Am I the only one that thinks this is a really bad idea?

TheTallest · Post by **TheTallest** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:55 am

Black holes on Earth.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0523/p25s02-stss.html

It's all a bit "it should do this, we think"

naval_aviator_2040 · Post by **naval_aviator_2040** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 1:07 pm

cool theory but i don't want to be around if it doenst work.

Seraphim · Post by **Seraphim** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 4:44 pm

There's no way to contain it. It would just drop to the center of the earth and consume it.

Calus · Post by **Calus** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:52 pm

I like how the high school student makes a claim that is false.

It wouldn't drop to the center of the earth. It would stay where it was created and consume our planet.

Dr. Tower · Post by **Dr. Tower** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 7:49 pm

Um, I'm pretty much going to agree with the last couple paragraphs of the article, the black holes they are creating won't swallow anything. They won't have enough mass to attract anything to swallow before they "die". Also, with the masses they are talking about, the chances of coming anywhere near the event horizon are incredibly tiny. Remember, for a person to be a black hole they would have to occupy the space of an electron. The volume occupied by a few hundred protons would be so tiny that another nucleus could pass by it, within its electron cloud even, and deflect slightly without being absorbed into it.

Hidden Sanity · Post by **Hidden Sanity** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:42 pm

the only reason that a black hole can attract anything is because of it's massive amounts of mass, although if you give one of these tiny black holes enough time (say a few hundred thousand years) it might be able to collect the entire earth into it.

TheTallest · Post by **TheTallest** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 8:54 pm

I just got the impression that it's all a bit "we think it'll do this".

I know very little about black holes, but how do they know it won't just consume and get bigger?

Hidden Sanity · Post by **Hidden Sanity** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 9:20 pm

well for on this small, it will slowly consume and get bigger, but it'll take a very long time to become a threat of any kind. Merry Christmas Future generations, hopefully you guys will know how to stop a black hole!

Seraphim · Post by **Seraphim** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 10:09 pm

I like how the high school student makes a claim that is false.

It wouldn't drop to the center of the earth. It would stay where it was created and consume our planet.

I was going by Steven Hawkings, who said a Black Hole on earth, would shift too the center of the planet (center of gravity), because there's no way to contain it. He was probablly talking about Black Holes much larger than these however.

They won't have enough mass to attract anything to swallow before they "die".

Isn't there a rather large nuclear explosion (even with tiny ones) when a black hole dies?

Posted Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:33 pm:

Furthermore... might I ask what my being in High School has to do with anything? If I was mistaken, that's fine, there's no reason to condescend about it. I know more about quantum physics than a vast majority of adults I've met. While I'm sure I don't know as much as a college student majoring in it, there is no need to be so rude about it.

Deacon · Post by **Deacon** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:04 pm

[quote="Seraphim";p="432546"]Isn't there a rather large nuclear explosion (even with tiny ones) when a black hole dies?[/quote]
I don't know about that... Are you thinking of a supernova? Has anyone witnessed a black hole "dying"?

Seraphim · Post by **Seraphim** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 11:57 pm

No one's witnessed a black hole period. But due to the application of quantum physics we can mathmatically deduce what we think should happen. I can't find my copy of a brief history of time, but bassically black holes are constantly leaking particles/waves, and the rate at which they leak grows exponentailly until it reaches a certain point where it just explodes out all at once. A baby black hole (one that isn't large enough to form under normal circumstances, but was able to in the beginning stages of the universe due to pressure...) has quite a powerful explosion if I remember correctly. So while one of these extremely miny black holes may not have the massive nuclear power of a baby black hole, it seems to me(hypothesizing) that if it has enough energy to become a black hole, that it would have enough energy to make a bit of an explosion.

Dr. Tower · Post by **Dr. Tower** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:02 am

Ok, they said that it has the mass of a few hundred protons. All of that mass is pretty much pure energy. We can calculate how much energy would be released.

As a simple thought experiment: if it had a mass of 1000 protons, with the mass of a proton (at rest) being 983.3 MeV/c^2 (useful form of mass for doing this stuff) if all of that mass was turned into energy during the explosion, you would have 1000*(983 MeV/c^2)*c^2=983 GeV.

983 GeV = 1.57 *10^(-7) J

That is enough energy to run a 60 W light bulb for 2.6 nanoseconds. In other words, the black holes they are planning to deal with have very, very little energy total. Just very high energy density.

Post by **Blaze** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:20 am

I know that a lot of people assume black holes are just deadly universe eater things from which there is no escape, but that's just not true. A black hole the size of the sun, where the sun is now would have no effect on earth whatsoever, save that earth would freeze over.

Secondarily, black holes don't really "grow". Anything they "consume" gets completely crushed in the center and maintains only 3 features, being mass, charge, and angular momentum, and is then all ejected at superhigh velocities. A tiny black hole created in a lab would simply pull in any ultra small mass objects nearby (there'd probably always be a slow wind in the room, if it were exposed), and then eject it as destroyed matter.

I don't know anything about them dying, but it's safe to assume it wouldn't be pretty.

Somehow I also doubt if they can create a singularity, though. Right now, they have a hard enough time creating degenerate matter, and they CANNOT create pure neutron matter, which even THAT doesn't cause a black hole.

(To note: Creating a black hole from the earth would require compressing the entirety of the earth into about 1cm of space).

Dr. Tower · Post by **Dr. Tower** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:25 am

Blaze, just to make sure, when you say a black whole the size of the sun, you are talking about its mass, correct? Because if you were talking about its volume, chances are there would be massive gravity waves ripping the Earth apart right now. A black hole the volume of the sun would have a much larger mass than the sun has and would have all of the issues that go along with that.

Post by **Blaze** » Thu Dec 09, 2004 1:26 am

Yes, its mass. My appologies.

Real Life Forums

Am I the only one that thinks this is a really bad idea?

Am I the only one that thinks this is a really bad idea?

Re: Am I the only one that thinks this is a really bad idea?

Who is online