There is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the LHC destroying the planet when it eventually switches on some time later this year. Right?
Err, yep. And yet a few niggling doubts are persuading some scientists to run through their figures again. And the new calculations are throwing up some surprises.
One potential method of destruction is that the LHC will create tiny black holes that could swallow everything in their path including the planet. In 2002, Roberto Casadio at the Universita di Bologna in Italy and a few pals reassured the world that this was not possible because the black holes would decay before they got the chance to do any damage.
Now they’re not so sure. The question is not simply how quickly a mini-black hole decays but whether this decay always outpaces any growth.
Casadio have reworked the figures and now say that: ” the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible.”
Does not seem possible? That’s not the unequivocal reassurance that particle physicists have been giving us up till now.
What’s more, the new calculations throw up a tricky new prediction. In the past, it had always been assumed that black holes would decay in the blink of an eye.
Not any more. Casadio and co say: “the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly ≫ 1 sec) than is typically predicted by other models”
Whoa, let’s have that again: these mini black holes will be hanging around for seconds, possibly minutes?
That doesn’t sound good. Anybody at CERN care to clarify?
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0901.2948: On the Possibility of Catastrophic Black Hole Growth in the Warped Brane-World Scenario at the LHC
Comments
237 responses to “Black holes from the LHC could survive for minutes”
[…] 23, 2009 arxivblog.com:There is absolutely, positively, definitely no chance of the LHC destroying the planet when it […]
Oops! Shouldn’t we consider a return to the drawing board?
Wouldn’t it depend on the event frequency? The analysis doesn’t seem to address individual black holes combining (which over a lifetime of 100 seconds, seems like a reasonable thing to look at). If the LHC can’t make more than one every 100 seconds, we’re presumably safe.
My real concern is, could it gobble up what remains of my 401(k)?
Jeez– read the abstract. It’s a calculation based on a theoretical model using some very speculative physics for which there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. Really. Ignore it.
The main thing to keep in mind is, cosmic rays have energies vastly higher than the LHC. If the LHC could produce black holes, then there would be black holes floating around everywhere.
Further to Geoffrey’s point. Wouldn’t the sun have become a black hole already if it were that easy to create one? Although, I am not a philosoph… err not a scientist.
Almost every single new technology has had unexpected side effects. Look at what happened to the early X-ray pioneers. The smart way to do high energy physics research is on the moon, preferably the dark side. We still don’t understand how physics works – how can you possibly say that doing X, Y, and Z won’t lead to the creation of a new elementary particle A with properties never seen before?
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Did anyone see that movie ‘event horizon’? The black hole took the guy into a dimension of pure evil. That kind of thing happens in real life. I am scared!
Maybe this would be a good time to ponder this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
I wonder how many black holes we can observe were created by civilizations that did not believe it would end their existance ? If it all goes wrong someone, somewhere will see the sudden start another one. I feel the existance of the many seems to out weigh the science of the few.
Don’t create black holes. The current theory of what powers them is incorrect.
The true source of a black holes gravitational energy isn’t the mass that gets sucked into it. That mass gets destroyed in the singularity. So does the energy it is composed of. It gets destroyed when the gravitational force that sucks it in makes it exceed the speed of light because exceeding the speed of light in space destroys the representation of the Dirac Sea; i.e., it destroys light, energy, matter, and spacetime. The singularity inside a black hole is the only thing that violates the conservation of energy. There is a universal law more powerful than the conservation of energy. That is the conservation of nonexistence. Nonexistence cannot be destroyed because it is nonexistent. It is the lack of existence. The conservation of nonexistence is the first cause of symmetry. It is the cause of dark energy and the cause of the Dirac Sea.
Inside the event horizon of a black hole lies nonexistence. No Dirac Sea. No energy. No space. No time. No dimensions. Black holes are powered by the dark energy difference between the nonexistence inside the black hole and normal space outside it. If you don’t know this, there is a finite chance you could destroy the earth. The energy of the Dirac Sea outside the black hole is inexhaustable. It is the most powerful energy source in the universe. We don’t know how to contain it.
As far as cosmic rays, the creation of a black hole involves more than energy. The thing that actually triggers the creation of a black hole is energy being forced to exceed the speed of light in free space. Cosmic rays don’t do that, unless they get sucked into a black hole.
