Could hadron collider devour the Earth?
June 28, 2008Particle colliders creating black holes that could devour the Earth. Sounds like a great Hollywood script. But, according to UC Santa Barbara Physics Professor Steve Giddings, it's pure fiction.
Giddings has co-authored a paper, "Astrophysical implications of hypothetical stable TeV-scale black holes," that has been accepted for publication in an upcoming edition of the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review D, documenting his study of the safety of microscopic black holes that might possibly be produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is nearing completion in Europe. The paper, co-authored by Michelangelo Mangano of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), which is building the world's largest particle collider, investigates hypothesized behavior of tiny black holes that might be created by high-energy collisions in the CERN particle accelerator.
If they appear at all, these black holes would exist for "about a nano-nano-nanosecond," Giddings said, adding that they would have no effect of consequence. However, the paper studies whether there could be any large-scale effects in an extremely hypothetical situation where the black holes don't evaporate.
The Giddings/Mangano study concludes that such microscopic black holes would be harmless. In fact, he added, nature is continuously creating LHC-like collisions when much higher-energy cosmic rays collide with the Earth's atmosphere, with the Sun, and with other objects such as white dwarfs and neutron stars. If such collisions posed a danger, the consequences for Earth or these astronomical objects would have become evident already, Giddings said.
"The future health of our planet and the safety of its people are of paramount concern to us all," Giddings said. "There were already very strong physics arguments that there is no risk from hypothetical micro black holes, and we've provided additional arguments ruling out risk even under very bizarre hypotheses."
The LHC, near Geneva, Switzerland, is expected to begin operations this summer. It
will collide proton beams at levels of energy never before produced in a particle accelerator. Those results will then be studied for clues to new forces of nature, and possibly even extra dimensions of space. The first collision of beams is likely to be in September. The $8 billion project has taken 14 years.
Two men have filed a federal lawsuit in Hawaii in an attempt to halt the LHC due to their concerns about the safety of black holes. Giddings' study has been cited by CERN as evidence of the safety of the LHC.
Giddings is a recognized expert in high-energy and gravitational physics. In 2001, he coauthored the first paper investigating black hole production at the LHC and he has authored many other papers on the subject, including an article for Scientific American. Mangano is also recognized as an expert in high-energy physics and, in particular, hadron collisions. This project, Giddings said, greatly benefited from contributions and advice of other members of UCSB's top-rated Physics Department.
Source: University of California - Santa Barbara
Nov 03, 2009 |
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That any questioning is going on is a healthy sign.
It's not widely publicized, but when the first atomic reactions were done, the US president was told there was a very small possibility the chain reaction would get out of control to an unknown extent. America was so intent on winning WWII economically, it was decided to go ahead.
http://news.bbc.c...7613.stm
If we don't consider these phenomena, then we can say nothing about true probability of the worst possible scenario.
What we know is: the black hole behavior was observed already.
http://news.bbc.c...7613.stm
So those, who are hoping in the black hole formation in collider are on to sure thing.
http://www.unisci...1012.htm
Therefore here's no apology for occasional accident here, everything is planned carefully and such people should be treated as a public enemies of civilization with full responsibility.
Personally I'd prefer to forget the most dangerous experiments at all (especially the ALICE experiment, involving a heavy metal nuclei collisions, planed in 2009) and wait for further advance in theories (which can predict the possible risks more reliably) and technology (the building of accelerator in free space, as it saves the costs of shake isolation, vacuum, cooling, and energy lost due the synchrotron radiation, because such accelerator can be a much larger).
Here's no real reason/apology for building such dangerous equipment beneath Earth surface. Our civilization can live without these experiments and Higgs boson quite well for years - now we have a much more substantial problems to solve, like the GW and cold fusion.
My understanding is, the scientists are behaving like lunatic people out of control: they're want to carry out the most needless, expensive & dangerous experiments in human history without public control - while they're not willing JUST TO ATTEMPT to reproduce the cold fusion even in most trivial/cheap arrangement. It's apparent, the contemporary generation of scientists has reversed its priority levels completely - they're behaving like little children.
http://www.newene...psreport
http://physicswor...p_1.html
Here's something rotten in the kingdom of Science.
The only people behaving like lunatics are those that claim that all scientists cannot behave like lunatics.
YOUTUBE search:
LHC may cause mini black hole and swallow earth
Parts 1-4
http://press.web....ter.html
It would take 5 months for the black hole to consume the earth and in the end our satellites would be orbiting a black star long into their lonely future.
http://news.bbc.c...7613.stm
with that said my question is ..
how can a comparison be made to the conditions of and what goes on in space v.s. the conditions of and what goes on here on earth?.. it would seem to me that the natural occurrences that take place out there would differ than from here on earth!.. i.e. the atmosphere, temperature, matter, density and stuff like that.
would the outcome be the same and if so why?
All comes down to probability. With the amount of possible similar, same, or higher energy collisions that take place every second in our atmosphere, if it were to happen in the LHC it would have already happened, and any doomsday scenario would preclude us from having this very conversation.
i see what your saying. it just seems the extrapolation of the same or somewhat same results would be impossible without the exact same type of conditions. like maybe something else unknown to us missing that enables these activities to safely occur.