Slashdot Mirror
Atom Smasher May Create "Black Saturns"
David Shiga writes "If we ever make black holes on Earth, they might be much stranger objects than the star-swallowing monsters known to exist in space. According to a new theory, any black hole that pops out of the Large Hadron Collider under construction in Switzerland might be surrounded by a black ring — forming a microscopic 'black Saturn'. This could happen if extra dimensions exist, as string theory suggests, and if they are large enough." An evocative excerpt from the article: "...there is an outside chance that in a few years in a tunnel near Geneva, physicists will make a black hole far smaller than a proton and circled by a squashed four-dimensional black doughnut."
mmmmmmmmmmmm, higher dimensional.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
black saturn
That was what I thought when I read the article. One of the major complaints about string theory has been that there's supposedly no way to test it experimentally. But the article says such a structure could only exist if there are really four dimensions. So if we succeed in creating one, would that be an experimental confirmation of string theory? Seems to me, at the very least it would confirm one of the major premises.
Testing String Theory:
Physicists create string theory test
PITTSBURGH, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Scientists have long questioned the validity of "string theory" and now U.S. physicists have created a test for the controversial "theory of everything."
[... click link to read article]
Am I the only one concerned that making mini-black holes might suck in the whole earth?
You're not the only one worrying, but trust me, there's no danger of this whatsoever. First of all, they will dissipate almsot instantly due to Hawking radiation. Second of all, they are so tiny that they will rarely (if ever) get close enough to swallow something else. Remember, on an atomic scale there is mostly space. And these things are not just small -they are so small its hard to fathom. They are formed by smashing together protons moving at 99.999999% the speed of light. A black hole (might) be formed, if, during the collision, the resultant density of the object is greater than the density required to form a black hole. The gravity will be no greater than the mass of the objects combining it, so you don't need to worry about it sucking things in. Let me jsut give you an example. A basketball could, theoretically, become a black hole, so long as you compressed its mass into a small enough area -but it would still have the gravitational pull of a basketball. And here, we are talking about turning protons into blackholes! In short, nothing to worry about chap!
It has to do with quantum moderation - a post can be in multiple states at once (offtopic/funny) until you look at it, then it takes assumes one and only one.
First of all, they will dissipate almsot instantly due to Hawking radiation. Second of all, they are so tiny that they will rarely (if ever) get close enough to swallow something else.
Third of all: The kind of (and energy of) collision in question occurs with non-trivial frequency when cosmic rays hit atoms in the atmosphere. If it created a long-lived black hole that could suck down a planet in a geologically short time we would have been down the drain LONG ago.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I feel my chances of getting laid drop with every chuckle at this joke.
It's real easy to beat up on an amateur on Slashdot isn't it? You'll even get modded up. Regardless, a wide segment of the scientific community look at string theory as something interesting which isn't much good for anything. Why? Because whenever someone finds a prediction with string theory that differs from observed data the string theorists have a reason why this doesn't disprove the theory. Time and again, string theory has been shown not to be disprovable. The standard model, on the other hand, has not. That's the difference.. that's what makes string theory not science. It may be interesting.. it may give us insights into how things may work, but you can't call it science. Now, if you disagree with me, please, don't take it up with me.. I'm just an amateur. Take it up with the scientific community.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hawking: I call it a Hawking Hole.
Fry: No fair! I saw it first!
Hawking: Who is The Journal Of Quantum Physics going to believe?
True. Regardless, a wide segment of the scientific community regards string theory as something which could very well be the most important thing since the relativities and QFT.
As I tried to explain previously, but you obviously either didn't read or didn't grasp, you are comparing apples to oranges. The SM is a particular instance of QFT. Nobody has yet found a comparable particular instance of string theory. You would in fact have just as difficult of a time disproving QFT as you would string theory, perhaps even more difficult of a time. For instance, suppose we did our searches for extra dimensions (these are done regularly at HEP labs) and found that our data supported a universe with 15 extra dimensions! This would rule out string theory without drastic modifications, but wouldn't hurt QFT at all. Wouldn't even hurt the SM.
If I shouldn't take it up with you, then you shouldn't be saying it in the first place. If you're intending to hide behind a shield of "I don't really know what I'm talking about," then actually behave as if you don't know what you are talking about. Keep your mouth shut unless you've really got something worthwhile to say.
