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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.

3 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Re:1st by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    "1st"? You cheated. Don't you know there's a ten character minimum?

  2. Re:Please remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Actual computer simulation FUUUUUUCKKKKK!!!!!!!!11111!!!!

  3. Re:The rise of ignorance... by Eudial · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    it's lifespan [...] it's event horizon

    "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.

    --
    GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!