Physicists Hoping To Create Tiny Black Holes At CERN

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.

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

I thought that creating a black hole would require Planck energy, or about one Trillion times what the SSC would have been able to produce.

21 posted on 10/01/2001 4:17:57 PM PDT by Restore

I thought that creating a black hole would require Planck energy

Well, that depends on whether the Standard Model is true, or whether M-Theory is true. That's what the experiment hopes to show. A positive result would dethrone the Standard Model and put M-Theory in its place. A negative result would leave the question undecided--and so leave the crown on the head of the Standard Model for a while longer.

22 posted on 10/01/2001 6:36:45 PM PDT by sourcery

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

You bet it does. Maybe they should start with brown holes and work their way up.

23 posted on 10/01/2001 6:44:30 PM PDT by Octar

Yeah, let's clone people while we're at it. Those scientists always know what's best.

24 posted on 10/01/2001 6:48:45 PM PDT by He Rides A White Horse

Why don't they try to make a large one and unleash some stranglets right in Ashcanistan!!! Sounds like a great place for this type of research!

25 posted on 10/01/2001 6:52:06 PM PDT by surfer

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

Nah. The bitsy ones evaporate, like the article says. It's hyperbolic; the smaller it is the quicker it goes.

No teensy hole could gobble enough matter to stay around.

I'd guess a half-life of microseconds or less.

--Boris

26 posted on 10/01/2001 6:54:57 PM PDT by boris

To: P-Marlowe; Physicist; RadioAstronomer

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?

This question has been asked numerous times on FR. As I recall, small BH's basically radiate away their mass faster than they can swallow up matter. The lower the mass of the BH, the faster it dissipates itself.

It's the self-initiating BH's that you want to watch out for; they have much larger event horizons (and hence threaten to "hoover up" a larger volume of space than their smaller, non-self-initiating cousins), and last much longer. It is just such large, self-initiating (via gravitational collapse) BH's that are suspected of being in the central core of most galaxies. [fade to black as loud munching, sucking sound is heard coming from the sky.... s-l-u-u-u-r-p!]

27 posted on 10/01/2001 7:05:33 PM PDT by longshadow

I thought this was an article about Hillary clones - I feel cheated - will someone post a Hillary pic in the pantsuit please !

28 posted on 10/01/2001 7:06:26 PM PDT by Revelation 911

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

Well the universe is filled with holes alright. Just maybe not the kind you're thinking.

When you're driving down the road and a car suddenly cuts you off, behind the wheel is most likely a hole.
When you're in the grocery store and the aisle is blocked by a cart, nearby you will often find a hole.

Holes are everywhere.

29 posted on 10/01/2001 7:18:19 PM PDT by Archaeus

"......a bit dangerous to me"

Actually the physicists in charge of the research thought of this also......There was a couple of articles written about this possibility in the science press (ie. creation of a BH that quickly gobbled up the earth), and this work was put on hold over a year ago due to the physicists OWN apprehensions!!!!

30 posted on 10/01/2001 7:31:37 PM PDT by DoctorMichael

I do hope you are right. But just to be on the safe side, we should display the first BH at the BJ Clinton Library. That way if the Universe starts getting sucked it'll feel at home.

31 posted on 10/01/2001 8:23:37 PM PDT by P-Marlowe

But just to be on the safe side, we should display the first BH at the BJ Clinton Library. That way if the Universe starts getting sucked it'll feel at home.

A capital idea!

32 posted on 10/01/2001 8:34:01 PM PDT by longshadow

Okay, now I am confused. Is the M-Theory a relative/incantation/flavor of the String Theory? In "M" we are we talking about the bandied about 'Membrane' or 'Magic' prefix?

33 posted on 10/02/2001 11:19:05 PM PDT by Restore

34 posted on 10/03/2001 12:01:59 AM PDT by sourcery

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794