Posted on 09/13/2001 6:39:19 AM PDT by LurkedLongEnough
To see black holes, those gravitational whirlpools that suck in matter and even light, you need not just a powerful telescope but a bit of imagination. You can't observe the holes themselves, just the bad effects they have on their neighborhoods: gobs of stellar matter screaming out radiation as they are pulled toward what appears to be an omnivorous, bottomless pit.
It is comforting to think that something so voracious is so far away. But there are times when physicists wish that they could take a closer look. Some of the newest ideas in high-energy physics suggest that this may soon be possible. The next generation of particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider, which is under construction at CERN, the European physics center near Geneva, may be able to produce miniature black holes on demand. Some particle physicists say they may be in a better position than the cosmologists to establish, once and for all, that black holes are real.
"Future colliders could become black hole factories," said Dr. Steven B. Giddings, a physicist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. If some recent theories turn out to be right, the effect would be far from subtle, with one tiny black hole popping into existence every second and harmlessly disappearing with an unmistakable burst of energy.
"Black hole production should light up the detectors like Christmas trees," Dr. Giddings said.
Dr. Greg Landsberg, a Brown University physicist who also works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., is hoping to give the astronomers a run for their money. "Despite what cosmologists like to tell the general public," he said, "there is no compelling evidence that they have seen a single black hole. There will essentially be a competition to see who finds a black hole first."
Cosmologists consider the case for black holes to be more persuasive all the time. Just last week, they announced strong new evidence that one lurks at the core of the Milky Way. But being able to create and manipulate black holes in an accelerator would make them seem more palpable and open up new theoretical terrain to explore.
Miniature black holes mark a point where the theory of gravity, called general relativity, comes together with quantum mechanics, which describes nature's other forces. Artificial black holes could be used to test ideas about merging the two disciplines into the long-sought Theory of Everything.
"We've been trying for a century, and we still don't fully understand black holes," said Dr. Andrew Strominger, a physicist at Harvard. "If there is some possibility we actually could make them in an accelerator lab and watch what they do, that would be just fantastic. This could guide us toward understanding the fundamental mystery of how quantum mechanics and general relativity fit together."
The experiments will also be used to explore one of the most jarring ideas in contemporary physics, that the universe consists of hidden dimensions, beyond the three we call home. According to the new theories, a reserve of extremely strong gravity lies dormant within the other dimensions. If physicists could tap that wellspring, they might be able to smash subatomic particles together so hard that they form black holes. If so, that in itself would attest to the possibility that the extra dimensions are real.
"It would be not just a smoking gun but a smoking cannon," said Dr. Landsberg, of Brown.
Unlike nukes, this one will keep going. Stupid idea.
Besides there is already one too big at the galaxy's center.
"There is a constant flux of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays striking the atmosphere," Dr. Giddings said. "The same calculations that we do for the L.H.C. also predict that around 100 such black holes a year are `organically' and apparently safely produced in the earth's atmosphere in cosmic ray collisions. So if this were dangerous, we shouldn't be here to begin with."Still I worry. Suppose we make a collision that we think should make a black hole, but it's a dud.
We crank up the mass/energy and try it again. Dud.
Frustrated, budget running out, red-faced, we really crank it up . . .
YOU HOPE.
Plot of a Hogan SF novel. Can't remember the title. Timescape?
Sorry! Sorry! It just spilled out of my evil head! I hit the post button before I gave it any thought, honest!
There might have been some good news but if so I forget what it was.
And all he gets is grief from people like you.
OK, so they'd have to have the dial really cranked. You can't be too careful when the children (people like me) are at stake.
That looks like it. I love SF, but am not much into what's been coming out since sometime in the 80s. It doesn't clank anymore, it just preaches. All I remember for sure from that book is that a black hole bouncing around inside the earth is a bad idea. (Duh-uh!)
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