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Lab fireball 'may be black hole'
BBC News ^
| 3/17/2005
Posted on 03/17/2005 12:59:33 PM PST by flashbunny
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To: Bigh4u2
10 million, billion, billionths of a second is 10 million seconds=115.74 days. 10 million-billion-billionths of a second is a little smaller.
121
posted on
03/17/2005 5:35:46 PM PST
by
ThanhPhero
(di hanh huong den La Vang)
To: flashbunny
122
posted on
03/17/2005 5:38:08 PM PST
by
muir_redwoods
(Free Sirhan Sirhan, after all, the bastard who killed Mary Jo Kopeckne is walking around free)
To: flashbunny
![Image hosted by Photobucket.com](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v209/kingprout/EventHorizonCore2.jpg)
naw... it ain't dangerous
123
posted on
03/17/2005 5:44:18 PM PST
by
King Prout
(Remember John Adam!)
To: cripplecreek
Angstroms and Nanometers, or is it picometers
124
posted on
03/17/2005 5:45:14 PM PST
by
roaddog727
(The marginal propensity to save is 1 minus the marginal propensity to consume.)
To: -YYZ-
Yeah, Gardner Dozois always does the best "Year's Best" anthologies.
But I'd miss the Moon of that happened. Instead of the familiar, pearl-colored ball of rock we all know and love, there would be a blazing, eye-searing accretion disk spewing out x-rays and Hawking radiation. No thanks! LOL
But seriously, I question the wisdom of carrying out such research anywhere in cislunar space, much less in a heavily populated region like New York.
How about this - carry on the research in orbit around Jupiter. If something goes wrong, the black hole falls into Jupiter, "stellarizes" the planet, and Presto! We've got Europa and Ganymede warmed up, and ready for colonization and terraforming. (Io would be too hot, Callisto too cold)
"We don' need no steenking black Monoleeth!"
Can't you tell I have quite a bit of time on my hands at work tonight? LOL
125
posted on
03/17/2005 5:45:39 PM PST
by
FierceDraka
(The Democratic Party - Aiding and Abetting The Enemies of America Since 1968)
To: WestVirginiaRebel
AAAARGH!
you beat me to it.
126
posted on
03/17/2005 5:49:06 PM PST
by
King Prout
(Remember John Adam!)
To: FierceDraka
hey, Draka! longtime no see.
127
posted on
03/17/2005 5:50:03 PM PST
by
King Prout
(Remember John Adam!)
To: beezdotcom
don't forget the 50/50-95 rule. If there's a 50/50 chance of choosing the correct answer, 95% of the time you'll choose wrong
128
posted on
03/17/2005 6:13:34 PM PST
by
chief_bigfoot
("isn't THAT amazing?" - Ron Popiel)
To: Gorjus
What if a group of scientists working in particle acceleration lab created a BLACK HOLE that was above some level of stabilty (ie. large enough that it didn't immediately dissolve because of Hawking Radiation)?Sorry, but your premise is flawed. The lifetime.....
The funding agency nonetheless stopped all research to give their overseers a chance to double-check all the calculations before allowing the researcher to continue with the experiment. Their thought process was as I described ie. What if........?
Better to be safe than sorry.
129
posted on
03/17/2005 6:17:41 PM PST
by
DoctorMichael
(The Fourth Estate is a Fifth Column!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
To: DoctorMichael
Assuming it got loose, and I have no idea if a micro black hole can be contained, presumably some much like the scenario I described above from a sci-fi short story: it would fall from the surface towards the center of the earth, and keep right on going towards the other side, and then swing back and forth repeatedly and steadily, accumulating mass as it went, hollowing out the earth. Eventually the whole earth would collapse into it and we'd all be killed. The earth would become a low mass micro black hole in orbit around the sun, with the moon in orbit around it, with everything continuing much as before, except that the earth as we know it would be gone. Not a pleasant prospect.
130
posted on
03/17/2005 6:30:08 PM PST
by
-YYZ-
To: ThanhPhero
How do you get days out of billionths of a second?
131
posted on
03/17/2005 6:39:45 PM PST
by
TheLion
To: mhking
"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball"At 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, you better be quick!
132
posted on
03/17/2005 6:42:17 PM PST
by
TheLion
To: -YYZ-; lepton
.......whole earth would collapse into it and we'd all be killed...... This is what was most likely on the minds of those in charge of the research grant money and particle accelerator time. I was merely relating an article on similar experiments I had read 5 years or so years ago.
This stuff is all kinda 'out there' and I'm sure they just said, "Whoa. Wait a minute", before allowing the research to continue. If there was a small infinitesimal chance (ie. NOT absolutely zero) of this happening, they wanted to err on the side of caution.
133
posted on
03/17/2005 6:57:47 PM PST
by
DoctorMichael
(The Fourth Estate is a Fifth Column!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
To: WestVirginiaRebel
Cosm by Gregory Benford is a better story...
134
posted on
03/17/2005 7:05:02 PM PST
by
JasonC
To: -YYZ-
Hawking radiation is essentially the idea that just outside where you'd expect an event horizon on general relativity physics, you get a quantum field theory effect not predicted by GR. Which is basically pair production from breakdown of the vaccum itself. As pairs (electron positron to keep it simple - it generalizes to others) of virtual particles pop into existence in a boundary layer near the hole, one of them has a world line that leads into the BH and another has one that leads out (some cross section has this characteristic etc). Thus you get particles that seem to come out of the hole, while their virtual "twins" fall into it. Thus the surface of the E.H. in GR terms is not "black", but emits radiation as a spectrum of "created" particles out of the vaccum. Meanwhile the BH loses mass-energy as net antimatter goes into the hole (effectively). BH entropy is as high as possible - completely disordered, no info about prior state preserved. So the stuff coming out is completely entropic aka black body. If the mass of the BH is high, this "unblackness" of the hole aka QFT driven "leakage" of mass-energy out of the hole, is very small. If that mass is small, the leakage rate may be high compared to the mass of the hole. Otherwise put, massive holes have huge "evaporation lifetimes" - well over the age of the universe - but small ones have modest ones and are appreciably "non-black". The idea here is that particle production seen in an accelerator event might have reflected a tiny mass hole that evaporated rapidly. But they are probably guessing and other ways of accounting for whatever event they are referring to, may well be possible.
FWIW.
135
posted on
03/17/2005 7:18:51 PM PST
by
JasonC
To: bassmaner
The author is physicist Dr. John Cramer of the University of Washington, who writes "The Alternative View" column for Analog, and came up with the "transactional" model of quantum mechanics.
To: demnomo
I remember it; I'm also reminded of a great early fifties movie called The Magnetic Monster, which in spite of its title, is an intelligent, engrossing film, one of the very few "hard" science fiction films. I'm also reminded of a bad direct-to-cable movie called The Void.
To: -YYZ-
I don't know what that story is, but Larry Niven's "The Hole Man" is somewhat similar.
To: JasonC
OK, I understand that. Now what's this about BHs not having an event horizon after all?
139
posted on
03/17/2005 7:39:57 PM PST
by
-YYZ-
To: flashbunny
140
posted on
03/17/2005 8:04:35 PM PST
by
chaosagent
(It's all right to be crazy. Just don't let it drive you nuts.)
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