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Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All
cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW:
"You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole."
That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.
If it doesn't create a black hole, the earth isn't destroyed.
If it does create a black hole, and does destroy the earth, it won't matter, since we won't be alive to experience how horrible it will be.
Quantum black holes are unstable. Now if they manage to create a tuned string we need to start worrying.
sci/fi movie.
The Large Hardon Collider, to be turned on tomorrow, is designed to pump various types of hardon up to huge energies before banging them together. However, many concerned citizens without the personal experience or understanding of what hardons do worry at the idea of the large hardons being sucked deep into a black hole.
The device will push large, energised hardons through a ring repeatedly, faster and faster, as smoothly and tightly as possible, until they clash and spray matter in all directions. "It's nothing that cosmic rays don't do all the time all over the place," reassured a particularly buff scientist. "It's perfectly right and natural."
Low-energy hardon physics and the temperature dependence of hardon production are well understood, as is the process of a hardon smoothly entering the nucleus. But some question what may happen at greater, hotter energies.
Church leaders have come out at the device. "They're the same polarity!" said Pope Palpatine XVI. The Church worries that strange matter may recruit normal matter and turn it strange.
The Large Hardon Collider was to launch in May, but this has been delayed. "I'm so sorry," stammered a scientist, "this has never happened to us before."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
This would explain why people from the future are trying to stop (not my idea), I do wonder "how stable is the black hole?" "could it fall thru to the center of the planet? Or evaporate after existing momentarily"
This sort of experimentation seems better suited in deep space than on the planet if the answer to #2 is yes.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A quintillion times higher than the LHC?
Might I suggest that we not use the word possible to mean "as likely as your car turning into a pig and flying away".
Thanks!
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
The Large Hadron Collider can definitely create microscopic black holes, the thing is that they are not dangerous as they would evaporate long before interacting with any matter.
Low-energy hardon physics and the temperature dependence of hardon production are well understood
Especially in the porn industry.
This means that if the earth collapses to a black hole, the extra dimensions exists. This is an incredible result that will most certainly boost confidence in string theory.
If the LHC does make a black hole, what will be the mass of it? It will only have the mass of the few particles that collided to create it. It's mass will be tiny. It will be like a grain of sand. Now, what is the gravitational attraction force caused by a grain of sand? If you've ever been near a grain of sand, you know that it's basicly none. So, this black hole won't actually have any ability to suck in matter. It will fall into the center of the earth and stay there until it evaporates.
basically what the TFA is saying is that if you put a lot of energy in a very small spot, you get a black hole...
in other words:
E=mc
+
high mass density = black hole
Nothing to see here, move along
PS: IAAP
I don't see how you can prove something conclusively in silico, you put in what you know and you get a distillation of it out. How can you discover* completely new physics when the computer can only start with a potentially incorrect/inaccurate theory and make deterministic calculations based on that input? I mean, you can't get out more than you put in, can you?
Caveat: I can easily accept that collisions of the same energy take place all the time in nature, even if a hole were somehow formed I have far more confidence in Hawking than someone who can scream "Think of the Children!!!" while keeping a straight face.
*There's no reason why you can't put in your theory and come out with a simulation that doesn't resemble how things happen in nature and so begin to disprove a theory. That being said, if CERN could have shown the existence of the Higgs boson using only simulations then they might not have bothered with the LHC.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
easily possible with an Infinite Improbability Drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Infinite_Improbability_Drive
It's amazing how so many people who never passed a high school science class (or their schools 'science' class hadn't gone past basic atomic structure) are utterly afraid of crackpot doomsday predictions about something scientific that they don't even have the faintest inkling of comprehension of, while all the experts in that field aren't afraid or worried in the slightest.
(Now there's a run-on sentence.)
Of course those scientist don't say it's impossible, though my understanding is that it's probability of destroying the earth is a bit less than that of a winged monkey to fly out your ass leading a miniature brass band.
Funny thing about all those colossal energies involved, on the cosmic scale, they don't even qualify as peanut crumbs. If they do produce a black hole (of the extremely miniature variety), it's lifespan will be horrendously short, it's event horizon freaking minuscule, and at that scale the distance to the nearest thing to gobble (assuming it can actually suck it in) is the equivalent of light years away. It's just not going to be a threat. If something that like that could be created by these cosmically insignificant energy levels and actually survive long enough to eat planets, the universe would already be pretty darn empty. There are an uncountable number of energy events that far exceed the LHCs energy levels around us constantly, and if you want the really big ones, just point your telescope pretty much anywhere in space and you'll be pointing at several. If that kind of stuff has been going on for billions of years, and we haven't gone poof yet, you're better off buying a flying monkey proof undies than worrying about calling the LHC the 5th horseman.
