The theoretical possibility of a black hole being created is not what people think it means. To create a real black hole you need a massive star to collapse, supernova. LHC is simply not able to do this, if with its ability to create energy this black hole would appear and disappear nearly instantly because its not created with the energy required to sustain itself.
Thats how it was explained to me, if any physicist can correct me please do but we have nothing to fear from this but a chance at greater insight into the universe and our existence.
The theoretical possibility of a black hole being created is not what people think it means. To create a real black hole you need a massive star to collapse, supernova. LHC is simply not able to do this, if with its ability to create energy this black hole would appear and disappear nearly instantly because its not created with the energy required to sustain itself.
Thats how it was explained to me, if any physicist can correct me please do but we have nothing to fear from this but a chance at greater insight into the universe and our existence.
Yay for LHC!
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
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.
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
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.
I think you'll never get certainty from a real scientist but they seem very confident, here's a few things I found on this topic from real physicist.
Thats how it was explained to me, if any physicist can correct me please do but we have nothing to fear from this but a chance at greater insight into the universe and our existence.
Yay for LHC!
That faint "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" you just heard was Kirk Cameron.
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?
No.
Quote:
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.
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.
Well, you can compute the rate at which this black hole will eat matter. Assuming it eats every proton, neutron, or electron that it comes in contact with -- and also taking into account its gravity, to see what it attracts -- it will eat about 66,000 protons and neutrons per second.
That rate will be constant until the black hole becomes quite large; at about one billion metric tonnes, the black hole will start to grow faster. Capturing 66,000 nucleons per second, how long will it take to get the black hole up to even one kilogram? Three trillion years, which is much longer than the lifetime of the Sun or even the age of the Universe.
So even if you make a black hole, and even if the laws of physics that we know are wrong and it lives forever, it is still harmless. So the Earth will still be okay.
Check it out, one of the best science blogs out there:
Guess i should have said 71 years ago, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered nuclear fission in 1938.
They discovered fission, but they didn't discover the excess of energy nor did they discover that fission in U235 produced an excess of neutrons, that came later (as did the letter warning the President of the threat of a nuclear bomb).
Science is about finding out about the unknown so there's always going to be risks, and scientists work to understand and mitigate the risks.
The LHC is safe, they're not doing anything new that hasn't been done before, they're just doing it where it can be watched and studied.
I misunderstood, I thought you kind of meant small as in a few kms only.
Didn't mean a few kms, just that a supernova black hole is earth sized or in that order of magnitude where you'd typically measure it in km, and even the biggest ones aren't a light year big.
Quote:
Originally Posted by T@T
For the record I am not worried about the LHC at all, just stating nobody is "absolutely" positive what will happen and at what scale.
Of course, which is why they do the experiment.
EDIT: My money is that they'll find the Higgs and confirm the Standard Model, and physicists will continue to be frustrated because this is the worst possible outcome... it wouldn't tell us anything new.
Didn't mean a few kms, just that a supernova black hole is earth sized or in that order of magnitude where you'd typically measure it in km, and even the biggest ones aren't a light year big.
Of course, which is why they do the experiment.
EDIT: My money is that they'll find the Higgs and confirm the Standard Model, and physicists will continue to be frustrated because this is the worst possible outcome... it wouldn't tell us anything new.
Hope they find something...$5 billion is a lot of dough for a white elephant.
Hope they find something...$5 billion is a lot of dough for a white elephant.
Well its about perspective, we spend how many hundreds of billions on the American military complex, how about the massive tax credits for huge corporations.
Nasa; projects like LHC are about something bigger than just economic gain, or military might; it has massive relevance and importance to our future.
We throw so much money away on supporting consumerism, big business, and the pennies these projects receive should be not only increased but widely supported.
Because if you think the solutions for our incoming problems for this planet will come from Citibank, Haliburton, Shell, or any other corporation you are deluded (not you T@T, in general I'm saying.)
Pure science, not monetary reward focused science is the one part of the global human contract we should never breach, without it, we will simply be science for profit/benefit and not have the type of research/breakthroughs that we truly need.
Hope they find something...$5 billion is a lot of dough for a white elephant.
Well I wouldn't call confirming the Standard Model a white elephant, and there's a ton of other science that can be done in the LHC other than finding the Higgs.
It would also put a lot of parameters on other theories trying to unify GR with the quantum world, limiting possible solutions and such, so even if it does no more than find the Higgs it helps in that regard. Think of doing an experiment where you're trying to figure out the mass of something, some things you could do would give you maybe a minimum mass, or a maximum mass, so you know the answer falls within a specific range, that's what even a successful Higgs find would do for theoretical physics.
The most interesting result would be to NOT find the Higgs, or to find something different that would crack the whole thing wide open, and give a clue as to where to go to unify gravity and the quantum world.
Guess i should have said 71 years ago, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman discovered nuclear fission in 1938.
You sure about this? Albert Einstein split a beer atom ( with a chisel ) in the early 1800's. Those Hahn and Strassman guys must have ripped him off somehow.
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You sure about this? Albert Einstein split a beer atom ( with a chisel ) in the early 1800's. Those Hahn and Strassman guys must have ripped him off somehow.
You sure about this? Albert Einstein split a beer atom ( with a chisel ) in the early 1800's. Those Hahn and Strassman guys must have ripped him off somehow.
Which Albert Einstein was this? Only one I know of was born on the late 1800's
Ever since watching Carl Sagan I will never read the word "billions" the same in my head again.
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