Posted on 01/19/2006 1:53:38 PM PST by 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.
Pretty sure I don't want a garbage dump nearby, damn sure I don't want a black hole!
There's some stuff we shouldn't be messin with...
"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."
YET.
Ping for your thoughts
it ain't a black hole he created, it's federal government!
"There's some stuff we shouldn't be messin with..."
I think there should be a checklist:
1. Is there a possibility this experiment could destroy our solar system (Y/N)?
If the answer is "yes", then it's time to find a new experiment.
There was an interesting show on the National Geographic channel a few weeks ago that posed various end-of-the-world scenarios, the final one being the creation of a black hole in the laboratory. Great special effects.
Aww, c'mon. What's a little time/space warp ?
Now how cool would it be to have a Meson cannon that shoots small singularities at targets ? :)
Okay, time to stop colliding those gold particles. It doesn't appear to be safe.
=P
I visited the lab where this test was performed. It's amazing technology.
OTOH, if the city dump were a black hole, just imagine how small and sweet smelling it would be! ;-)
Beat me, I was going to ping you but see you are already here.
I remember that. Pretty interesting. My favorite was the giant tsunami.
Of course gravity is the dominant force in a black hole. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be a black hole!
The real reason it is safe is that the evaporation effect from Hawking radiation is so fast that it dissolves before it becomes a threat.
I really hate science writers!
No wonder the price of gold is climbing. These guys keep busting it up.
> Now how cool would it be to have a Meson cannon that shoots small singularities at targets ? :)
Only if it shot them faster than escape velocity...
I've heard some scientists speculate that quasars could simply be the ultimate in industrial accidents.
They need a big block of gold, and then we could play "DOOM" for real!!!
Not good!!, don't go creating black holes for fun. Sure its all fun and games till the earth is sucked into it. Bruce Willis wouldn't even be able to save us.
oh, i thought this was about whoopee goldberg
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