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.

[Ole Okie]

Well, I got 10^-13, give or take a few billion or so.

Hope the guy holding the stopwatch is fast on the trigger.

[Blood of Tyrants]

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

When you are dealing with quantum physics (and thus extremely small and large numbers), I would be very careful about crowing about a single decimal place.

[Bigh4u2]

It also depends upon whether you walked into the room after the fact, and spied the cup, or you where there before the 'event' happened!

[lepton]

FYI: If my memory serves me correctly Grant money for similar experiments was withheld a few years ago and the experiments were ordered to be stopped immediately while a panel of physicists examined the proposed experiments. The reason why? 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)? Would it "run away" and devour the Earth?

That was what I was thinking of when I saw this article.

[NY-YANK]

I think they meant 10 million billionths of a second. But personally I like "tiny fraction of a second". I find it hard to believe that amount of time could be measured, so it's likely a calculation or a theory anyway.

[printhead]

Is 10 million billion billionths of a second the same as 10 million seconds?

[lepton]

13?
1-(6+9+9)=-23

[hosepipe]

[ It also depends upon whether you walked into the room after the fact, and spied the cup, or you where there before the 'event' happened! ]

Have to be there while glass is filled...
Or its a question only a liberal would attempt to answer..
The accuracy of the answer or question is not meaningful to liberals..
To them its how they feel about both that are relevant..

[dread78645]

Cool. I'm going to try it.

Have a replacement microwave on hand (or at least the money to buy one).
Burnt sugar don't taste too good.

[dread78645]

half full or half empty?

"Walk half the distance toward the wall, then half the distance again, then half, ..."

[Finger Monkey]

Thank you for the advice, I have an extra microwave oven (someone gave me one for X-mas), however, I like the taste of burned sugar.

[Bigh4u2]

" "Walk half the distance toward the wall, then half the distance again, then half, ..."

If I keep doing that, pretty soon I'll be walking backwards!

[Mat_Helm]

Great Scott!

1.21gigawatts!

Great scott????

[Deguello]

"that black holes have passed right through the earth"

Wow, that was a thread from a few years ago...turned into a gun thread.

[Lekker 1]

Black hole? Reminds me of a bar I used to frequent.

Funny...reminds me of a girl I used to date.

[Erasmus]

You might be thinking of Gregory Benford's "Cosm."

IIRC, the novel's action takes place at the RHIC mentioned in this article.

[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 of a black hole depends on the mass-to-surface area ratio. Since the mass itself determines the surface area, that means the lifetime of a black hole depends on its mass, and exponentially. Unless you can get something of about planetary mass compressed to the applicable radius - a challenge for any laboratory environment - the decay will be essentially 'immediate.' Even planetary mass black holes decay in fractions of a second. All the cool 'black holes passing through the earth' ideas were pre-Hawking.

[Ole Okie]

I read it as 10⁶/(10⁽⁹⁺⁹⁾) or 10^-12.

I made it 10^-13 as poetic license, since -13 seemed to describe the situation.

Or it could be 10^-11.

More or less.

[Drammach]

OK... I got your back on this one..

This is a BBC article..
Europe uses "billion" differently than we americans do..

A "billion" in europe is a "trillion" american.. 1*e12
A "Million Billion" (EU) = 1*10e18 american ( 1 Quadrillion )

Europeans use " a million million " instead of 1 billion... therefore:

Yeeeeehawww! Here we goooo!

One can interpret "10 million, billion, billionths of a second," as:
10*e18/1*e12... or
10*e6/1*e24..

I hope that clears it up for you...

Heeheeheeheeheeheehahahahahahahahahaaaaaa..

[Drammach]

ping.. # 99...