[Cid_Yama]

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. <b>The efficiency at which energy is released from such impacts is more than ten times that of nuclear or thermonuclear reactions.</b>

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

<i>A new source of energy in the offing?</i>

[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

[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]

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.

being a nihlist I say, go go go scientists!

[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.



The Universe <b>does</b> have a sense of humor.

[Volcanic21]

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

Black Holes, Unicorns, and All That Stuff
06/11/08 

The notion of black holes voraciously gobbling up matter, twisting space-time into contortions that trap light, stretching the unwary into long spaghetti-like strands as they fall inward to ultimately collide and merge with an infinitely dense point-mass singularity, has become a mantra of the scientific community, so much so that even primary school children know about the sinister black hole, waiting patiently, like the Roman child’s Hannibal, for an opportunity to abduct the unruly and the misbehaved. There are almost daily reports of scientists claiming black holes again found here and there.

Yet despite all this hoopla, contrary to the assertions of the astronomers and astrophysicists of the black hole community, nobody has ever identified a black hole, anywhere, let alone ‘imaged’ one. The pictures adduced to convince are actually either artistic impressions (i.e. drawings) or photos of otherwise unidentified objects imaged by telescopes and merely asserted to be black holes, ad hoc.
Einstein Violated
Furthermore, black holes are allegedly obtained from Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. It is called the General Theory because it is a generalisation of his Special Theory of Relativity. As such, General Relativity cannot, by definition, violate Special Relativity, but that is precisely what the black hole does. 

Special Relativity forbids infinite densities because, according to that Theory, infinite density implies infinite energy (or equivalently that a material object can acquire the speed of light in vacuo). Therefore General Relativity too forbids infinite densities. But the point-mass singularity of the black hole is allegedly infinitely dense, in violation of Special Relativity. Thus the Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of a black hole.

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts." - Albert Einstein

It is also of great importance to be mindful of the fact that no observations gave rise to the notion of a black hole in the first place, for which a theory had to be developed. The black hole was wholly spawned in the reverse, i.e. it was created by theory and observations subsequently misconstrued to legitimize the theory. Reports of black holes are just wishful thinking in support of a belief; not factual in any way.

[crossthread]

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.

Was the book called "The Langoliers"?

[KevO]

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

it was supposed to have been switched on last year. It keeps getting put off. It'll probaly be 21st December 2012 before they press the green button

[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]

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]

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.

Well said dissident. Do we have an exact date that the experiment is to be initiated? Just thought we might like to know when we open up Pandora's Box and find out the last secret the gods kept from humanity...the knowledge of the time of our demise.
From my reading we would only have a few minutes before we stopped existing...just enough time to catch a CNN news flash on an anomoly on the French/Swiss border then....phffft!
Cheers, I guess.
Alex

[TheDude]

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.

You're thinking of Earth, by Postman author David Brin.

[Cid_Yama]

<i>From my reading we would only have a few minutes before we stopped existing...</i>

Actually it would be virtually instantaneous, sucked in at half the speed of light.

They throw the switch, and if they were horribly wrong, they will never know it.

[dissident]

According to the LHC website they are in the final stages of cooldown which started on May 29th and should take 7 weeks. So it looks like they will be trying their first experiments in late July or early August. It would be quite ironic if all the fretting about global warming and peak oil was misdirected. It is also interesting how the particle theorist never get their chestnuts exposed to fire from professional skeptics. I guess there no Exxon funding...

[FourOfSwords]

Kind of long, but very poignant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsCPvYVC ... re=related
Our final days.
Alex

[FourOfSwords]

Here is the LHC site for those who are interested:http://www.lhcountdown.com/
As I understand it there are roughly thirteeen days until this monster is turned on, then about 2 months before the two particle beams are nudged together to collide. Pray no black holes, strangelets and such are produced...ever.
Alex. 'eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we may die'

[EnergyUnlimited]

So cosmic rays of energy up to 10 E21 eV, means 1 000 000 000 TeV are hitting Earth every day.
Easy reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high ... cosmic_ray

On the other hand you guys are frightened of few TeV, what is really insignificant comparing to above.
Chicken Littles.
To exceed energy of cosmic rays already hitting the Earth we would neen accelerator of size of Solar System at least

And on the top of that all this BH hype is in all probabilities BS.
My bets in respect to LHC are as follows:

1. Higgs boson is not going to be detected and those who hope to discover it are going to be disappointed.
2. BH, regardless how small, is not going to be proven to exist.
3. Stable strange matter will not be produced.
4. Quantum vacuum phase transition is not going to materialize.
5. String/brane theories are not going to be experimentally proven.
6. It is unlikely that LHC will push particle physics beyond Standard Model, but lack of proven existence of Higgs boson will really be annoying in that context.

[dissident]

The two situation are completely different. In the ultra-high energy cosmic ray proton collision it is being slowed down but not brought to a complete dead stop. In the LHC they will have protons moving in opposite directions with equal momentum colliding in a dead stop.

The talk of microscopic black holes originates from the LHC people and other scientists, not the members of this board. The proton anti-proton collision inside the LHC can be considered a focusing of the energy into a confined space. The cosmic ray case cannot.