While this very well could be true, I'd just like to point out that a computer simulation is no substitute for an actual experiment.
Also, while I'm no expert in the subject of string theory, if one could reach the Plank energy, wouldn't it then be possible to find these supposed strings about which everyone's been talking?
Because I have several computer models that predict what I should trade to become fabulously wealthy. Excellent!
my bet is on 2012... that's the year when we prove string theory and compact extra dimensions as well as finding out what REALLY happens when you get sucked into a black hole... let's see it as an opportunity rather than an apocalypse.
this is a virtual insanity that always seems to be governed by our love for this useless twisting of our new technology.
I though the Big Mistake was supposed to happen in Kiev!
Regardless, I've already seen how this plays out, and I think it ends up with people impaled on a big metal tree.
But someone, Einstein's other work, general relativity, that does result in infinities is assumed to be true. I was thinking we would have this fixed by now, and 2001-2010 would be as productive as 1901-1910. Perhaps the year 2000 was the beginning of a little dark age,and will have to wait a while for science to restart.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
How about we just get the thing running, make some observations, and see where it goes? Whatever happened to simple scientific curiosity, where scientists were allowed to make modifications to the setup and explore new and interesting regimes of energy, mass, and velocity in order to see what can be found? Why are we so obsessed with all of these competing theories, which are confirmed by reality rather than controlling it?
I wonder whether a quintillion is bigger or smaller than a gazillion?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If they are scared by the odds of creating a black hole in the LHC, then should be hidden and trembling below their beds as are far more probable ways to end the earth, the human civilization or their own lives in any minute than the black hole one. Is almost as possible as creating red matter, with the same attributes than in the movie.
We always knew that it was likely possible that particle collisions could create black holes. The physicists who said this wouldn't happen at the LHC agreed that that was likely possible. The key is that people with their heads screwed on straight understood that this was vanishingly unlikely for particles in the LHC. All this result shows is that it confirms that there is in fact an energy level where one can create black holes via particle collision, which everyone believed already. Indeed, if it turned out not to be the case it would mean that a lot of our understanding of physics might end up being seriously squirrely. The headline and summary are thus highly misleading.
The Luddites that believe the LHC is going to destroy the Earth are really starting to get on my nerves. It is obvious even with a simplistic high-school level of understanding that any black holes formed by the LHC (if such a thing is even possible) are completely harmless. If we were to collide two protons with enough energy to produce a black hole, you would end up with (very temporarily) a black hole that has the mass (and thus gravitational pull) of two protons, with an electric charge of +2.
Let's take a look at a Helium atom. Helium nuclei are (usually) composed of two protons and two neutrons, thus they have roughly twice as much mass (and gravitational pull) as our aforementioned black hole. This nucleus also carries an electric charge of +2. That means that Helium nuclei exert more attractive force on their surroundings than the worst-case scenario black hole that can be produced by the LHC.
In the most extreme case, the closest that one of these miniature black holes would get to sucking in the matter around them would be to capture an electron or two into orbit around them in the same way as a Helium nuclei would, before the black hole evaporates. That would be quite an exciting, interesting, and completely harmless development.
I'm a pornographic film maker and I have just registered a screen-play with the USPTO and the US Copyright office for a creative work titled "The Large hardon Collider"depicting two white nude male actors running around a ring for the purpose of jousting with their abnormally large, erect penises. When the actor collides his penis with the opposing actor he is assigned a point for the collision, the first actor to achieve 5 points wins the privilege of engaging in the sex scene with a black actress. Any talk or writings involving "large hardon collider" or "large hardon collisions" with or without blackholes is a serious violation of my IP rights. My legal team is at this moment is preparing litigation against the more grievous violater one "Anonymous Coward".
Seriously if newstechnica.com habitually misspells the word hadron, which is so fundemental to the topic of the article, how can anybody give them any credibility?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
For the record, those financial models were perfectly accurate. The data fed into them, however, was stupidly naive and optimistic, which isn't surprising, as the users of the models tweaked the data to get the results they wanted.
Or: Why you should blame the carpenter, not the hammer.
" the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes"
Meanwhile, I hear they're planning a Very Tiny Hadron Collider that may create very large black holes.
Say hello to my little sig.
Gee, what's wrong with this sentence:
Now a computer model shows conclusively...
I'm sure the research modeling is interesting and worthwhile, and it's just the writeup that is idiotic. But y'know *computer* models do not ever show anything *conclusively*. The model is only as good as the assumptions that went into designing it. Those might be good and reasonable guesses, but you are only doing the model because you *haven't* (or can't) observe the actual phenomenon.
