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Originally Posted by IliketoPuck
So refresh my memory, this LHC has the potential to create a black hole, or something along those lines which would lead to the destruction of the planet?
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No.
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Originally Posted by T@T
Does anybody really know this for certain though? Black holes that they think they found in space caused by supernova's are light years across in size, we only need to create a little one in order to cause grief  |
Actually it's more like kilometers in size, not light years. Even the super-massive black hole at the center of our galaxy isn't light years across.
And a small black hole created by the LHC would only be dangerous to the earth in maybe 5 billion years. Such a black hole would be so small it could fly around inside the earth for thousands of years before it comes close enough to a single electron or proton to eat it. So yeah it could eat the earth one proton at a time over billions of years, not very scary. Our sun will probably die first.
However the same math that predicts a micro-black hole also predicts that it will evaporate instantly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by T@T
70 years ago noboby would have thought something so small that you can't see could be split and cause an explosion that would level a large city either.
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Yes they did think of it, that's why they did the kind of experiments and took the precautions they did.
Cosmic rays hit the earth's atmosphere resulting in particle collisions much much more energetic than anything the LHC can achieve. If small black holes that do not evaporate and were dangerous WERE produced in the LHC, cosmic radiation would have produced them long long ago and the earth would have been eaten up then.