Lab fireball 'may be black hole'

BBC news ^ | BBC

[djf]

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.

The RHIC is sited at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

[FreedomCalls]

What happens (according to Hawking's equations) is that the universe is constantly producing paired particles and anti-particles at the quantum level. These particles are almost always instantly drawn to each other like magnets of opposite polarity, and annihilate when they meet.

I thought that was discovered by Richard Feinman, not Hawking.

[djf]

I'm not a Luddite, I engineer large scale business computers.

I just think we need to proceed very, very, very, very cautiously.

Are we for sure absolutely certain that these things can't get enough mass from the quantum vacuum to grow?

I don't believe even Casimir's tests tell us what the actual density is.

[djf]

You raise a good point. As I've heard it, some of those rays have more energy that can be generated by any known processes, and scientists are stretched almost beyond their limits trying to even conjecture what could have made them.

The mystery of the universe is beautiful and cruel at the same time!

[orionblamblam]

> when a star goes nova and collapses the shockwave can be measured in light years.

Yes, but that's irrelevant. The black hole is a *result* of the nova (or, more specifically, the supernova... normal novae being stars not nearly massive enough to form black holes), not the other way around.

[palmer]

What is the tipping point for such a thing?

When we stuff about 10 of our suns into it.

[DoughtyOne]

I agree Paul. All I'd change in your response is the word backyard to "living room".

[phatoldphart]

Thanks for the explanaion!

[Paul C. Jesup]

You left out the: "It depends on the weight/mass of the core of the blackhole." Part of my statement.

[polymuser]

The point is we don't know what they did (nor do they, really).

Maybe it was an original Democrat thought.

[DouglasKC]

I think that's essentially it. Those who are saved are those who are no longer physical. God created the physical universe and it is finite. That's why:

Rev 7:16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.
Rev 7:17 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

All physical things are gone.

2Pe 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
2Pe 3:11 Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,
2Pe 3:12 Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

[2harddrive]

Mr. President! We cannot allow a Black Hole Bomb gap!!!!

[Netheron]

Not really, what we really want is the ability to bend space in both directions. Currently, gravity only bends space one way.

If we could find some method to bend in the other direction as well, then we could make wormholes, warp drives, etc.

[Netheron]

It's quite easy actually. Take the energy of the transitions and multiply by Planck's constant.

(Okay, its a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic idea.)

[Netheron]

Yeah, it exits out as fluctuations in the Hawking radiation.

[RightWingAtheist]

There was a bad Canadian movie called The Void on this topic. Here's a review.

[oldleft]

A "warpdrive" is in theory different then a "wormhole." A wormhole is a "tear" in space which opens portals on each end. Stephen Hawkins has recently come out and said he doesn't think wormholes can exist outside of the subatomic level so they may never be good for more than communications.

"Warping" on the other hand involves the actual bending or "folding" of space. There are essentially two ways to do this. First, you can bend space by concentrating mass. This is what we call gravity and is why we stick to the ground. The other way is to accelerate and let space bend around you. This is tricky because you have to accelerate very close to the speed of light and as you do time changes for you relative to the people and place you left. In other words, if you could travel C=.95 to a star 10 light years away you would only experience a few weeks of time passed, while people on Earth would experience 10.5 years.

Folding or bending space seems more practical, but the gravitational forces would be immense. In theory you could create a ship which would be able to generate black holes in front of it and let their mass bend space. Then the ship could travel around the periphery of the black hole and take advantage of the "fold" in space. It's the same reason when there's a black hole between a star and earth you see a double image. The light from the star bends around the black hole's periphery.

My question is more whether such a ship could withstand the massive forces to make it worthwhile.

But it's still exciting if we made a black hole.

[MarkL]

I visited the lab where this test was performed. It's amazing technology.

Pfffttt! What's the big deal? I was smashing little things into each other when I was 3 years old... Like Hot Wheels!

Mark

[R. Scott]

An artificial black hole – under 100% perfect and safe control (yea – right!) – would make an ideal garbage dump.

[mudblood]

"There's some stuff we shouldn't be messin with..."

Oh come on, it just sounds scary. These things are really very, very tiny. Nobody's going to get turned into the Hulk :)

[Netheron]

They still both require bending space in a negative direction, which is why Hawking said that he believes they cannot be built. Currently Hawking (and everyone else) does not know a way to bend space in a negative direction. Yes, the Casimir effect MAY do it, but it is so small as to be impractical. It certainly hasn't been measured.

I'm talking about an Alcubierre warp drive, which allows faster than light travel in a particular reference frame. This type of drive would allow you to go to another star and come back while a small amount of time passed both for you and observers on Earth.