Lab fireball 'may be black hole'

BBC News ^ | 3/17/2005

[flashbunny]

Lab fireball 'may be black hole'

A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said.

It was generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, US, which smashes beams of gold nuclei together at near light speeds.

Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole.

His work has been published on the pre-print website arxiv.org and is reported in New Scientist magazine.

When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks and gluons.

These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. This fireball, which lasts just 10 million, billion, billionths of a second, can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.

But Nastase, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says there is something unusual about it.

Ten times as many jets were being absorbed by the fireball as were predicted by calculations.

The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter is thought to fall into a black hole and come out as "Hawking" radiation.

However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat. At these energies and distances, gravity is not the dominant force in a black hole.

[Rodney King]

I just thought they were using the '10 million, billion' as a 'divisor'.

That's clearly what they were trying to do. I wonder what the proper way to say it is?

[Williams]

well, I know I've read theories that black holes have passed right through the earth so maybe these small ones can be fun. And even if it does suck us in, we'll all find out what goes on inside a black hole. Please try to look on the bright side of these things.

[Bigh4u2]

Don't know.

Maybe 1sec/10m^10b??

[Rodney King]

Maybe 1sec/10m^10b??

Yeah, but then only .5% of the readers would have any idea what that means.

[Bigh4u2]

Yes, but by the time you're 'sucked' through, wouldn't you need a new wardrobe?

And what size car would you drive?

Ultra Compact?

[GOP_1900AD]

LOL!

[reagan_fanatic]

However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat.

Well, that puts my mind at ease...

[Bigh4u2]

" Yeah, but then only .5% of the readers would have any idea what that means."

Which ones??

:0)

[add925]

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Ingredients of Happy Fun Ball include an unknown glowing green substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space.
Happy Fun Ball has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
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[libbybelle]

Wow! Those Relativistic Heavy Ion Colliders are really somethin'. I wonder where I can get me one?

[DoctorMichael]

"..... Please try to look on the bright side of these things......."

Since this post dealt with BLACK HOLES I'll consider this an intentional pun [*LOL*].

;-)

[Williams]

yes but time becomes meaningless or runs backward so imagine all the time I'll have to shop for a new car. Of course, I will be jammed into an infintesimally small space with all the people I hate, but I'll be just as close to Kirsten Dunst, to name two.

[Right Wing Assault]

" Yeah, but then only .5% of the readers would have any idea what that means."

And if you are British, a billion isn't the same as our billion, so we have even more uncertainty.

Anyway, use parentheses to make things clearer.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Maybe it just turned into BBC news.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

John Crichton already beat them to it.

[Bigh4u2]

"Of course, I will be jammed into an infinitesimally small space with all the people I hate,"

As long as it's not a hot stick summers night.

I hear the mosquitoes are real 'killers'.

[flashbunny]

And he's the only one who can stop it once it gets out of control! Somebody call the scifi channel, they need to start up farscape again!

[-YYZ-]

"Maybe 1sec/10m^10b?? "

No, that'd be 1 second / 1 followed by 60 billion zeros.

Try 1 * 10^-25 (or 1 / 10^25) seconds, if I've added it up right. I might be off by an order of magnitude (factor of 10).

[Bigh4u2]

Sorry!

Sticky summers night.

(Well that just ruined the first post)

LOL!

[ModelBreaker]

One of the ways they did this was by weakening the US. They actually lobbied George Bush to leave Saddam Hussein in power and raise taxes in order to limit the strength of the United States and to limit it's ability to convince others to fund super-collider projects. In the first reality, Bush had done all the right things and the world had emerged a better place...at least until everyone was killed by the alien nano-machines.

So, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, John Kerry, and Susan Sontag are actually patriots laboring to save the world from Alien Nano-Machines? That would explain a lot.