Buy Text Processing in Python
Seems that nothing quite draws in the crowds like a black hole!
Correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not a high energy particle physicist, a particle's energy/mass would only exists at it's maximum along it's axis of velocity, m = mrest/ sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) and v is varied by the cosine of the angle of approach or the radial velocity therefore it is likely that a relativistic particle could have some collisions that would satisfied the conditions for a black-hole and some that did not simultaneously. We generally view a blackhole event horizon as a psychologically comfortable sphere, yet a relativistic blackholes event horizon would be shaped like an hour-glass.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"it's" is a contraction of "it is", not a possessive.
Sorry, you were saying something funny about high school education?
One "Carl", several "Carls"; and it's "Carl's" possession.
One "it", several "its"; and it's "it's" possession.
"It's" is both possessive and a contraction.
Uh yeah... no. First off, "Carl's" possession refers only to the single Carl who possesses something. If you have a group of Carls and you're referring to their possessions you have two possibilities:
1. The group as a collective owns something: The Carls' fan club
2. The members of the group individually own things: The Carls' cars.
However, it refers specifically to an item in the singular. As a result you don't have several its. Instead you end up with those, them and what-not. So in your example above:
One "it", several "its"; and it's "it's" possession.
"It's" is both possessive and a contraction.
You have "it" the subject. "Its" which refers to an object owned by the "it", and you have "it's" which is a contraction for "it is." It doesn't matter if the "it" represents a group or an isolated individual, the subject is singular.
I know this post contains further grammatic errors, the subject here is the use of its and it's. I apologize for further muddying the waters with my contribution.
Read more about its / it's here:
Eats, shoots, and leaves
Now we just need to figure out how to inject some code for a buffer overflow attack so we can obtain root access!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
i love how you comment was modded +5: Offtopic. This is slashdot :)
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Will there be anyone left to care?
I can think of a lot less pleasant ways to go out as a species ... nuclear Armageddon and not-quite-instant-extinction-sized asteroid impacts come to mind.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Every day, thousands of particles hit earth at speeds MUCH faster than what the LHC can do.
They create black holes.
If anything could have happened, we would all be dead for a looong time. In fact the universe would never have developed any planets, if this would create black holes.
Anyone who still mentions it... even if it’s only to say that there are some crazy people who are crazy... deserves to be bitch-smiten with a wet crocodile.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
In Soviet Russia becoming fabulously wealthy predicts having several models and trading them on your computer, because you say so. Excellent!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Especially in the porn industry.
They've also proven that it is possible to make business with black holes...
The last earthlings words spoken will be: OOPS!
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
The title of the slashdot article, "Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All," is misleading, although the summary is less misleading. There's no "after all." Here is the earlier paper, by Giddings and Mangano, which concluded that the LHC would not cause the end of the world. Here is the more recent paper, by Choptuik and Pretorius, referred to in the present slashdot summary.
The "after all" makes it sound as though the Choptuik paper contradicts the Giddings paper. It doesn't. Giddings and Choptuik agree that if the number of spacetime dimensions, D, equals 4, then black holes will not be formed at LHC energies. They agree that at much higher energies, with D=4, black holes will be formed. Choptuik checked the latter statement more carefully than had previously been done, and confirmed what everyone expected.
The LHC black hole doomsday scenarios all require D>4, and in addition they require a number of other implausible things to occur. The Choptuik calculation has little relevance to this discussion, because it just confirms something everyone was pretty sure was true anyway, without affecting the extreme unlikeliness of the long list of *other* things that would have to be true if you were to get an LHC black hole doomsday scenario.
I don't see anywhere in the Choptuik paper where they explicitly state that they're assuming D=4. But I think they must be, since, e.g., they refer to things like Petrov classification of spacetimes, which I think are specific to D=4.
By the way, a commonly quoted argument against the LHC black hole doomsday scenario is actually an oversimplification meant for consumption by nonscientists. The argument is that if such a thing was possible, it would actually already have happened to the earth because of cosmic-ray events. If you read the Giddings paper, there are some loopholes in this argument that they specifically identify. If the long list of implausible things actually all turn out to be true, then it is possible, in a certain specific example involving D=6 (see p. 28) that LHC collisions *would* destroy the earth after a lag of millions of years, while cosmic ray interactions would not. For that reason, they turn to arguments involving neutron stars and white dwarfs rather than planets. It turns out that this argument has no such loophole: even if the long list of implausible statements were all true, neutron stars and white dwarfs would already have been destroyed by cosmic rays. Since we observe that neutron stars and white dwarfs do exist, we conclude that the long list of implausible statements cannot be true. So I know it isn't as comforting to non-physicists as the argument based on the earth's present existence, but the argument based on neutron stars' and white dwarfs' existence is actually secure.
