Large Hadron Collider, a doom machine?

[aostling]

This was on the front page of the New York Times today http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/sc...03a&ei=5087%0A. I think it is a bit of a stretch. Sure, maybe the LHC could make a mini black hole which would gobble up Earth.

But the whole universe? What would be so special about this particular black hole?

[Evan]

Why are they resurrecting this again? Didn't anybody ask Stephen Hawking about this? Micro sized black holes evaporate very quickly. Anything they could make isn't big enough to encounter a significant amount of matter before it evaporates. It will just fall through the "cracks".

[aostling]

Okay. Despite my jocular intro, I confess I had a little anxiety after having read the article. Glad to hear the concern is overblown.

[dp]

For some high drama on an otherwise interesting scientific topic:

http://www.misunderstooduniverse.com/France_Builds_Doomsday_Machine.htm

The animations are laughable - they show the earth as an eggshell form toward the end collapsing cleanly into an ever growing hole. I think it would look more like a hypercompression as might happen to a tennis ball at the deepest bottom of the sea.

It will either destroy the world or it won't. Interesting that the LHC will create (claim) several black holes per second. If they don't evaporate, and there's no proof they actually do, and Hawking lost a bet over the information paradox, the problem will self-terminate quickly.

Should be an interesting day.

[lazlo]

Come on guys -- micro black holes are bullsh!t. We all know the Large Hadron Collider is going to open a gate to Hell. I've got my BFG ready...

[wierdscience]

Has Stargate command been notified?

[toastydeath]

Has Stargate command been notified?

Being from the internet, I have many images that are appropriate and on-topic for this thread. If these shenanigans continue, I look forward to finally having a place to use them all.

[Ian B]

Ha!

What's all the fuss about? I was machining an old lump of hadron alloy bar that I had lying around yesterday - it's 90% unobtanium, 10% deadlium. No problems, except for the holes it made through the drip tray all the way to the centre of the earth.

[toastydeath]

was machining an old lump of hadron alloy bar that

I've been in school too long; your statement cracked me up for ridiculous reasons. Hadrons are composite particles like protons and neutrons.

So, quite literally, everyone here machines hadron alloys very frequently. Always, one might say.

[Ian B]

Toasty,

Thanks - I wondered what it was that was chewing my carbide tooling up...

[old-biker-uk]

.....is going to open a gate to Hell.

I'm ready. Had my sweat rag & No.8 shovel on standby since I stopped God-bothering in 1958.
Mark

[John Stevenson]

Ha!

What's all the fuss about? I was machining an old lump of hadron alloy bar that I had lying around yesterday - it's 90% unobtanium, 10% deadlium. No problems, except for the holes it made through the drip tray all the way to the centre of the earth.

Note to self:

Self,
Stop making centre punches out of Hadron, that's why they keep disapearing.

.

[oldtiffie]

Stick 'em

Being from the internet, I have many images that are appropriate and on-topic for this thread. If these shenanigans continue, I look forward to finally having a place to use them all.

Agreed TD - good advice.

This is an electronic/internet version of "Chicken Little" on steroids.

Are you planning to use your images here as being in a repository or as a suppository - or both? Perhaps getting them in will be no problem but keeping them in might be.

[Evan]

It will either destroy the world or it won't. Interesting that the LHC will create (claim) several black holes per second. If they don't evaporate, and there's no proof they actually do, and Hawking lost a bet over the information paradox, the problem will self-terminate quickly.

Not likely.

Seriously, the size of a black hole is dependent on only one variable, the amount of matter it contains. In the case of the LHC that is determined by the amount of energy available from the machine. Since the conversion of energy to matter is well defined by e=mc^2, a relationship that is very well proven, it is then possible to calculate the event horizon size of such a small black hole. I don't know that math but I do know that a hypothetical black hole containing the mass of a small mountain is about the size of a proton.

The theoretical size of the black holes that may be created by the LHC are numerous magnitudes smaller. The LHC will operate at energies able to create showers of sub atomic particles, not showers of mountains, bricks or even grains of sand. The theoretical micro black holes it may create will be so small the interaction with matter will be vanishingly unlikely even if they are entirely stable. Hadronic matter is almost entirely empty space occupied only by the fields that hold it together.

Since a black hole has very simple properties it is not influenced by either the strong or weak intra atomic forces. According to theory "black holes have no hair". They have only three properties: Mass, spin and charge. The gravitational field of a black hole falls as the inverse square with distance. That distance is referenced to the size of the event horizon. For a black hole smaller by orders of magnitude than a subatomic particle that means that the probability of actually coming close enough to swallow up another particle is infinitesimal.

Any such persistent black hole that might be created will promptly fall toward the center of the earth in an entirely frictionless free fall. Because of the enormous relative space between the component parts of atoms that black hole may only encounter another sub atomic particle every few million years as it oscillates freely about the center of the earth. It isn't able to attract particles toward itself as they are far more strongly bound by the other forces. The electromagnetic force that rules the interactions between atoms is 10^43 times stronger than gravity. The gravitational force of the black hole at only 100 such black hole diameters distance is ~ 1.3x10^-30 weaker than at the event horizon. Any charge held by the black hole is also subject to inverse square law.

What it boils down to is that even if such black holes were created the universe won't last long enough for them to swallow the earth.

[Rustybolt]

Maybe I should get together with my neighbors some night and light our torches and descend on FermiLab. Idiots