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CERN and LCH Black Holes: Part Three

June 22nd, 2008
By JAZZ SHAW, Assistant Editor

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BlackHole.jpg(See Parts One and Two)

For those following this story, the concerns expressed by a number of scientists over the Large Hadron Collider are more complex (make that far more complex) then earlier descriptions provided here. With thanks to JTankers in previous comment threads, I went and gave a listen to an interview with Nuclear Physicist Walter Wagner. (Parts one, two, three and four.) A number of facts about this scenario are quite different from my original perceptions, and we’ll try to sort some of those facts out here.

NOTE: None of the parties involved on either side are saying that this disastrous scenario will happen, simply that it’s possible that it might and more study may be required. The events described below are only what would happen if a worst case scenario played out.

We Won’t Know Right Away: After the experiment fires, even in the event that the worst case scenario unfolds, there will not be a sudden plop resulting in a black hole squatting in some chamber in the accelerator tunnel. Nor will there be any War Games style computer alarm going off saying “Black Hole Detected! Run for your lives!” Any number of microscopic black holes (MBHs) would be created, and they would be travelling at a very high speed. Since the MBHs are about the size of a neutrino, they pass through almost all matter, dancing between the individual atoms, without slowing down. The scientists would have only a fraction of a second to detect them and then they would go winging out of the chamber, even through the Earth itself, and out into space.

The One That Didn’t Get Away: Any MBHs which have escape velocity (something in the range of 250,000 mph or more) will zip off into space and hopefully become Somebody Else’s Problem. (SEP) However, one or more may be traveling a bit slower than that and would be captured into “orbit” by the Earth’s gravity. It would swing around and begin looping out through space and back through the Earth, through buildings… even through YOU with no harm caused an nobody noticing. (Remember the neutrinos?) Every once in a while the MBH would interact with a particle and absorb it, slowly increasing its mass and shortening its orbit until it eventually was orbiting entirely inside the planet.

Couldn’t We Detect It Zinging Around?: No. We’ve been looking for evidence of a neutrino (any neutrino) interacting randomly with any particle for decades. The results have been, to say the least, disappointing. Our chances of finding a specific MBH swinging around through the Earth would be effectively zilch.

When The End Comes, It Comes Fast: Hopefully Dr. Wagner and his associates aren’t the type to enjoy saying, “I told you so” because they won’t have much time to do it. The MBH will take some time to build up enough mass through these random collisions until it can do any serious damage. Estimates range from as little as five years or less up to a millenium. We just don’t know. But when it does reach a size where it can start quickly “eating” mass, it will begin carving out the center of the planet like a melon ball spoon. Dr. Wagner notes that we won’t have much notice… “possibly a couple of earthquakes” but by then the formerly microscopic but now full-fledged black hole will be consuming matter at a horrific rate, followed by the collapse of the planet down into a single black hole the size of a golf ball. And that, as they say, would be that.

We recently launched the GLAST Telescope which, among other missions, will search for evidence of Hawkings Radiation. This is one of the elements of the discussion arguing for the safety of the LCH experiments. Proof of Hawkings Radiation (which is still purely theoretical) would indicate the any MBHs produced during the experiment would “evaporate” away without doing any damage. Some opponents of the project would like to at least wait until the GLAST research is completed before attempting the LCH collisions.

We’ll have more on this subject during the week as we interview some of the principal scientists involved in the debate. Those interviews will be found at Mid Stream Radio.

e-mail the author: jazzshaw@gmail.com



This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Natural Disasters, Science, Math, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 12 Comments

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    Given the possible effects of this experiment, the scientists can't err on the side of caution enough.

    I seem to recall (well, it was way before my time but I think I read somewhere) that when the scientists were pursuing the nuclear bomb no one exactly knew what would happen once there was a nuclear explosion... wasn't there a group of scientist who thought the whole atmosphere would be destroyed or something? So I wonder how scientists would rank these experiments on the global catastrophe scale- leading up to the actual "discovery". Would a black hole be considered more catastrophic than sparking a nuclear explosion (before we had actually done so)?

    BTW: I remember reading some scifi book as a kid where the black hole lodged in the Earth's core and was slowly eating up the planet. It wasn't the main story line which was about space colonization.

    Thanks, Jazz for the posts!
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    Your memory is fine, StockBoySF. Duing the Manhattan project, when the hydrogen bomb was being developed, there were some scientists who speculated that lighting off what was, in effect, a miniature sun on the Earth's surface would spark a fusion reaction with the molecules in the atmoshpere and effectively blow up the entire biosphere. Fortunately it didn't happen because once the pressure is released from the system, the fusion process shuts down, but yeah. We've taken some crazy chances before.
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    The Pool Table Effect.

    The problem with CERN's report, you can't compare colliding protons at the Large Hadron Collider to cosmic rays. The cosmic rays are hitting a stationary object, Earth, bouncing particles harmlessly into space. Kind of like a cue ball hitting racked balls on a pool table. Now the protons in the Large Hadron Collider are like cue balls colliding with each other, minus any stationary balls. And what happens when two cue balls traveling at the same speed collide with each other, they don't bounce anywhere, but stay right where they collided. So if the LHC were to create black holes with these collisions, it wont bounce into space harmlessly, but remain stationary, gravitating towards the Earths center.

    Physicists at CERN are depending on an unwitnessed unproven theory to protect Earth against micro black holes from growing, Hawking Radiation, which has already been proven in error once, admitted by Stephen Hawking when he lost a bet to John Preskill of Caltech.
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    It does seem as if we are placing one heck of a large bet on Hawkings being right about the Hawkings Radiation (and his shot at a Nobel Prize at long last.) If he's right, the MBHs will evaporate harmlesslly. If he's wrong, we have an unwelcome guest at the party who may well not only eat all the food, but the house as well.
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    One major problem with Hawking Radiation, if a stationary black hole is created, it will gravitate towards the Earth's core so fast, we wont know if it evaporated or not, but I'm sure the people at CERN with their book smart PH.D's will say it evaporated, in hope they can get their Nobel prize in physics seconds before implosion.
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    One of my main questions is to do with the "stationary" part. It's my understanding from all the reading I'm doing so far (keeping in mind this is from a completely uneducated, layman's view) is that any MBHs created will be moving at a very high velocity, so they wouldn't likely be just sitting there and drifting down toward the Earth's core. Have you seen something different?
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    The question was asked (paraphrase) "if micro black holes are created by the LHC, would they be captured by Earth's gravity and drift toward Earth's core ".

    If the LHC creates micro black holes, it is generally accepted that some percentage would be captured by Earth, likely orbiting through Earth.

    From the LSAG Safety Report 2008 (http://environmental-impact.web.cern.ch/environ...)

    "[stable microscopic black holes] produced by the LHC could remain on Earth"
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    I was only going on Dr. Wagner's description of how they would behave during that YouTube radio interview. By the way, I was on the phone with him last night and we'll be interviewing Dr. Wagner about these questions, the legal defense fund, etc. on Wed. during our show.
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    Testing comments. I tried to post one before, to you Jazz, but the The Moderate Voice prevented me from posting it, then removed comments all together for about 10 minutes. Hope this gets through so I can respond to your question.
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