Should I be worried?

[Phil Spencer]

I heard on the radio to day the scientists will be starting up the super particle accelerator CERN next week one of the programmed experiments may produce a black hole, there was a court case trying to stop this as some people were so concerned that if a black hole was created it may be big enough to swallow the earth. The scientists said don't worry if a black hole was to accidently be created it would only be a small one, and not to worry about it. I want to finish the cupboard that I am building should we trust them?


Phil

[Pat]

No, never trust Scientists, politicians and those that say "Trust me".

[Phil Spencer]

No, never trust Scientists, politicians and those that say "Trust me".

I suppose there are better ways to go, who ever heard of disappearing up your own black hole? But then again we might end up in an alternate universe.
Phil

[Steve Fryar]

In a nutshell,a black hole is created when the matter inside it is so dense and has a huge gravitational pull that light(photons) cannot escape it.A tremendous gravitational field will pull any loose matter into it,therefore increasing its mass,increasing its size and increasing the distance the field has an affect.If whoever makes a small black hole,how can they control what enters it.The fact that they want to observe it means that matter will enter it.Electrons and photons do have weight.Should you be scared.Yep.

[Master Splinter]

Black hole production via the Large Hadron Collider is only supported in some of the more 'speculative' theoretical models of quantum mechanics.

I think it's in the ADD model, which specifies that extra spacetime dimensions can have macroscopic sizes - instead of the more popular spacetime models where there are five (as in Kaluza-Klein theory) 10, 11 or 26 dimensions (in various string theories), with the extra dimensions unobservable as they are compactified to less than the Planck length (1.6 × 10⁻³⁵ meters).

But in any case the energy level available at the LHC is small, compared to the energy level of cosmic rays hitting the Earth.

Individual particle (proton/proton) collisions in the LHC have about the same energy as two mosquitoes flying head on into each other; while this is a lot of energy for a subatomic particle like a proton to have, the more energetic cosmic rays (cosmic rays are just protons moving at very, very high speeds) that hit our atmosphere have about as much energy as a well thrown cricket ball - so there are quite a few orders of magnitude difference between the two!

Submicroscopic black holes also have to contend with the problem of Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation is the loss of mass from the black hole due to vacuum fluctuations creating particle-antiparticle pairs at the event horizon; virtual particles 'borrow' energy from the black hole's gravity to become real particles, thereby decreasing the black hole's mass.

This Hawking radiation means that a submicroscopic black hole would evaporate faster than it could attract extra mass, dissapearing in a dirty little puff of gamma radiation.

Other possible effects touted - such as strangelet creation (matter created of up, down and strange quarks instead of just up and down quarks), collapsing the vacuum state of the universe, monopole creation leading to catalysed proton decay...if they were going to happen, then the rather larger and more energetic events that occur regularly in the universe (such as novas, supernovas or hypernovas) would have already triggered such outcomes.

However, there is still some danger...if you think your table saw is a safety issue, don't stand in the way of the LHC beam dump path! If there is a superconducting magnet quench and the beam dump is used, it has to absorb the equivalent of 170kgs of TNT from the proton stream (which has roughly enough protons to fill the volume of a grain of sand).

See also: http://xkcd.com/401/

Electrons and photons do have weight.

Photons don't have a rest mass; just energy, however they do contribute to the stress-energy tensor and so can be affected by gravity.

A black hole needs a certain minimum mass to be big enough to survive - otherwise there is not enough matter near it to be affected by its gravity (remember, the subatomic world is mostly open space!), and it looses mass via Hawking radiation too quickly. Not sure what the minimum mass is but you are talking billions of tonnes which you are not going to create with a puny device such as the LHC.

[tea lady]

Ummm Maybe you should just try and live eery day like its your last.

How's the wife BTW?

[Honorary Bloke]

TL, if we take your post and Master Splinter's post and combine them, I think we may have stumbled upon the Unified Theory!

[Phil Spencer]

Think I will be able to fonish the cupboard after all.

[The Bleeder]

Phil,

If we all disappear into that black hole who's going to know you didn't finish the cupboard.

Steve

[Phil Spencer]

Ummm Maybe you should just try and live eery day like its your last.

How's the wife BTW?

Hi Tea Lady

Rhonda is doing well she is out of the wheelchair and walking short distances, the pain is still there and always will be, rehabilitation is now down to two half days per week until the end of September and then once every two weeks, she is finding the rehabilitation hard work but she is sticking to it. One good thing is that Rhonda has left that dark place in her mind where she was considering doing something silly.

We are living every day like its the last and loving like its the first time.

I just want to finish the cupboard now without the threat of black holes

[tea lady]

I just want to finish the cupboard now without the threat of black holes

Maybe you could buy some epoxy resin so if a black hole appears you can just fill 'er up and know one will notice.

Great to hear things are going well otherwise.

[Phil Spencer]

Maybe you could buy some epoxy resin so if a black hole appears you can just fill 'er up and know one will notice.

can you get Black Hole filler?

[Sturdee]

I just want to finish the cupboard now without the threat of black holes

At last we'll have a place to dump all our scraps and sawdust.


Peter.

[Blocklayer]

That black hole crisis will probably end up being the next big thing after the Global Warming crisis fizzles

.

[kiwigeo]

If you were really worried about blackholes you wouldnt be flicking on the minitron in your neutron porosity tool without first getting your running shoes ready outside your logging truck.

In a nutshell,a black hole is created when the matter inside it is so dense and has a huge gravitational pull that light(photons) cannot escape it.A tremendous gravitational field will pull any loose matter into it,therefore increasing its mass,increasing its size and increasing the distance the field has an affect.If whoever makes a small black hole,how can they control what enters it.The fact that they want to observe it means that matter will enter it.Electrons and photons do have weight.Should you be scared.Yep.