Hi Ken G: Perhaps we have a trillion micro black holes orbiting near the center of Earth. A few more from CERN, may make one not so micro black hole which will start eating Earth's core. Perhaps Earth's magnetic field is weakening because much of the core has already been eaten = sink holes tomarrow. Aggg! Neil

As far as I can tell, none of any consequence. You're right...this may be a topic worth its own thread.

And perhaps the flying spaghetti monsters should be taken seriously as well. Perhaps is a funny word that way.

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Simple flip answer: yes.
If Hawking radiation is taken into account, and has the expected effect, it's even simpler, as the black hole will have evaporated before it could eat even one proton.

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I just realised something: We're all talking about these super-high-energy cosmic rays that have, despite 4 billion years of trying, emphatically not destroyed the Earth, the moon, or any other body that humans have observed.

But just for extra evidence (as if it were needed): Wouldn't nuclear explosions create similar artifacts? I know alpha particles are emitted at some considerable velocity. What about protons? Or maybe some of the neutrons involved in the chain reaction? Is it feasible that at least some of these could have been accelerated to LHC-like velocities?

If so, then we have another few dozen events (every nuclear test ever performed) producing exactly zero Earth-destroying effects.

I guess some people just need something to worry about, to make them "happy". Also, there seems to be rampant paranoia regarding scientists, not to mention a level of distrust that borders on contempt.

Yes, scientists have made mistakes before. But thousands of them? All making the same mistake, when so much is at stake? If you believe that, I have a space-ship in my back yard to sell you. It will take you to Hoagland's "Cities on Mars", so that you won't get sucked into the Evil Black Hole of Dooom!!! like the rest of us poor sods.

And yet life has evolved to such daring complexity that intelligence evolved too and looks back at the evolved life in its complexity and declares it must have been designed by an intelligence.

Well, no-one ever said that intelligence had to be smart.

<chuckle>

My point was the absolute magnitude of the time involved- and the minuscule odds of any super-high-energy cosmic rays or baby black holes.

People who think this system is going to create a black hole that will implode earth probably took the last episode of "Lexx" too seriously....

Altho the premise of that episode would explain why we never hear from other civillizations.

So when are they gonna fire this thing up?

Even if it was 50 million years, that would reduce the Earths life expectancy by 99% (down from 5 billion years). We may not make it anywhere near that long, but why would you take any chance, it you can know whether this experiment will really be safe in probably a few more years of study.

fyi:

My research [of existing published sources] indicates a risk of up to 10% of a single MBH being captured by Earth’s gravity per month of LHC operation. Supporting assumptions and estimates: CERN states that microscopic black holes might be created at a rate of one per second (http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/LHC/Safety-en.html, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columni...imension_N.htm). Assuming that that CERN’s prediction is correct, [experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I.] Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience estimated in 2004 that 10 million microscopic black holes could be created by LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in a year and 1 in a million would be captured by Earth’s gravity if Hawking Radiation fails to cause the MBHs to evaporate (http://www.livescience.com/environme...ack_holes.html). James Blodgett published survey results from 15 physicists estimating odds between 0% and 50% that Hawking Radiation would fail, with an average estimate of 9.9% for failure (http://www.lhcconcerns.com). However [Greg Landsberg] Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience also estimated that a single stable microscopic black hole would grow so slowly that it would not be a threat to Earth, though other physicists estimate much faster growth patterns. --Jtankers (talk) 22:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