This is based on research still to be published. Ignore at your peril.
This is starting to get me nervous.
This is orders of magnitude from what initially stated, and we certainly do not know enough in order to know that the equations will hold or that other factors may affect the process.
Furthermore it would seem simple to facilitate initial accretion, particularly in the case of those long lived black holes…
Well, one good thing… if they are wrong nobody will blame them… if the calculations turn out to be wrong we will all be gone and they will not have to apologize for the incorrect calculations.
regards,
Johan Louwers.
There’s an old theory that states that civilizations advance to the point where they discover nuclear weapons, then they proceed to destroy themselves.
I would like to amend this to civilizations advance to the point where they can build a Large Hadron Collider…
I’m getting the feeling that there’s a anti-anti-science knee jerk reaction going around. People embrace a set of conclusions while waving away an opposing set just because it’s mostly speculative. Just like the former conclusions. And why is the context being outright ignored? As far as I can tell the solar system is not a LHC.
“11pm Galactic News: If you put your credits on black holes call your bookies now and you will be in for a treat! The budding civilization at Sol III has managed to wipe itself out with the good old energy collider. Last transmissions captured seem to be of someone complaining of not even going to have sticks left.”
Show me a gravitron first. Then maybe I’ll believe you.
Wow that would be great. We could create small black holes, feed them with a particle beam, and achieve 100% matter->energy conversion.
If they are created, they clearly can’t be hazardous, since they must be created in the upper atmosphere as well.
No need to worry – the existence of neutron stars proves that cosmic rays (some of which have much higher energy than the LHC), even when striking a surface with extremely high density, cannot create black holes that could threaten the Earth.
If it was even remotely possible, those neutron stars would have turned into black holes long ago, and we would not see any.
I am still, however, in favor of that large accelerator on the far side of the moon!
Isn’t the LHC in Europe? As long as it doesn’t suck up the USA, I’m fine with it.
Nature hurls cosmic rays toward the Earth with far more energy than the LHC could ever produce. We most likely have mini-black holes produced by Nature at far greater frequency than one every 100 seconds. Cosmic rays have collided with Earth’s matter for quite a long time, yet we are still here! The wonderful opportunity we now have is the ability to study them in a laboratory environment.
Well, it is certainly a more high tech approach to the EOW than a flood and a boatload of animals and people that survive 🙁
in my experience, black holes have always been a lot more pleasurable than white holes.
…just an observation
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The true cause of black holes is an attempted violation of the conservation of nonexistence that nature can’t correct in any other way; e.g., through the release of other forms of energy. Nonexistence cannot be destroyed, because there is nothing to destroy. The conservation of nonexistence is absolute. It is the first cause of symmetry. It is the reason symmetry exists. The universal function that creates the future from the past and drives the evolution of the universe is based on the conservation of nonexistence.
In addition to creating a black hole via a gravitational field forcing energy to exceed the speed of light in free space, one can be created by creating so much assymetry in a high energy particle collision for so short a duration that nonexistence can only be conserved by forcing the energy in the collision past the speed of light. Doing so destroys the energy, thereby conserving nonexistence. However, in destroying the energy, it creates a hole in the Dirac Sea, i.e., it destroys spacetime and everything it contains in the localized region that exceeded the speed of light. A black holes energy is powered by the dark energy differential between nonexistence inside the event horizon and normal space outside it. The dark energy in the Dirac Sea outside the black hole is finite, but extremely large. In other words, the power that drives a black hole is not solely based on the energy that went into the collision that creates it. That is only the trigger. I know, there will be objections that this would violate the conservation of energy. How do you know the conservation of energy isn’t violated inside the singularity in a black hole?
As the amount of assymetry in a collision increases and the amount of time available to discharge the assymetry decreases toward the Planck time, the frequency of the energy released and its power will increase explosively. If we are lucky, the explosive increase in energy will result in a high intensity gamma ray burst that will destroy the LHC before it can create a black hole.
DO YOU SEE!? DOOOO YOOOOUUUU SEEEEEE!!!????
The thing is, even if they lasted for days or years, black holes that size have such miniscule gravity that they only eat when they directly impact another subatomic particle. That will happen so rarely that they simply won’t grow unless they can survive for millions of years.
