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

It's Crazy

[LinuxWhore]

I can't help but think of one of my favorite The Soup clips every time I hear about the LHC now.

Folks I don't want to hear say oops

[MyLongNickName]

1. My Barber
2. My urologist during my vasectomy.
3. The LHC scientists during the first collisions.

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

[morgan_greywolf]

How can an LHC scientist say oops if their vocal cords have entered another dimension of space and time?

At the LHC's first collisions, a black hole forms....

scientist: Oops... OMFG! Call the President!
evil voice from inside the black hole: What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak?

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

[zappepcs]

Yes. At some point in the future, I'm fine with the universe unfolding like so:

Mother: Tottle, do NOT do that!
Child: But mom, they are just small ones.
Mother: You remember what happened to the humans, don't you?
Child: They danced funny?
Mother: Besides that...... (hand on hip)
Child: (face frowning slowly) Yes mother, they blew up the southeast quarter of the galaxy experimenting with black holes.
Mother: that's right Tottle. It's all fun and games till chunks of the galaxy go missing. Your father will NOT be impressed if he can't find our house after he gets off work tonight.
Child: yes mother
Mother: now put your physics set away and make your bed.
Child: yes mother

Yes, I'd be happy to be a footnote in the history of the universe as an example of what you really shouldn't do with your Acme Physics set that you got for your birthday.

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."

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

[postbigbang]

I said it before: Lake Hadron. New shoreline real estate for sale, soon.

Don't mind the Schwarzchild radius, come on in!

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

[MrMunkey]

My urologist was actually quite funny. When he was done he said, "Well, I've finished with the second one... but I found a third." I was a bit confused and shocked and then he laughed and said he was just kidding.

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

[MoonBuggy]

I think that pretty much sums up the way that the scientists on these kind of projects really think about these things, and I find it reassuring. They are just as unenthusiastic about the prospect disappearing into nothingness as you are. They are smarter than me. They are also almost certainly smarter than you. If they are comfortable enough to joke/make bets then I'm not worried.

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

[kenj0418]

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.

Assuming he's betting on the "No" side, he probably should have got a prize for economics too. If you're right -- you win money. If you lose -- everyone's dead anyway so you don't have to pay! Its a win-win proposition.

(Ok maybe win-win isn't the right term here)

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

[MadUndergrad]

Four minutes?! I'll be damned if they make black holes that last longer than I do!

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

[mseidl]

I'm hoping it'll suck more than my wife.

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

[duguk]

I'm hoping it'll suck more than my wife.

Yeah... me too.

Its all okay. Nothing to see here.

[tnk1]

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. ...

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.

Well its good to know that despite their uncertainty about the the data, they are absolutely certain of their conclusions.

Well...

[AltGrendel]

...there's one sure way to find out.

Fire it up, boys!

cosmic rays

[cats-paw]

I thought that this entire line of doomerism had been dispensed with thanks to cosmic rays.

Since cosmic rays are striking the earth all the time, and a decent percentage of them have a much higher energy level than anything the LHC can produce, we should have already seen such a phenomena.

?

Re:cosmic rays

[secPM_MS]

Small black holes are far less dangerous than made out to be. I wouldn't like to be very near one due to its Hawking radiation (virtual photon creation near the event horizon where one of the virtual photons is absorbed and the other turns real as it escapes), but the fear mongers of black holes forget the limiting factor. Matter falling into a black hole is compressed and gets hot. The hot matter radiates light / gamma rays. While in some cases this radiation might be captured as well, it is far more likely that the radiation pressure will limit the rate of matter absorption by the black hole. The radiation pressure effect is known as the Eddinton effect and is a major factor in stellar stability. In the case of a small black hole, the size of the black hole is far smaller than the absorption length of gamma rays, preventing advection of the gammas. Since a non-rotating black hole is likely to convert on the order of 1% of the absorbed mass into gamma radiation, such a source would be more than capable of creating a near vacuum of hot matter about itself.

If such stable black holes were creatable / existed, we should see rather remarkable things with old white dwarfs and neutron stars, which would be greatly affected by such energy sources.

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:cosmic rays

[John Hasler]

> What happens if one of these black holes happens to intercept a spacecraft as it leaves
> or re-enters the atmosphere? Does it do significant damage?

No. Try to understand how small these holes would be. They are so tiny that in the unlikely event that they hit the nucleus of an atom they would almost certainly pass through with out interacting at all with any of the subatomic particles there. Your spacecraft is going to be hit by cosmic rays with far more energy and with a far higher probability of interacting.

Re:cosmic rays

[Goldsmith]

There is no need for comments on this article other than the parent. In fact, this article should just be put into idle.

As a physicist, this whole thing has been an embarrassing reminder of just how bad physicists are at public relations and the failure of many people to think logically. I'm not the biggest fan of LHC, but I'd like to see some intelligent criticism out there (Is this really where we should be putting our smartest scientists? Are particle accelerators the best way to do this measurement?), not this junk.

Re:cosmic rays

[davolfman]

What I find more interesting is that if these miniature black holes can give off a minute of Hawking radiation then it means the final seconds of a black hole look less like a bomb and more like a really bright flashbulb. This is great news for some science fiction authors as it means potential Hawking radiation reactors are actually NOT suicidal for a species to build.

