Scientists to attempt to create black-holes

Cid_Yama · Last edited by Cid_Yama on Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:05 pm; edited 1 time in total

A black hole will appear in mid-July on the border between France and Switzerland, swallowing up first Europe and then the entire planet. Such are the apocalyptic forecasts being made ahead of the scheduled launching, in three weeks, of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The ambitious research project, aimed at looking into superconductivity, high energies and God or devil knows what else, is an international effort involving several countries, including Russia. The report that the LHC will also produce a black hole is the most talked about item.

Remarkably, the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe are not those driven by thermonuclear reactions or annihilation processes. Much more powerful are high-density objects called black holes and neutron stars. The force of gravity around these bodies is tremendous, and accelerates any matter caught by its pull to immense speeds. Matter impacting on the surface of a neutron star does so at half the speed of light. The efficiency at which energy is released from such impacts is more than ten times that of nuclear or thermonuclear reactions.

The LHC is expected to generate collision energies of proton bunches (rather than traveling in a continuous beam, particles in accelerators are generally "bunched" together) as high as 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV). Electron-proton bunches will collide with energies of up to 1.5 TeV, and bunches of heavy ions, such as lead, with a total energy of over 1,250 TeV. This is nothing short of a new phenomenon in physics, in particular the likely confirmation of a theory that teraelectronic energies and corresponding gravitation give rise to black holes.

Black holes are expected to appear (or be detected appearing) in the LHC every second or so. As they evaporate they will leave a trail of radiation that will be registered by the accelerator's monitoring devices.

The super-accelerator, by throwing light on the evolution of black holes, will also recreate the conditions that obtained in the universe within one-billionth of a second of the Big Bang. That, scientists hope, will help to answer many questions about how our world began, questions usually still discussed on a theoretical plane.

Some theorists, however, and the public at large have started voicing fears that when such processes are modeled there will be a danger of collider experiments getting out of hand and giving rise to a chain reaction that could destroy our planet. The most widely expressed fear is that microscopic black holes may appear and capture the surrounding matter.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080618/111107931.html

A new source of energy in the offing? Rolling Eyes

_________________
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell

It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues

cipi604

This is rubbish. Particles from space hit the atmosphere every day and create micro-black-holes. We think that we are so powerful , but we're not. And what source of energy?!

biofuel13

Glad to know I have until mid-July before I blink out of existence. At least we don't have to worry about PO anymore....lol Laughing

anarky321

rubbish, and from you Cid of all people

in the scope of PeakOil which is the next 50 years at most, we will not be making energy out of black holes, and you can quote me on that; what happens more than 50 years from now is quite irrelevant to the scope of PO and mostly guessing at this point

id really like to see less spam of this sort on this board and keep the discussions more practical such as "how do you steal gas from a gas station" or "how to raid your PO-prepared neighbors' hideout to scavenge valuable supplies" or even "how to roast roadkill"

cheers

Ayame

Cid_Yama

Sorry, the new source of energy comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I forgot to apply the appropriate smiley. (fixed)

Not suggesting anything cornucopian.

The sudden termination of the human race by being swallowed by a black hole of our own making somehow sounds like an appropriate end.

Rolling Eyes

The Universe does have a sense of humor. Laughing

_________________
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - George Orwell

It riles them to believe that you perceive the webs they weave. - Moody Blues

cbxer55

Over 20 years ago I read a science fiction book about this very thing, sorry I cannot remember the name. A small man-made black hole running loose around the world, gobbling things up.
Funny how reality catches up with the fiction many years later.
I somehow think this is kinda like Pandora's Box, best left unopened.

Volcanic21 · Coal Joined: Jan 28, 2008 Posts: 19

I am by no means an astrophysicist, but I think I have a rudimentary understanding of black hole basics. At the center of the black hole is a singularity, which is all the mass of a dead star compressed down to a single tiny point in space, which has an enormous gravitational pull. What these scientists are doing with the LHC uses mind-bogglingly tiny amounts of matter, especially when compared to the mass of a star. So, while they may be creating black holes, I don't think they will be of such a magnitude that they could have any impact on the Earth. Then again, I don't really know what I'm talking about, and three weeks from now we could all be smushed together in a tiny dot of matter floating in space where Switzerland used to be. Though I highly doubt it.

virgincrude

Thunderblogs

crossthread · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 20, 2004 Posts: 180

KevO · Expert Joined: May 24, 2005 Posts: 2389

FourOfSwords

Some interesting research to consider: http://www.risk-evaluation-forum.org/anon1.htm
Cheers, and good luck.
Alex, soon somewhere in a black hole accreation zone(hope it doesn't hurt too much)

dissident · Heavy Crude Joined: Apr 08, 2006 Posts: 454

If virtual particle and anti-particle pairs are being produced in every volume element of space then they should be detectable (even if they last fractions of femtoseconds). Even if there is a cloud of them they cannot perfectly cancel out a net, time-varying electric field at small scales. It seems that there is too much interpretation thrown into quantum field theory. Instead of viewing the second order corrections to Maxwell's equations as intrinsic nonlinearity it is the fad to talk about swarms of virtual positrons around electrons, etc.

I would say it is EXTREMELY irresponsible to create microscopic black holes on the surface of this planet instead of some lab in solar orbit or better yet on an escape trajectory from the solar system. Hawking radiation is not an experimentally confirmed fact but a flimsy hypothesis. Of course, microscopic black holes may be a figment of the theorists' imaginations too but at least we have slightly firmer evidence for the existence of the macroscopic variety.

FourOfSwords

TheDude