Okay okay, then if cosmic rays collide with Earth and for sure they produce mini-black holes, why not to put the detectors in the space? At least they have the particles accelerated for free by the Sun!
Anyway if anyday we’re spaghettified I hope that thing get sucked me so fast I don’t take care of it.
Btw in answer to GreenAvenger, yeah, is here in Europe, but if we’re sucked it will have enough mass to suck USA too 😉
It is not purely a matter of energy. Its a matter of too much assymetry being created in too short a time to discharge it as energy without exceeding the speed of light. Cosmic rays are not equivalent to the LHC. LHC does not equal cosmic ray. Cosmic ray density is not high enough to create enough assymetry to trigger the creation of a black hole. I’m not so sure about the LHC.
The difference is that black holes produced by cosmic rays are moving at about the speed of light with respect to the Earth, but black holes produced by the LHC can be standing still or slowly moving through the Earth.
@people who raised the cosmic-ray objection:
Did that analysis take into account the interactions of concurrent events? That is to say, the idea is in the long long history of the planet, enough cosmic rays have hit the atmosphere that some meaningful number of them must have been at or above LHC energy – and since we’re still here, such collisions must not produce planet-killing black holes. But what about a bunch of similar-energy collisions all in the same place in quick succession – what are the chances of two or more non-PK black holes merging and crossing that line? Have enough CR events happened to establish that scenario as “safe enough” also?
Understand me – my default assumption here is that this has been covered by someone…I just want to know the details.
On the one hand: I agree that when we don’t know what will happen, and if there is even the smallest chance of catastrophic consequences, then we shouldn’t do it, just to be safe. Clearly the changes in estimates indicate that we really have no clue what will happen.
However, on the other hand: in this case, we are replicating a natural phenomenon (the smashing together of cosmic rays at high energy) in order to study it. Naturally, we don’t know what will happen, or we wouldn’t need to do the experiment. What we do know is that whatever happens, it won’t destroy the world, because the world would already have been destroyed, since this happens in nature all the time.
In the end, the precautionary principle does not apply to duplicating natural phenomenon.
Ah, a good ol fashioned American response.
So Barry, how does non-existence have the gravity required to sustain the black hole? If black holes are truly nothing, then they obviously don’t have mass and therefore cannot have gravity. Incogito ergo no sum.
“This is based on research still to be published. Ignore at your peril.” Jeez, Barry, if the research doesn’t pass peer-reviewed muster then it’s likely to be crackpot stuff. The only peril in ignoring crackpots is when they become homicidal in their frustration.
…but Scotty… what about the space-time continuum?
By my opinion the risk of BH swallowing the planet is rather low due the high activation energy required – but the risk of strangelet formation is quite high – simply because we observed it already!
The muons formation during recent Tevatron experiments in Fermilab well outside of collider pipe may be related to recent pentaquark and tetraneutron evidence and it can demonstrate the stabilization of large matter clusters via supersymmetry and the danger of strangelet formation.
We can understand the dark matter, WIMPS and supersymmetric bosons as a surface tension effects of gravitational field. At the case of large distances / energy densities the energy density of space-time curvature near large particle or galactic clusters can become a dominant force, because it manifests itself as a additional mass density of vacuum with antigravity effects.
In particular, the formation of tiny dense particle clusters can stabilize the exotic forms of matter due the hydrostatic pressure inside of tiny particle droplets like the neutrons inside of neutron stars or atom nuclei by such way, these droplets can escape from collider pipe and they can start the avalanche conversion of normal matter to another strangelets under development of giant explosion, which could vaporize a substantial portion of Earth.
Therefore the latests Fermilab results should serve as a very last warning of people before high energy LHC experiments planned. The confirmation of supersymmetry could become a supersymmetric event for science as well: the best triumph of mainstream science and it’s very last mistake at the same moment.
Looking at the numbers, we would expect to find many more intelligent civilizations creating radio sinnals.
It is entirely possible that the obvious steps in scientific discovery may cause intelligent societies to destroy themselves.
