Artificial Black Hole

[5614]

This:

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000205/fob4.asp

article from sciencenews.org caught my eye the other day.

 

It said that in Feb 2000 scienstists thought that they may be able to make artificial black holes.

 

However, this was news from almost 5 years ago now - does anyone know if anything happened?

 

(like if anyone actually ever made one?)

[5614]

well, i must say i dont know much astro-physics, but this sure is interesting so i did some more research and found:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0523/p25s02-stss.html

 

(the article is VERY long, so heres a 'short' (that is relatively short) summary - yes, i read it all first, took a while!)

 

This line of reasoning has led scientists to the inevitable: If we really want to observe black holes and how they radiate' date=' we'll have to whip them up in our own laboratories. And that's exactly what we are on the threshold of being able to do. Now, there is no kind of technology with the ability to physically crush matter to black hole densities, but there's an easy away around that. Einstein showed us that matter and energy are equivalent, so you can also make a black hole by pushing a huge amount of energy into a tiny volume. For those kinds of experiments, there's an obvious choice: particle accelerators. And the next generation is just about to be unveiled.

 

Amazingly, scientists are becoming increasingly confident that they will be able to create black holes on demand, in quantity, using the new atom-smashers due to come online in the next five years. Some estimates suggest that the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN -the acronym is in French) will be able to create an average of one black hole each second. LHC will bombard protons and antiprotons together with such a force that the collision will create temperatures and energy densities not seen since the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. This should be enough to pop off numerous tiny black holes, with masses of just a few hundred protons. Black holes of this size will evaporate almost instantly, their existence detectable only by dying bursts of Hawking radiation.[/quote']

"But wait"' date=' I hear you say, "Has anyone considered that creating artificial black holes might not be the best idea?" The idea of creating black holes in the laboratory has to give one pause. I mean, how can anyone resist the urge to imagine future headlines like "Artificial Black Hole Escapes Laboratory, Eats Chicago" or some such thing? In reality, there is no risk posed by creating artificial black holes, at least not in the manner planned with the LHC. The black holes produced at CERN will be millions of times smaller than the nucleus of an atom; too small to swallow much of anything. And they'll only live for a tiny fraction of a second, too short a time to swallow anything around them even if they wanted to.

 

If it makes you feel any more comfortable, we're pretty sure that if the LHC can produce black holes, then so can cosmic rays, high-energy particles that smash into our atmosphere every day. There are probably a few tiny black holes forming and dying far above you right now. So I think we should all relax, fire up the Large Hadron Collider, and get ready for a view of the universe that we've never seen before.[/quote']

so that article was posted in may 2003, a bit more up to date, and it mentions with in 5 years.

 

damn.... i'll bump this thread then!

[Gilded]

Ooh, a quark-sized blackhole sounds cool. I also recall there being an article concerning similar-sized wormholes. Too bad you can't fit anything useful through them though.

[5614]

it would be a bit bigger than a few quarks.... big enough to hopefully measure the radiation which hawking precdiced would be given off... this would allow meaningful insight into a lot of what hawking has said.

 

it would also give an insight into how the universe could end... and possibly how it began too.

[ydoaPs]

it wouldn't live long enough to swallow anything. it would dissapear almost instantly. the detection process wouldn't be direct; it consists of detecting the particles made when the black hole "dies." "Fabric of the Cosmos" talks about it as a test of string theory.

[ecoli]

So couldn't we have been creating black holes ever since we started using particle accelerators, but simply never had the equipment to measure them?

[5614]

So couldn't we have been creating black holes ever since we started using particle accelerators, but simply never had the equipment to measure them?

 

i dont think so, there is something different about the method used here, or so i think, i doubt that what you think is the case.

 

i also think they are meant to live long enough to be able to do a tiny amount of "swallowing", not much, just enough so that it will emit some of the predicted radiation and show normal features of a black hole, just on a small scale... if it didnt "swallow" then it might be a black hole but it wouldnt really show charachter of one as it would not have "swallowed" anything yet - so wouldnt be able to radiate anything either.

[Sayonara]

it wouldn't live long enough to swallow anything. it would dissapear almost instantly.

We hope.

[swansont]

We hope.

 

Yeah. We don't want "Oops, we dropped a minus sign" to be the last words of humankind.

[5614]

well, so long as the measuring equipment survives and we know the outcome of the experiment... who cares about the human race? at least we'd have fulfilled all the purposes of the original experiment!!!

 

but seriosuly, they'd only last for a few split seconds, unless once former, black holes become stable and just exist forever, which they dont presumably... how, or why would a black hole die out?

