Black Holes From the LHC Could Last For Minutes

KentuckyFC writes "There is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the LHC destroying the planet (or this way either) when it eventually switches on some time later this year. And yet a few niggling doubts are persuading some scientists to run through their figures again. One potential method of destruction is that the LHC will create tiny black holes that could swallow everything in their path, including the planet. Various scientists have said this will not happen because the black holes would decay before they could do any damage. But physicists who have re-run the calculations now say that the mini black holes produced by the LHC could last for seconds, possibly minutes. Of course, the real question is whether they decay faster than they can grow. The new calculations suggest that the decay mechanism should win over and that the catastrophic growth of a black hole from the LHC 'does not seem possible' (abstract). But shouldn't we require better assurance than that?"

Comments

Assurances

[truthsearch]

But shouldn't we require better assurance than that?

What better assurance can we get than mathematical formulas? Unfortunately the only other way to find out is to run an experiment, right? I just hope their formulas and the assumptions they are based on are correct.

Bogus

[Kludge]

Groups of high energy particles striking each other is not rare in nature. It happens all the time, right in our own atmosphere, on the surface of the moon.

This is all Chicken-Little nonsense.

Re:What could possibly go wrong?

[Muad'Dave]

Teller did. According to this article, he showed that igniting the atmosphere was possible, but unlikely. He just didn't cover up the data fast enough, and it got out.

Teller also raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere, because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei.[citation needed] Bethe calculated, according to Serber, that it could not happen. However, a report co-authored by Teller showed that ignition of the atmosphere was not impossible, just unlikely.[6] In Serber's account, Oppenheimer mentioned it to Arthur Compton, who "didn't have enough sense to shut up about it. It somehow got into a document that went to Washington" which led to the question being "never laid to rest".[7]

Re:cosmic rays

[whathappenedtomonday]

That's what I thought, too, and in the comment section you'll find a comment from Geoffrey A. Landis, scientist at the NASA John Glenn Research Center, stating:

Jeez - read the abstract. Its a calculation based on a theoretical model using some very speculative physics for which there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. Really. Ignore it.
The main thing to keep in mind is, cosmic rays have energies vastly higher than the LHC. If the LHC could produce black holes, then there would be black holes floating around everywhere.

Re:Folks I don't want to hear say oops

[Gareon]

I wonder if they are taking any bets on the probability of an "oops" incident.

Source: July 16, 1945: Trinity Blast Opens Atomic Age @ Wired
"The Trinity test, as it was known, was the culmination of the American effort to win the race against Germany (and, ultimately, the Soviet Union) in building an atomic bomb. A mere three weeks after the test, the United States used atomic bombs to destroy the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But prior to the 16th, none of those involved in the project knew if they had built a devastating new weapon or a spectacular dud.
With gallows humor, the Los Alamos physicists got up a betting pool on the possible yield of the bomb. Estimates ranged from zero to as high as 45,000 tons of TNT. Enrico Fermi, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938 for his work on nuclear fission, offered side odds on the bomb destroying all life on the planet."

Even if it does so what?

[Trails]

If the LHC manages to create mini blck holes, let's be clear here, tese will be very very mini. A black hole weighing what? Same as a couple atoms of carbon?

Consider that even if matter collapses to a singularity, its gravitational effect is still just proportional to its mass. Given that the LHC is a vacuum where the collisions are occuring, the blackhole could only ever mass the sum total of the mass of the particles used in the collision. From a casual outside observer you wouldn't even notice, and the black hole would decay before it could acquire more mass.

Re:Its all okay. Nothing to see here.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The fact is that the mass of the particles is going to be negligible compared to your arm, and the size is going to be negligible compared to atoms. The Shwarzchild radius for a 1kg black hole is ~1.5 x 10^-27 m, or 12 orders of magnitude smaller than radius of the nucleus of an atom.

These black holes aren't going to have appreciable gravitational pull, and they aren't going to have appreciable cross section to actually absorb matter.

The truth is, we already know darn well what is going to happen macroscopically. We know physics pretty darn well. Its the very fine details that we aren't sure about.

Agreed, this is silly.

[TiggertheMad]

People have this amazing misunderstanding of black holes generated by Hollywood. If you take the moon, and crush it into a black hole, it will still follow the same orbital path, and have the same effect on the tides as it does currently. It will just occupy a much smaller space. Its event horizon with be incredibly small, and the amount of mass that would be added to annually would be about the same as it gains now through occasional collisions of small objects in space (i.e.,just about 0)

Since they will not have immense mass to apply to the particles, they will have to apply truly immense amounts of energy (E=mc^2). Should they actually achieve a 'black hole', it will have the same amount of gravitational attraction as it did before.

I think I will spend my time worrying about more likely problems, like cholesterol and cancer.