worry about it.