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Are you worried the Large Hadron Collider might create a mini black hole that will devour the Earth?Yes: we're all going to die! At least it'll happen so fast we don't have time to think about it. 8% Maybe: if the LHC can create exotic subatomic particles, who can say what might be possible? 25% No! Give me a break! 68% Black holes.............yeah, whatever!Theoretical physicists and such have been looking into black holes, including both supermassive and mini, for ages and they wouldn't undertake the greatest scientific endeavour to date if there was a danger to them. Current thought tells us the mini black holes would probably evaporate to energy before they even came anywhere near enough matter to stop their decay. And besides, both mini black holes and strangelets, despite everyone's interest in them, are purely theorectical and without any physical evidence of their existences, so they might not even be possible. Submitted by Visitor on 7 April 2008 - 11:37pm.
I think the interestingI think the interesting thing about these comments and those of scientists is the non-definitive responses. Highly unlikely, improbable, maybe sorta kinda... BOOM! Why scoff at people who are concerned as to the consequences? Science questions itself and it's assumptions. That's what makes it science. Myself, personally, I think we should go for it. Besides, who'll be left to say "I told you so" if it goes wrong ;) Submitted by Visitor on 8 April 2008 - 3:13pm.
Adversarial Safety Review First or Just Roll the Dice Now?CERNs web site states that we have not been destroyed by effects of cosmic rays and micro black holes will evaporate. However, cosmic rays travel too fast to be captured by Earths gravity, and Hawking Radiation is disputed and contradicts Einsteins highly successful relativity theory. Collider particles smash head on like a car collision and can be captured by Earths gravity, and relativity predicts micro black holes will not decay (Hawking called Einstein doubly wrong, yet it is Einstein who is repeatedly found to have been correct in his theories). There is currently no reasonable proof of LHC safety, LSAG (LHC Safety Assessment Group) has been trying for months to prove safety without success. I hold the minority opinion that it may not be possible because it may in fact not be safe. Professor Dr. Otto E. Roessler warns that the success of the experiment may result in the black hole destroying the planet, reducing the remaining life expectancy of Earth by at least 99%. If this thing is so safe, why arent CERN scientists allowed to express any personal fears they might have about this Collider? Alleged in the legal action: Chief Scientific Officer, Mr. Engelen passed an internal memorandum to workers at CERN, asking them, regardless of personal opinion, to affirm in all interviews that there were no risks involved in the experiments, changing the previous assertion of minimal risk. (Statisticians generally consider minimal risk as 1-10%). Which would be wiser, conduct a full and independent adversarial (red team, blue team) safety study first, or just turn it on now and see what happens? JTankers Submitted by Visitor on 8 April 2008 - 6:37pm.
Total GarbageHow long would the mini-blackholes take to eat the Earth? For starters even if they don't Hawking decay they will be too small to eat protons directly. Instead protons will have to lose quarks via quantum tunnelling into them, then there's every chance that a black-hole that's eaten a proton will remain charged and act just like a (slightly) heavy proton. How many aeons of aeons will it take a mini-hole to eat the Earth? And if the LHC makes billions and billions of them? Too long for a planet with a use-by date of 1 billion AD when the oceans dry up and the Sun gets too hot. All this worrying is bogus. It's just grand-standing by attention-seeking twits who are banking on other people getting ridiculously worked up about non-existent threats. The really worrying thing is that respectable, intelligent people have been suckered into the whole silly farago. Submitted by Visitor on 8 April 2008 - 9:41pm.
How many billions of billions?To add numbers to my initial rant, let's do a worst case scenario. Earth is a sphere 6,400 km in radius and contains 3.6 E+51 nucleon masses. Assuming they're all evenly spaced (they're actually more spread out, but remember it's worst case) then nucleons are ~ 1.0E-10 metres apart. A mini-hole swallows a nucleon each time it runs into one every 1.0E-10 metres, and we assume the Earth offers no resistance to the hole's motion (it would but I'm making this easy for the mini-holes) then it's orbitting within Earth at ~ 8,000 metres a second. Thus it runs into 8E+13 nucleons every second. Assume the Earth is to be swallowed in 1 billion years, thus a mini-Hole eats 2.5E+30 nucleons in a billion years, or about 4,200 kilograms. This is a pretty big change in mass for a mini-hole, but minute change in event horizon size. It would thus take 1.4E+21 mini-holes to eat the whole planet in 1 billion years. If a run of the LHC makes a billion of them, then it will need 1.4 trillion runs to make enough mini-holes to eat Earth in 1 billion years. That's just ONE reason why the whole silly debate is BOGUS! Submitted by Visitor on 9 April 2008 - 12:05pm.
Large Hadron Collider Destroys the Earth!I don't pretend to know the first thing about this subject. Submitted by Visitor on 13 April 2008 - 7:17am.
hadron colliderwhen the physicists at cern find a new particle. Submitted by Visitor on 23 April 2008 - 3:15am.
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LHC - mini black hole production
Extremely unlikely that the mini black holes which will probably be produced will coalesce into large enough black holes to cause destruction of our world.