[ExI] Large Hadron Collider

ben benboc at lineone.net
Fri Feb 1 22:36:54 UTC 2008


"spike" <spike66 at att.net> exclaimed:

> > John K Clark
.
> > Subject: Re: [ExI] Large Hadron Collider
> >
> > Rick Strongitharm Wrote:
> >
>> > > The Large Hadron Collider is scheduled to begin operation in a few
>> > >

> >...The most disappointing result would be if it
> > discovered the Higgs Boson and nothing else.   John K Clark


> I disagree John.  The most disappointing result is if it created a mini
> black hole, which then started eating atoms around it as it sank to the
> center of the earth, growing more massive and eventually having the earth
> collapse suddenly into a marble sized point of mass.  The astronauts 
aboard
> the space station witnessing the sudden disappearance of the earth would
> have new insight into Fermi's paradox but would be most disappointed 
in any
> case.

> spike



If it created a mini black hole, wouldn't that make a fantastic energy
generator?
And wouldn't it take thousands of years, or longer, to start making any
appreciable difference if it did fall to the centre of the earth and
start gobbling it up?

I Am Not a Physicist (by a long chalk), but i seem to remember reading
that if a very small black hole had a spin, it could be controlled with
electrical and/or magnetic fields?

So if we accidentally made spinning tiny black holes (not sure how big
they'd have to be not to disappear instantly), surely that would be a
most desirable result?

And if we lost a few along the way, that would simply act as an
incentive to make sure we could get off the planet sometime in the
future. Probably in black-hole-powered spaceships.

Ooh, here's an interesting exercise for those of you who get excited
over such things: What would the orbit of such an accidentally-created
black hole be? Or what would the range of orbits of a range of such
black holes be, from the smallest hole that would be stable enough to
complete at least one orbit, to the maximum mass hole that could be
reasonably formed from the LHC?

(When i say orbit, of course, i mean orbit inside the earth, around it's
centre of mass).

Is that an interesting problem? Or is the answer boringly obvious? I
don't have a clue.

Or am i being suckered into a silly speculation here? Surely any stable
black hole would have to mass a few tonnes at least? Just how powerful
is this LHC supposed to be?!

ben zaiboc





More information about the extropy-chat mailing list