Physicists Hoping To Create Tiny Black Holes At CERN

UniSci.com ^

[sourcery]

Physicists Hoping To Create Tiny Black Holes At CERN

Home

Search

Physicists Hoping To Create Tiny Black Holes At CERN Black holes are known as the omnivorous destroyers of stars, but in reality, black holes not only take but give. Near their event horizons, where space is so drastically warped, black holes spawn particle-antiparticle pairs out of sheer vacuum. In some cases, one of the pair escapes beyond the horizon while its counterpart is pulled back into the hole. Thus black holes can shed energy in the form of this "Hawking radiation." Physicists hope to bring this whole process down to earth by manufacturing tiny black holes amid the stupendous smashups of protons at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) being built at CERN. Until recently, theorists thought gravity was so weak compared to the other forces that it, and gravitationally bound objects such as black holes, could be studied on an equal footing with the other forces (e.g., the strong nuclear force) only at energies of 10^19 GeV. In the past few years, though, some models featuring extra spatial dimensions hint that the unification of the forces, including gravity, might set in at much more modest energies, even in the TeV realm of the LHC. Thus one can contemplate forming a TeV-mass black hole even as one can imagine creating new particles in that mass range. But what would a black hole look like? Savas Dimopoulous of Stanford and Greg Landsberg of Brown University have drawn a picture in which proton-proton collisions could create black holes with a cross section (likelihood of creation) only about a factor of ten less than for producing top quarks and at a rate of up to one per second (see figure at this URL). A black hole produced in this way would quickly decay, not in the usual particle way but in a furious burst of Hawking radiation. A particularly striking signature of the black hole would involve an electron, muon and photon in the final state of debris particles. Properties of Hawking radiation could tell physicists about the shape of extra spatial dimensions. A possibility of recreating the early moments of the universe in the lab would further unite particle physics and cosmology (Physical Review Letters, 15 October 2001; text at this URL). (Editor's Note: This story is based on PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE, the American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News, Number 558, September 26, 2001, by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon.) [Contact: Greg Landsberg] 01-Oct-2001

Add the UniSci Daily Java News Ticker to Your Site or Desktop.
Click for a demo and more information.

 

HOME | ARCHIVES | ABOUT | PIOs | BYLINES | WHY SCIENCE | WHY UNISCI | PROSTATE | POLIO

Please direct website technical problems or questions to webmaster@unisci.com.

Copyright © 1995-2001 UniSci. All rights reserved.

 

[MrFred]

ummm.. is it just me, or does this seem a little dangerous.

[First_Salute]

Not necessary.

Al Sharpton qualifies.

[sourcery]

If the physicists at CERN can create tiny black holes using the energies and physical processes they propose, then cosmic rays do the same thing all the time. So there is nothing to worry about.

[Rosencrantz]

I would like to echo MrFred's concern: Starting a blackhole doesn't sound like the best to me... but what do I know? I majored in Philosophy...

[P-Marlowe]

My thoughts exactly. Once a black hole starts pulling in matter, does it ever stop? If you create a black hole on earth, won't it eventually swallow the whole earth?

[RightWhale]

does this seem a little dangerous

Not dangerous at all. Nothing is so natural as black holes, the universe is filled with them.

[droberts]

cosmic rays do this all the time

Yes, and the universe is full of black holes.

[First_Salute]

Sorry Al, but you've returned to be a hypocrit --- to have re- focused the great loss of life in New York into a symbol of discrimination against young black men: your statements, of late, that young black men with baggy pants would not have been allowed upon airliners, is venal and pointless.

And typical for you, you laid upon the backs of the survivors.

There's nearly 10,000 kids without a mom or a dad, in New York, Al.

Al Sharpton, you are a prostitute for the devil.

Bug off, you little hole.

[First_Salute]

My apologies to the management, staff, and fellow Freepers.

I finally got pissed off at somebody.

[Storm Orphan]

I know a bearded, turban-wearing gentleman we can test it on.

[NC_Libertarian]

So what should the response be if they accidently create a full scale black hole or something? Stop drop and roll?

[Free the USA]

Thanks for the link and heads up.

[That Poppins Woman]

Yeh! You think they can center this experiment near Kabul, or maybe near the Pakistani border where Usama is supposed to be hiding?

[Storm Orphan]

(touching nose and smiling, nodding)

[Ahban]

Paging phycisist. Only this size might evaporate before it can consume something, but if it is in an area where matter is dense enough isn't there a chance it could GROW instead of evaporate? And the more it grows the easier it would be for it to keep growing and the less likely it would be to evaporate. Are the rewards worth the risk?

Now if we could put one in orbit and control it to make an endless supply of positrons to fuel a starship, it might be worth the risk!

[DallasMike]

How many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall?

[StriperSniper]

Black holes are known as the omnivorous destroyers of stars, but in reality, black holes not only take but give.

So they are less of a threat than liberals?

[balrog666]

Arg! We're all going to die!

Sorry, I couldn't resist!

[exit82]

Shoot, making black holes is easy. The government's been pouring money down some of 'em for decades!