Its gravity would be that of a couple of protons. And if Hawking radiation exists, the tiny BH would evaporate before it has time to do anything.

EDIT: And probably even if it doesn't, as the mass of a few protons can't balance the internal forces of such a compressed mass. Some things don't scale well at the subatomic level.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

But like I was saying, none of those risks are anywhere near as bad as dying in a black hole or the whole world and everythign dying in a black hole.

The worse the outcome the less it's worth the risk. For example, I'd take a 1 in 20 chance of stubbing my toe (which hurts a lot) to win £10. But I wouldn't take a 1 in 20 chance of myself and the whole world being sucked into a black hole, I wouldn't even take a 1 in 100 chance because of the outcome being that much worse.

That's why the argument that you could just as easily choke on a cornflake or get mugged when you go outside falls apart.

How about a 1 in nothing chance, because it's physically impossible? Or how about just far less likely than a natural world-ending event?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

But even supposing for the moment that this BH can survive for a longer amount of time, what would it take for it to absorb anything else? To suck up another proton, for example, it'd have to be a direct hit from a proton with enough energy to overcome the electromagnetic force, wouldn't it?

What about an electron? It'd be attracted to the protons by gravity as well as electromagnetism. But something keeps them from getting sucked into atomic nuclei under normal circumstances. Since this 2-proton BH is going to have to be smaller than a pair of protons, I expect that whatever keeps helium nuclei from eating electrons is also going to help keep this black hole from being able to get close enough to consume them.

Would a BH made of protons still even have an outward EM charge?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Then I'm astonished we're still here. As has been mentioned through the thread, cosmic rays regularly reach energies higher than what they're expecting. Earth is still here, we don't see planets collapsing, or evidence where planets collapsed into black holes.

In order for this to be dangerous, it would have to do something that never happened once in the history of the solar system.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I'd expect so; I've heard talk before about black holes with an outward EM charge. Here are a couple Wikipedia entries that touch on non-rotating and rotating charged black holes.

I have no idea about the other two forces, though.

Ah, that's a relief. If we're all gonna die, at least we might as well all die under unique circumstances.

I could reply (I think you misunderstood me), but I am in danger of derailing the topic.

Suffice to say I have no objections to this particular research (not that anyone would care if I did!).

You are half right. It's not just the severity of the outcome, but the likelihood of that severity which must be considered. To seem to know this, since you then said:

So, what is the likelihood of the LHC generating a mini-black hole that does not evaporate but grows large enough to threathen the earth itself?

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
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If I did so, I apologize.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Well I didn't know that. And how do we know it's true, because the scientists said so? I thought it was foolish to have faith in the fact that scientists would never put their interests before the worlds?

I don't know. So then, I should just trust the scientists. Do they really know? People have said it's foolish to do this also.

So now you are saying that ALL of these scientists are lying just so that they can endanger the world? What possible motivation could there be for that?

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

What is the LHC doing differently that isn't already happening in nature? If it is going to destroy us, why are we still here to talk about it?

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

This thread is rapidly approaching the point of "flaggelating a deceased equine"!

How many times and in how many ways do we have to say it?

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

No, I'm not saying that at all.

I didn't know that what they're doing is already happening in nature on earth.

Why didn't someone explain this already then?

Anyway, I'm drunk now, not sure if I'm making any sense anymore, so whatever, sorry if I've offended anyone.

We did. Several times in this thread.
Did you just jump into the discussion without reading any of the previous 12 pages of posts?

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

You haven't offended me, but it's probably not the best time to discuss a technical subject.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Lol, yeah I did.

Just as I read your post I looked a few pages back to make sure and straight away I saw a post with someone saying that it already happens on earth.

I don't really know anything anyway as far as space and science is concerned, I'm not that educated.

The first mention is in Post # 8

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
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I haven't read all of the previous 12 pages either, but here's my (layman's) understanding:

The earth is constantly being showered with cosmic rays; extremely energetic particles that come from space. The overwhelming majority of these are protons just like the ones that the LHC will be accelerating, but they can be 100,000,000 times more energetic. These cosmic rays are constantly slamming into particles in the upper atmosphere, which contributes to the auroras as well as being the source of most the planet's carbon-14.

In other words, nature itself has been doing what the LHC will do, only a lot more frequently and a lot more energetically, for billions and billions of years.

If the LHC is capable of producing microscopic black holes in Switzerland, then nature is constantly producing microscopic black holes in our atmosphere. And if microscopic black holes were capable of consuming the earth, then one of the (hypothetical) gazillions of microscopic black holes that it has encountered since its formation would have eaten it by now.

In short, the fact that we can sit here and talk about whether or not the LHC is capable of destroying the planet gives us more than enough reason to believe that it isn't.

No problem, just log off and hoist a tall one for me!

After you've recovered, come back and read the thread from the start, I'm sure it will be either much easier or much harder to grasp sober.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Let's say Prof Hawking is completely wrong about radiation at the event horizon of a μBH, and the things don't evaporate faster than a politician can change his stance.

Then we'd need an explanation as to why these things haven't destroyed the entire galaxy yet. (Just as a mental exercise, given the lack data.)

First possibility: A μBH can't actually be formed this way, even at the mind-boggling energies present in the upper atmosphere. Our models of quantum physics still need a little refinement.

Second: As already discussed, it's possible that the other forces at play in an atom (electromagnetic, strong&weak nuclear) still overwhelm the gravity of the μBH.

Third (my pet theory)*: Just how "big" is a μBH?

What are the possibilities of something 10E-9 or 10E-12 the size of a proton ever coming close enough to any other particle to "grab" it?

Remember, it would have to literally collide with another particle - it won't be able to "suck them in" as it still only has the mass of a pair of protons. And the debate is still on, it seems, as to whether it would still have a +ve charge with which to attract electrons.

My layman's guess is that the BH just keeps travelling with the net momentum of the original protons. It sails harmlessly through the entire Earth, never touching any other particles at all. And off it goes into space, with a ridiculously small chance of ever coming near another large mass, and another ridiculously small chance of actually interacting with that mass.

There could be millions of these things passing through your body right now, but not doing anything at all to it. Does that remind you of any other particles we know of?

So you might think of a μBH as a "particle" so elusive, it makes the neutrino look like a blundering buffoon, by comparison.

Please feel free to add your own hypotheses, or tear mine to shreds: That's how I learn, ;-)

*) "Theory" in layman's terms, "hypothesis" in scientific terms, "something I pulled out of a convenient orifice" if you want to be brutally honest.

It would sails harmlessly through the entire Earth as long as its net momentum is higher as the required escape velocity of earth, I would guess.

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THis could explain all that silence out there in space. Even Drake's equation had a slef destruct variable built in.

Perhaps most civs extinguish themselves with an LHC.

Might be....just might be.