Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Concern Over Creating Black Holes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the nothing-to-fear dept.

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.

3 of 597 comments (clear)

  1. Hot Damn! by ackthpt · · Score: 1, Troll

    Some fear that the device, in creating mini black holes, could jeopardize Life As We Know It.

    I was worried that my poor highschool and early college grades, plus lack of practical experience in government would go against me. It's comforting there are people like that out there are people of the land, the common clay of the mankind, you know... morons.

    Meanwhile, the warming of the earth in 50 years time, at the rate we're going is going to displace hundreds of millions, cause unimaginable famine and natural disaster, bring countless birds and animals which can't suddenly adapt to extinction and bring to an end life as we have known it. This might just be the solution to the Greenhouse problem...

    if this thing starts a blackhole which ends up killing us all, I'm going to be really angry!

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. That's Fermi Paradox. by Cybert4 · · Score: 0, Troll

    And yes, I'd like my karma points.

  3. Re:Please, for the love of God... by norman619 · · Score: 0, Troll
    "There should be no need for using current events to disporve John Titor as a time traveller, you only need physics for that. If a machine were invented that was capable of time travel, the machine would only be able to travel back as far as the time the machine was created."
    LOL!!! You can't be serious. At least I hope you aren't. That's the same assbackwards reasoning they used in the H.G. Wells remake a few years ago. There is no such limitation. If there is then please enlighten me. Titor came from an alternate Earth. One complete with it's own past, present, and future. One very similar to ours. You can call it a "parallel universe" if you like. This is what he claims if you bother to read what he actually wrote. He only shared with his readers the history of his alternate Earth. I would have thought more people would have been familiar with the whole parallel worlds hypothesis. This is what Titor was describing. Not the classic idea of timetravel. Now I have a problem with the whole creation of a sigularity so close to the craft and occupant. Wouldn't that mean death for the occupant? I've seen the funny photos of the gravity field generated bending a laser beam. You have any idea how powerful the gravity fieild would be? Einstein observed a slight bend in the path of light near the sun. What they show in Titor's photos was much more than a slight bending. It means the presence of a gravity source MUCH stronger than that of the sun. If this were the case it result in less than favorable consequences for the planet as a whole. Get real.