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If you built a micro black hole anywhere on Earth, it would instantly start dropping towards the centre of the Earth, overshoot, and then bounce from the centre to the surface and back again while drilling a little tnnel along its path and growing as it ate the matter in its way to make the tunnel. Not fun at all.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 03:23:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
is that we use dunk tectonics and frikkin huge magnets. ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 03:28:49 PM EST
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It's not the size of the magnets but what you can do with it that matters.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre
by ATinNM on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 03:51:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Finnish magnets with more pull than push.

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 04:19:00 PM EST
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Actually, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva (at CERN, the last of the super accelerators), plans on delivering a regular stream of micro black holes if current models are true.

According to Stephen Hawking's findings on the thermodynamics of black hole, they are not black at all. They radiate, and the smaller they are, the hotter and more intense the radiation. So if they are small enough and not fed fast enough, black holes actually explode.

At some point, the "Gamma Ray Bursts" from deep space where shown as evidence that primitive black holes (born from density variations at the big bang), would blast back their mass-energy from time to time. It turned out that super-super-novae are an easier explanation.

Back to the LHC black holes: they cannot explode with more power than what you put in creating them (not much by macroscopic standards), and their lifetime is so short that they have no time to exit the detector at beam collision point.

Even if one were to move a bit further on, its diameter is so small (and its absolute weight to) that its efficient collision diameter with matter would be nil: it would fly through matter, between electron and nucleus, with a gravity pull far below the electromagnetic force that binds them into atoms. So it couldn't eat any, and would not be able to compensate for mass lost in radiation. Eventually, it will still explode after a shord dash.

Pierre
by Pierre on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 04:55:09 PM EST
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is ET working at its beautiful best.... ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 05:01:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]


You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 05:03:13 PM EST
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The honest view is that nobody has a clue what the endpoint of Hawking radiation is.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 06:04:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Lots of physicists have their pet theories about "new physics beyond the standard model". Depending on who you ask, they'll tell you a completely different fairy tal about what the LHC will find. The truth is that they have no idea.

Micro black holes is one of the possible "exotic new physics". Other people say that supersymmetric particles will be found. Everyone expects the Higgs boson to be found, but even in that case they don't know what variety of Higgs boson (of the many that are possible in theory) will be found.

Theory has been "ahead of experiment" for over 30 years now, which is a kind way of saying there has been no substantial experimental input, and nothing incompatible with the standard model (including neutrino oscillations). It's a pitiful state for a scientific field. If the LHC does not find some "exotic" physics, theoretical high energy physics will die of success.

The most enticing evidence of "new physics" is coming from relativistic astrophysics and cosmology.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Apr 28th, 2006 at 06:11:26 PM EST
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Exactly. And if MBH at LHC turn out to be bigger a problem, we may no longer have to worry about peak oil. Nice ;-)

BTW, some folks are finding new ways of studying ultra-high energy particles in the decay chains of cosmic rays entering the earth atmosphere. Here's a link to a webcast of an excellent public conference on this (in french only):

Le Problème des Rayons Cosmiques d'Ultra-Haute Energie

The whole series are quite good: Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris

Pierre

by Pierre on Sat Apr 29th, 2006 at 10:28:52 AM EST
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