Most of the scientific community that I am familiar with (experimental HEP) doesn't really much care for string theory, but neither do they think it is not science and is a waste of time. In other words, they and I largely agree. Now which scientific community did you want me to take this up with again? (and don't forget the concept of a vocal (and book-writing) minority. Only a tiny minority of scientists ever write pop-science books. Their opinions should not necessarily be considered representative.) In my opinion, it is the amateur public, who is easily and immensely swayed by a few popular books, and then who reinforce each others misconceptions by such things as posting to slashdot and saying "yeah, string theory, sucks doesn't it. I really hate it.", who need to be addressed.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Most theories involving extra dimensions (extra meaning more than our normal 3-space, 1-time) explain our non-observance of them (to date) by saying that the total size of them is very small. Now, size of a dimension is a weird concept, I know.
Suppose you had a rectangular prism-shaped room with 2 doors, exactly opposite each other on the North and South walls, respectively. Actually, better yet, suppose that the entire North wall and the entire South wall are completely taken up by their doors. Now, suppose that when you walk out the North door, you are simultaneously walking in the South door. This doesn't happen normally (obviously), but with a sufficiently weird topology of space, it could. It is certainly imaginable. The North door and the South door are actually the same place. Now, of course, you can measure this room, length height and width. You might say "but North to South it would be infinitely big!", but it isn't. Take meter sticks, and lay them end to end, starting in the middle of the room, with them oriented N-S. Eventually, because the North and South doors are the same place, you'll wrap back around, and find yourself laying the last meter stick on top of the first one. The number of sticks that you laid down is the length of the room N-S in meters.
Now imagine that your room is that trash dump in Star Wars, where the walls start closing in. Move the North wall closer and closer to the South wall, so that you can only lay down two meter sticks before they start overlapping, and then one meter stick, and then your one meter stick starts overlapping itself, so you switch to centimeter sticks. The size of your N-S dimension has decreased, say to 50 cm. The East-West and Up-Down dimensions are still plenty big, say 5 meters, and they have hard walls, ceilings, and floors, none of this wrapping around nonsense.
Now, suppose that you have a stick 25 cm long. You can orient it in whatever direction you like in this space. It has no trouble existing. Now take one of those meter sticks you had before. You can't orient it however you want, because if you try to turn it to point exactly N-S, it will run into itself. Now suppose you have a 25 cm diameter beach ball. It has no problem existing. But try to imagine a 1 meter diameter beach ball. It can't happen. No way no how. No matter how you turn the thing (unless you deflate it, of course), it will run into itself.
So, an essentially 1-d object, the meter stick, can exist in this space, but only if you turn it certain ways. It can exist even though it is larger than the smallest dimension. However, the 3-d object, the beach ball, can only exist in this space if it is smaller than the smallest dimension, otherwise it runs into itself.
This is precisely how the "black saturn" can only exist at microscopic scales. It is a 4-d object, and all our theories of extra dimensions (at least all of them that have any real following) have no more than 3 dimensions which are actually macroscopic. So if you have an object which is roughly 4-spherical, that is the same size in 4 dimensions, it can only exist if it is smaller than the 4th largest dimension (the three largest being our normal 3 space).
Another way to look at the room I described is that at scales above 50cm, it is actually a 2-d space. Only at small scales (< 50cm) is it really 3-d. Only at really really tiny scales is our space 4 (or more) dimensional (in most extra dimension theories), at any larger scales, it is 3-d. (Of course, I'm not counting time here. Only spacial dimensions.)
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
OK, time for Physics 101: The mass of the original object collapsing will decide the mass of the black hole. Weight != Mass.
A larger star collapsing will form a larger black hole of the SAME mass.
A molecule collapsing to form a black hole[forced to] will form a black hole of the same mass of the molecule.
The smaller the black hole [smaller mass], the faster it will evaporate due to Hawkins Radiation.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
no, the gp is right. H didn't say provable, he said disprovable. Huge difference. Evolution is probably not provable, but it is disprovable. This is also why creationism is not science: it is not disprovable (once an omnipotent God is in the picture, any disproof can be refuted).