Re:cosmic rays

[Thiez]

> Is this really where we should be putting our smartest scientists?

What gives us the right to decide where to 'put' 'our' smartest scientists? They belong to themselves, right? It is their choice what to do with their brains (cure cancer or get drunk or work at the LHC).

If you insist on asking a question I guess you could ask 'Do we really want to fund the LHC?'.

What could possibly go wrong?

[JCSoRocks]

Hey guys, we thought the first nuclear bomb might burn up the atmosphere and we survived that! Guys?

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]

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.

Space Madness

[egcagrac0]

And there's no possible way that Stimpy would be stupid enough to press the beautiful, shiny button - the jolly, candy-like button.

and nothing of value was lost?

Storm in a very, very tiny teacup

[Mindwarp]

The Sun in conjunction with the Earth's atmosphere has been colliding particles with WAY higher energies that the LHC could ever manage for billions of years now. As far as I know we've not been consumed by a mini black hole yet.

Advanced Alien Civilizations

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be why we do not see Advanced Alien Civilizations - their technological sophistication gets to a point where they eventually play with some sort of basic question of physics and have a planet ending disaster. Yet another reason to colonize Mars, and do this type of research there.

Re:Advanced Alien Civilizations

[ball-lightning]

Actually, a black hole at mars orbit wouldn't do any damage (to us) because if it swallowed up Mars, it would have the same mass as mars, thus leaving everything else untouched. A black hole on earth would well, not be enjoyable for us.

Bruce Campbell at the LHC

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Yeah, I would really feel a lot better if the LHC deployed Bruce Campbell, with a shotgun during those Black Hole experiments:

Evil Witch/Black Hole: "I'll swallow your soul! I'll swallow your soul!"

Bruce points his shotgun at the Evil Witch/Black Hole:

Bruce: "Swallow this."

*Blam*

Well, duh!

[Shivetya]

those mini black holes were up in the air, not next to the earth you ninny.

sheesh, next thing someone will make a video game with this scenario

Re:Well, duh!

[Mindwarp]

Heh - when you're talking about a black hole at or smaller than the size of an atomic nucleus it doesn't matter whether it's at the top of the atmosphere or at the center of the Earth. Matter at that scale is described as tenuous at best. You'd have to get somewhere like the center of the sun or denser before a collision would be anywhere near likely.

seconds and minutes

[phrostie]

when they say seconds and minutes is that in normal earth time or according to the time inside the micro event horizon?

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:Bogus

[blueg3]

Actually, cosmic rays, which regularly (read: constantly) enter our atmosphere, have energies up to 10^20 eV. The LHC uses 7 TeV protons and ~500 TeV lead nuclei. That's on the order of 10^12 to 10^14 eV.

So, you have it backwards. We don't produce particle at anywhere near the energy they're produced in nature.

Absolutely, positively,

[xav_jones]

There will be no black holes, well except for very tiny ones that will wink out of existence in mere nanoseconds. Certainly no more than a couple of microseconds. At most a second. Likely tops of a minute. Absolutely can't be more than seven minutes ...

The Quantum Make a Wish Foundation

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone wins a free trip to France.

Gravity still applies

[dazedNconfuzed]

A black hole is just the gravity well of a given mass compressed into a sufficiently small space. In this case, the given mass is miniscule, so very little (practically nothing, hence the "evaporation" issue) will be drawn to it.

You have more to worry about from the gravitational pull of your shoes.

Screw mini-black holes.

[SilentBob0727]

It's the ice-9 strangelets that have me worried.

I say "go for it!"

[Joce640k]

If they're right the benefit to humanity could be enormous.

If they're wrong then it's the end of the economic crisis, unemployment, conflict in the Middle East and world hunger.

So, on balance ... I think they should do it.

Re:I say "go for it!"

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And not just that: having the entire earth annihilated by incredible gravitational forces unleashed by man's own Faustian arrogance would be the most utterly Fucking Metal thing ever. Orders of magnitude more metal than thermonuclear weapons, the current favorite, or satan, the historical contender.

Re:I say "go for it!"

[jameskojiro]

OK, no more metalocalypse for you!

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:Not so fast there old chap!

[Metasquares]

The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference, but in practice, there is.

In theory.

"Answer first, experiment second" -- the FRAK?

[MrLizard]

I find it hilarious how people say, "Before we run an experiment, we need to know what will happen!" Hello, McFly! You run experiments to FIND OUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN. That's, uhm, the whole FRAKING DEFINITION OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD! You can do the math, you can form theories, you can hypothesize... but you never know FOR SURE until you flip the switch.

People like the OP were probably standing around in caveman days, saying, "Ugh. No make fire. What if fire is monster, kill everyone? Bad thing. Not make fire unless know not monster."

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.

Couldn't agree more...

[PinkyDead]

Small black holes are far less dangerous than made out to be.

A while back we had a family of small black holes living in our basement, and I found that if you didn't bother them, they wouldn't bother you.

The wife wanted rid of them, but I said no, they're not doing any harm to anyone - and anyway we never used that part of the basement.

Eventually they just moved on.

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.

*Extemely* unlikely

[bugeaterr]

It's like the odds of a black man becoming President of the United States.