(as we are expecting these little ones too)

[Kygron]

My feeble understanding of this subject says: Won't the radiation take the form of particles and energy emited from the collision point? That sounds just like what I've ALWAYS heard of happening. You throw particles together at high speed, they "do their thing" and then you get other particles that you study to try and decode what happened. I admit I didn't read the full article, but... what's the difference between making an explosion and making a black hole that explodes?

[5614]

well there's a great idea, lets think.... whats the difference between when you bomb another country and just pop-em in a black hole..... slight difference!

 

seriously though, i see where you are coming from but the whole purpose is to create a black hole and then measure readings about it.

 

they wanna make the black hole by making something very dense and this is what is happening in particle acclerators - there is most probably something different about the way do it to make it extra dense for a black hole of sufficient size and mass to measure values regarding it.

[Sayonara]

Hopefully it will stop getting more dense when they want it to, and not when it feels like it.

[Gilded]

"Hopefully it will stop getting more dense when they want it to, and not when it feels like it."

 

Uncontrolled black holes are something I don't want have in the near vicinity, or let's say within a radius of couple of million light years or so. )

[5614]

gilded/sayo read the 2nd quote on the 2nd post (by me) about that very topic... the one which says: "(this isnt critical to read - but interesting and worth reading all the same!"

[TWJian]

A "hawking" type blackhole would be easier to make and more advisable then eliptical(self-sustainable) blackholes.It radiates energy and since energy is equivalent to mass,it will eventually dissapear.

[5614]

It radiates energy

 

that is only a theory (with mathematical evidence) however still remains a theory.... that theory is the main thing they will be measuring.

[Gilded]

"gilded/sayo read the 2nd quote on the 2nd post (by me) about that very topic... the one which says: "(this isnt critical to read - but interesting and worth reading all the same!""

 

Yes I indeed read that, quite some time ago. But IF there was an uncontrolled black hole, I'd get as far from it as possible.

[5614]

"if there was an uncontrolled black hole"

 

... I'd go and give it a hug

 

:S

 

well maybe not!

 

if anyone hears any more news about it let me know... (it was first thought of almost 5 years ago!)

[Gilded]

"... I'd go and give it a hug"

 

Warning! Hugging black holes is not recommended for people with mass. Please consult your doctor before doing so.

[Kygron]

seriously though' date=' i see where you are coming from but the whole purpose is to create a black hole and then measure readings about it.

 

...there is most probably something different about the way do it to make it extra dense for a black hole of sufficient size and mass to measure values regarding it.[/quote']

 

Ok, I admit they need a big one to measure black hole-type properties, but I was trying to suggest that perhaps we've been making black holes all along. That maybe EVERY particle-antiparticle collision creates a black hole.

 

(I may just have to read that long article, but I don't know if it will say anything about what I've suggested)

[5614]

i know what you are suggesting

 

The laboratory analogy goes only so far, however. Black holes out in space are massive remnants of collapsed stars that pull in not just light but everything else in their vicinity. By contrast, the proposed atomic whirlpools would have too little gravity to swallow any matter. Tiny tornadoes within wispy clouds of gas, they would snag photons through their remarkable ability to slow light pulses.

 

the 2nd article (not quoted):

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0523/p25s02-stss.html

(i just re-read some of it) suggests that the "next generation" of particle accelerators were about to be released.

"bombard protons and antiprotons together with such a force that the collision will create temperatures and energy densities not seen since the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. This should be enough to pop off numerous tiny black holes, with masses of just a few hundred protons. Black holes of this size will evaporate almost instantly, their existence detectable only by dying bursts of Hawking radiation."

 

It is possible you are right... the articles do not tell you.

[Gilded]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

 

Whoah, see the end of the page. It seems that a black hole that "lives" only for a second blows up with quite a bang.

[5614]

black holes blow up?? i thought they just died out due to the hawking radiation?

 

So' date=' for instance, a 1 second-lived black hole has a mass of 2.28 × 10^5 kg = 2.05 × 10^22 J = 5 × 10^6 Megatons. The initial power is 4.31 × 10^6 W.

how do you get a "blow up" power from that?

[Gilded]

"black holes blow up?? i thought they just died out due to the hawking radiation?"

 

(from the Wikipedia-site:)

"For a black hole of one solar mass, we get an evaporation time of 10^67 years—much longer than the current age of the universe. But for a black hole of 10^11 kg, the evaporation time is about 3 billion years. This is why some astronomers are searching for signs of exploding primordial black holes."

 

Yep.

 

"how do you get a "blow up" power from that?"

 

First of all, the site even tells us how many megatons worth of energy is released. And even if it didn't, note that over 100 tons of matter transforms into energy in a second. Well... I'd call that an explosion. )