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No, they are so small that they will evaporate far too fast for any accidental growth to even be noticed.
Infuriate left and right
Black holes are so dense that not only matter, not only light, but even information cannot escape beyond an event horizon. If running the collider proves correct the model with extra compact dimensions by creating black holes at LHC energies, those black holes might consume the proof. And the Earth with them.
--
make install -not war
There a several of major problems with nano-black holes constructed from a few atoms:
(1) First is lifetime would be shorter than time it would take to interact with anything else.
(2) Its event horizon would be so small as to keep from interacting with most matter before it evaporated.
(3) Particles dont interact gravitationally in practice. Other atomic forces are 38 or more magnitudes larger.
I wouldnt be surprised if existing colliders and cosmic rays routinely make black holes. We just dont see these very tiny ones.
...but if someone proposed a collider that would produce energies "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum," I'd still be for it. Those collisions would be freakin awesome!
If you havent already done so, now is a good time to get some black hole protection I am renewing my IS Disaster recovery plan to cover this contingency now_b
I think these "M-Theorists" are just stringing us along...
Is it really possible to make a prediction on black holes of this size, without a theory of quantum gravity? I'm no physicist, but I keep reading that the current theory of relativity is not usable at the quantum scale.
I listened to the UK's representative at the LHC project speak at a local society last winter. She explained this in detail and said it was laughable how the Sun newspaper talked about these things without knowing anything. The energy of the colliding particles is about the same as two mosquito flies colliding with each other at around 15ms1.
For the record, those financial models were perfectly accurate.
The models failed to take into account how the models would be used. [Cue runway jokes]
When the statement "computer model shows conclusively" is used in a particle physics article, what kind of fail is that?
"Why, Johnny Ringo. You look like somebody just walked over your grave." Doc Holliday, Tombstone.
FYI: http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Though I don't think mdenham has the collision cross section correct the article certainly deserves a score of more than one.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
simulation only can be done by known knowledge
anything unknown is NOT simulated
so u r proving ur own facts with ur own theories
nothing factual
wOw
For the record, those financial models were perfectly accurate.
You mean in that they assumed that because the risk of failure of one loan was X%, in a batch of N loans the risk of all N loans failing was X^N%? That doesn't sound like user error to me.
Our economy goes through boom and bust cycles, any student of history can tell you this. If your financial model does not demonstrate how boom and bust cycles occur, or at the very least include the risk of systemic failure, it is grossly negligent to apply it in the real world.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
Friends help you move... Real friends help you move bodies...
Get your black hole insurance policy now
That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"
A quintillion? Really? With that much energy, do you really need a particle accelerator? I mean, couldn't I risk creating a black-hole by starting my car with a quintillion times more LHC energy?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
This is properly viewed as something in between a mathematical discovery and a physical one
No it is not. It is NOT properly viewed as any sort of discovery at all because it might be utterly wrong! It is far more like an unproven hypothesis in maths. It is something that MIGHT be true if the physical axioms hold for that situation but, until it is physically tested, there is no guarentee that this is the case. All this is, is a suggestion that something interesting may happen at a particular (currently unreachable) energy. That's not to say that it is not a worthwhile result but if this counts as a discovery then we also have a whole load of "discoveries" of simulated particles from LHC Monte-carlo simulations.
Not this nonsense again. Before we start to talk about black holes. Let's make sure someone knows something about gravitational forces. As an example, neutron stars could easily kill us all if one existed here somewhere near. However, don't forget that a single neutron is technically the same as a very small neutron star. We have lots of them around without the LHC. No one seems to be have been swallowed. Get it?
The HeadOn people called.
A helium atom has a mass of roughly 4 GeV/c2. The current lower limit on Black Holes at colliders is 1 TeV, or about 250 times more energy so it will have far, far more energy than a Helium atom.
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I can create a computer model that says 2+2==5. It doesn't mean that it's true. A computer is a tool for doing complex mathematics (and using Facebook). Does the computer do the research, collect data and publish the journal paper? No. It makes those things easier. It's the human mind that does the hard work.
You should post non-anonymously when you invite people to kill you in your sleep.
How very telling of Slashdot that the redundant one-liner raked in a higher score than the more elaborate and cleverer source. Your post didn't add anything, it just dumbed down the joke.