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Tiny Black Holes Could Trigger Collapse of Universe—Except That They Don't
sciencehabit writes: If you like classic two-for-one monster movies such as King Kong vs. Godzilla, then a new paper combining two bêtes noires of pseudoscientific scaremongers—mini black holes and the collapse of the vacuum—may appeal to you. Physicists working with the world's biggest atom-smasher—Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—have had to reassure the public that, even if they can make them, mini black holes, infinitesimal version of the ones that form when jumbo stars implode, won't consume the planet. They've also had to dispel fears that blasting out a particle called the Higgs boson will cause the vacuum of empty space to collapse. Now, however, three theorists calculate that in a chain reaction, a mini black hole could trigger such collapse after all.
Great, now I'm hungry!
Tiny black holes don't stick around for long due to the quantum uncertainty around the event horizon
See Hawking Radiation
But whatever, I'd rather the world end doing science.
I welcome our new microscopic black hole overlords!
There's nothing that the LHC (or any other conceivable accelerator that we could build at current technology levels) can do that the sun isn't already doing in the upper atmosphere (or in the centre of the sun)
What the LHC brings is doing the collisions in a small, controllable space where it's (relatively) easy to measure what is happening.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
You have to divide by zero when working with black holes.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
They evaporate first before eating the entire universe.
Quite polite of them, I must say.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Why were you able to pluralize correctly in your subject, but somehow needed an apostrophe in your comment?
"Within a fraction of second, the bubble would then expand to consume the entire visible universe."
So, we can now communicate faster the light by modulating Higgs field, instead of torturing kings.
http://www.goodreads.com/quote...
That barrier is so big that it would likely take many, many times the age of the universe for the transition to occur.
No, it will take exactly one "age of the Universe" to tunnel and cause the collapse.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
... destroy it due to local laws of physics would be destroyed at the moment of their formation when the energies tend to infinity. This may well have happened in the past (if you believe in the eternal inflation-collapse universe theory) or be happening (if you believe the multiverse theory) but since our universe is still here after 14 billion years I think its a safe bet that the laws of physics here don't allow it.
And cosmic rays are far more powerful than anythibng humans can create yet. Back tio the Whiteboard, folks.
What empty vacuum of space? Space is a quantity in itself. Obviously what used to be perceived as empty is swarming with all kinds of things we don't understand. We may have things like dark matter and dark energy and all kinds of super dark stuff that makes space some sort of dark solid with plenty of dark activity within. If we treat space as a quantity we need no magical suppositions about some under lying fabric of space. Said plainly just because we can not see it, sense it, or measure it in any way does not imply that it is not present.
To prevent that the vacuum collapse spreads beyond LHC, just put it into a vacuum-vacuum flask!
Summoning virtual Higgs bosons into existence using the HLC may create mini black holes. (Meh, what could possibly go wrong?) A bubble of nothingness that expands to consume the entire Universe! In less than a second! Sounds like an enthusiastic ten-year old after watching a bad Sci-Fi flick.
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
If the theories are calculating that it could happen, but it hasn't happened, the theories are obviously incomplete, wrong, or the calculations are wrong. Because the evidence in the form: the universe is still here; strongly indicates to the opposite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDKo7pTwIwA
In addition to the comments concerning the fact that there is nothing new at the LHC that wouldn't already be produced by cosmic rays in our atmosphere - there is an assumption in the paper: The production of small black holes at the LHC rests upon the assumption of "large" extra dimensions. There is no experimental evidence for this assumption. Therefore, there are many conclusions one could draw, a few that are consistent with the results of this paper are: There are no large extra dimensions. The parameter space they investigated is insufficient to characterize the real universe.
Are they saying black holes don't matter?
Just another day in Paradise
It's a little funny (in a cynical sense) to consider that if some other life form had advanced to this point and destroyed their planet, there would be no evidence left of them (minus whatever they had established in space and maybe whatever radio waves they had broadcast).
In a universe of nearly infinite size (from our perspective at least), there's bound to be other more advanced species somewhere. Many of them too. If it was possible to collapse the universe with tiny black holes, one of them would have already done it and we would not be here to talk about it.
And since particles can quantum tunnel that must mean that there is a small chance of all of the particles I'm made up of tunneling at the same time, thus enabling me to teleport wherever I want. Somehow I doubt I'll achieve this any time soon.
What is the one thing a black hole must have? Mass. What is the one thing a black hole created in a Collider will never have? Mass. Only a black hole created inside a Uranium or Plutonium particle MIGHT have enough mass to exist.
Ah, so I had it all wrong, a Dyson sphere is actually a type of black hole that doesn't lose suction, not an energy collection device.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But but I thought women in STEM were banned by order of the patriarchy?
That many other civilisations in our universe have used higher energies, yet our universe is still here.
that would be much harder with other larger and/or denser bodies like Jupiter, the Sun, and white dwarfs.
Actually the argument also used pulsars. These have densities at, or above, that of a nucleus. A blackhole produced at the surface of one would swallow the entire star due to the phenomenally large cross-section. Pulsars are easy to detect and since we have never yet observed a pulsar winking out of existence we can exclude dangerous black hole production.
Yep it was, good times.
Trust the scientists, they are always as correct as their data. Let us forget Luminiferous aether, Young Earth theory, Static universe, Immovable continents, Stress theory of ulcers, ...
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Would you be angry if someone associated you with the belief in Blue Ferries? Or would you simple say, "whatever". Both are irrational in the mind of an Atheist. But only the association with the belief in God evokes anger.
This reminds me of working in public service. There would be various questions that employees would have to answer many, many times in any given day, despite there being lots of signs around in an attempt to inform people.
Personally, my belief is that signs are for ignoring, and thus I rarely got irritated with answering the same question over and over.
But plenty of people who were happy to answer it the first time were quite exasperated by the 1,000th time.
Now, I believe that blue ferries exist, but I imagine those who don't might get irritated if half the population assumed (and oftentimes publicly stated) they were amoral because they didn't believe in a certain type of ship painted blue.
No, because compared to the age of the universe, our civilization has only existed for a fraction of a blink of an eye. Also, the end of our civilization is fairly insignificant and, in the long run, inevitable.
The micro-black-hole-problem, on the other hand, affects the universe as a whole.
Iff black holes can briefly upset the Higgs energy balance and put it in a new state, there is at least a possibility that that same process can be used to harvest very large energies from the vacuum state. Of course, I don't know whether the new temporary Higgs state will be at higher or lower energies that the nromal state, but I assume they will be higher.
But if we or another race out in the Universe did collapse the vacuum and destroy the Universe, wouldn't it only be one of the Many Worlds? We would continue to exist in the alternate Universe where the bubble did not form. It would turn out to be like the quantum experiments where they see probabilities of things, but in this case it would always be a probability of 100% not collapsing the vacuum since any World that did collapse would cease to exist and there would be no observers to measure that probability.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
"you can't experience a universe in which you don't exist." More of those every day.
New Zealand really was that quiet once upon a time!
Much of it still is. It's a beautiful country.
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
There are over 7 billion people on the planet and growing - each of whom will die and will likely not have a pleasant death. A black hole would be a pretty clean way to go.