Earth Will Survive After All, Physicists Say

NY Times ^ | June 21, 2008 | DENNIS OVERBYE

[Strategerist]

The earth is routinely hit with very high energy cosmic rays, beyond what even the LHC can generate.

We’ve lasted 4 billion years under that bombardment. LHC isn’t going to be able to generate anything any more dangerous.

And the other thing is that black holes gradually decay, as Stephen Hawking showed. The smaller they evaporate.

[HangnJudge]

And the other thing is that black holes gradually decay

Good discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

The evaporation time is proportional to the Mass^3
A black hole the weight of a car
would only take a nanosecond to evaporate

a black hole of mass 1 TeV/c2 would take
less than 10^-88 seconds to evaporate completely.
This is profoundly less time than it takes for a
light particle to cross a proton (Planck's length), or 5x10^-44 sec

I do not think you have anything to worry about...

[baclava]

Is the speed of dark the same as the speed of light?

I get confused, I don’t do math.

[varon]

Has your planet been eaten by a black hole?

No, but some of my socks have ;-)

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Black holes that small would evaporate more quickly than they could absorb matter (i.e. Hawking radiation). I don’t think we have too much to be concerned about here.

[Nick Danger]

No, but some of my socks have

Check your closet. If my theory is correct, there will be more hangers in there. I'm convinced that socks are the larval form of wire coat hangers. Every time a sock disappears, another hanger shows up in the closet.

To my knowledge, there is no way to turn them back into socks.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem. :')

[SunkenCiv]

:’D

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2034785/posts?page=4#4

[MHGinTN]

TFTP (Thanks For The Ping) ... “Whatever the collider will do, they said, Nature has already done many times over.” Yes, there are black holes and no we didn’t make them, so Nature ‘probably’ did. It is not comforting to know the men who lust after the LHC as their ‘research tool’ are the ones reassuring folks that the project cannot generate deadly worst scenario consequences. As one poster mentioned above, that they don’t know all the effects is why they call it research, in many cases. With the LHC, the object is to confirm their theories and ‘perhaps’ generate a particle to fill in the blank in the standard model, perhaps. With the fate of our planet perhaps weighing in the balance, I can think of other ways and reasons to delay trying this trick on ‘Mother Nature’ ... if ‘nature’ had made what these folks seek, wouldn’t they have another way to verify it instead of taking this gamble while telling us it isn’t a gamble?

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[SunkenCiv]

My pleasure.

[onedoug]

Aw, nuts. I was looking forward so to the trip.

[Billthedrill]

Yeah, maybe, but before it goes this sucker could tear a hunk out of the earth the size of a neutron. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

[CheezyChesster]

Some critics have argued, however, that Cern has ignored or downplayed the risk that the collider could...
_______________________________Produce__________________________ thousands perhaps millions of tiny black holes each with the ability to fuse together like eddy swirls in a current. (Time to Stop Time)

[wolf78]

The idea that such a micro black hole would be stable “for months, perhaps even years” is preposterous.

Nothing more.

The total energy of the LHC’s “big bang” is actually very, very small. About 0.0002 Joule. That’s 0.00004 calories. The energy required to lift a small apple 0.2 millimeters.