It would provide a clear resolution to the Fermi paradox:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature_of_intelligent_life_to_destroy_itself
If the LHC did create small black holes. Couldn’t you accelerate the black holes’ evaporation by feeding it a stream of antimatter particles? Isn’t that how Hawking radiation evaporates black holes?
I’m pro science and research, but I’m also pro caution when necessary. Maybe some laymen explanations are in order here. How do I get a good laymen explanation and avoid confusing quackery? Quality explanations are always appreciated…
“we certainly do not know enough in order to know that the equations will hold or that other factors may affect the process”
I suggest using the LHC, and perform some experiments.
We know for a *fact* that the earth will not be destroyed because John Titor came back from the year 2036 and reported that the LHC *did* produce black holes, but that we were able to trap and control them. That’s how GE built the time machine he used.
Look it up.
> I wonder how many black holes we can observe were created by civilizations that did not believe it would end their existance ?
Maybe that’s why we see >0 number of blackholes, but 0 alien spaceships
“…The smart way to do high energy physics research is on the moon, preferably the dark side….”
Great idea. I can just see it now:
“Oh, Honey, there’s a Full Black Hole out tonight!!! it’s SOO romant-” -GIANT SUCKING SOUND-
I don’t believe this would destroy the earth. The first thing destroyed would be the LHC itself. As soon as it becomes damaged, it will cease to funtion and stop generating these black holes.
–TomS
just read the paper. basically then length that these black holes last depends on the length scale at which newton’s gravity fails and gives over to higher-dimensional gravity theories. based the current experiments the paper states in the conclusion the BH is unlikely to grow. Only if we assume systemic errors and one sided errors is it possible for BH to grow at all.
the relevant paragraph quoted below:
“As shown in the previous Section, in particular in Tables
I–III, the maximum black hole mass never reaches
catastrophic size before leaving the Earth. The black hole
mass remains at microscopic values for a wide range of acceptable
initial conditions and for a wide range of critical
masses, Mc. Indeed, in order for the black holes created
at the LHC to grow at all, the critical mass should be
Mc & 105 kg. This value is rather close to the maximum
compatible with experimental test of Newton’s law, that
is Mc ≃ 106 kg (which we further relaxed to Mc = 108 kg
in our analysis). For smaller values of Mc, the black holes
cannot accrete fast enough to overcome the decay rate.
Furthermore, the larger Mc is taken to be, the longer a
black hole takes to reach its maximum value and the less
time it remains near its maximum value before exiting
the Earth.”
<>
Nonexistence means literally that. No Dirac Sea. No spacetime. No energy. No light. No matter inside the event horizon. The energy is in the spectral energy density of the Dirac sea in the normal space OUTSIDE the black hole. The energy differential between the zero energy density inside the black hole and the spectral energy of the Dirac sea outside means the spectral energy density of the spacetime outside the black hole will be drawn into the black hole like water down a drain. The black hole will draw spacetime, energy and matter into it due to the difference between the nonexistent spectral energy density inside and the spectral energy density of the Dirac Sea of the space outside. Spacetime itself will curve around the event horizon of the black hole as it gets drawn into the black hole. We interpret this spatial curvature as the gravity caused by the black hole.
Nonsense. to the particles colliding it makes not a dang bit of difference whether one is sitting still or they are moving towards each other. basic physics 001.
This is getting well beyond ridiculous. This author does NOT represent all physicists, his theories and all those predicting micro-black holes are waaay beyond speculative, and cosmic rays of much much higher energies have been bombarding earth with PRECISELY the same reaction as the LHC for billions of years.
nothing to see here, please move on. There are MUCH more pressing things to worry about. like your money, and your job.
The only problem in ignoring crackpots is if they turn out to be right.
Comic rays are not protons. Its said that cosmic rays have more energy, but protons have a LOT more mass, and if they are travelling at 99.999% the SOL, its hard to imagine that cosmic rays are weaker and, two, what if they create a black hole and then pump a bunch more protons into to … and it grows .. and grows.
My question is this: has anyone explained gama-ray bursts yet? The most powerfull explosions known yet no two are alike? Is that because they are created by black holes eating planets and solor systems?
Great .. I’m applying for an extension …
The only problem in ignoring crackpots is if they turn out to be right.
Publish your papers in “Physical Review Letters” and we’ll think about that possibility.