France builds Doomsday Machine…This massive machine is a magnetic ring 27 kilometers in circumference: Ultimately, it will collide beams of protons at an energy of 14 TeV. Additionally, beams of lead nuclei will be also accelerated, colliding together with an energy of 1150 TeV. The LHC will be the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.A terrorist would need only half of a gram of antimatter to be equally destructive as the Hiroshima bomb. If CERN'santi-matter factory were to blow up today it would only affect the regions bordering France and Switzerland.These black holes, the densest matter in the universe, will plummet to the very core of the earth, then, slowly at first, growing one particle, one quark at a time, but at an ever accelerating rate. Scientists have estimated that a stable black hole at the center of the earth could consume not only France but the whole planet in the very short time span of between 4 minutes and 30 seconds and 7 minutes.That age-old question: Will our planet disappear in the twinkling of an eye? - Now becomes a probability if and when the CERN facility is allowed to go on-line in 2008., ……………………………………………………………………………… Close you eyes and picture this. "there was a devastating explosion deep in the tunnel at the CERN particle accelerator complex that actually blew a 20 ton magnet right off its mountings. The explosion filled the tunnel with helium and forced a mass evacuation of the facility.While the facility was supposed to go online during the summer of 2007, the new start up is tentatively summer of 2008 after 17 miles of magnets have been repaired or replaced.To those of us who count ourselves among the worried masses, appears to be an ominous foreshadowing of what could eventually become the Second-Coming of the BigBang.The experiment quickly goes out of control, resulting in the creation of a new type of matter called strange-lets which begins to consume and destroy all matter around it.As it bores it's way through the EARTH man looks to the heavens for he has destroyed his home.The death roll of extinction grows from the bowels of the earth an eruption is imminent.The eruption altered the landscape wreaking havoc throughout the world spewing rocks, ash and smoke into the air in different parts of the globe and severely affect global climate with cataclysmic consequences for life human race is now in the endangered species list.The downward collapse of land at the eruption sites are as black holes swallowing up everything around.As the magnetic core of the EARTH is exposed it collapses in on itself the moon is pulled towards EARTH.Any hope for survival is lost. ASTEROIDS,and other heavenly bodies start being pulled also striking the moon first that is now looming 8 times closer than it was 4 hours ago as they hit the debris thrown up from the surface is raining down on the EARTH fire instead of water.All over the globe the ASTEROIDS are striking the EARTH in succession's one right after another.The extinction of the human race!"

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WUGGY6X9

Hi Wuggy69, welcome to BAUT. I have some friendly advice...

First, you might want to read the FAQs and rules of this board if you want to continue to participate.

Second, paragraphs are a wonderfully instrument for making ones writing more readable.

Third, if you actually read through the rest of this thread, you will find that pretty much everything you said is nonsense. Events of much more energy than CERN is planning to do happen all the time in the upper atmosphere of the Earth, from cosmic rays hitting atoms in the upper atmosphere, and haven't destroyed the Earth in the previous 4 billion years or so.

But, if that still hasn't convinced you, I would like some evidence of what you claim. For example, could you name the scientists, and show the calculations, that show that a black hole would destroy the Earth in 4-1/2 to 7 minutes.

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I think most of the issues in this post have been covered repeatedly in thread, but:

Why would it blow up? It certainly wouldn't be due to anti-matter. From:

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/...tAandD-en.html

A half-gram of antimatter (as you suggested above) would be an astonishingly large quantity. CERN couldn't possibly produce anywhere near that much, nor could it be stored for any significant time, so it wouldn't be possible to accumulate it, even if it could be produced in such large quantities.

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You know there's a thread on the OTB section on people who need to "get a life." It missed the point I think. Those who need to get a life are those who are focused on the miniscule (indeed, non-existant) dangers posed by the LHC who then proceed to ignore the far greater threats of every day living. Wuggy, you're probably going to die of a heart attack from unnecessry stress before anything the LHC can do will harm you. Relax. Have a drink. Enjoy your existence for a change.

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"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Not to worry. Even if the scientists have got it wrong and there is a real possibility that they have however small the odds may be according to their calculations.

As stated "Relax" soak in all the wonder and beauty of the world that you can and enjoy life. With so many mathematicians on a project that size if the world was destroyed in 4 1/2 minutes they would be sure to have a proven mathematical explanation for why it happened within a week.

Have there ever been any direct observations of this Hawking radiation ?

Once the LHC has been running for a year, and nothing has happened, I am going to laugh in the faces of all you "chicken littles".

Of course, if every single cosmologist and nuclear physicist in the whole world has been wrong all this time, well, at least I'll never have to pat off my overdraft and credit cards.

Win-win, as far as I'm concerned.

Manchurian Taikonaut: To be serious for a second: No, the existece of Hawking Radiation is still unproven at this point - I think the amount of HR would be infinitisimal next to the other radiation streaming away from the vicinity of a solar-sized BH (not to even mention what comes off an Active Galactic Core!), and we've never discovered a BH with less mass than several Suns.

Of course, there are a number of other reasons why a black hole massing just 0.000000000000000000000003 grams isn't going to be a become a bother until several eons after Sol goes red-giant on us.

Well, following up with NASA's GLAST space probe, that satellite has not detected a single strand of Hawking's radiation. How would you respond to this?
I would like to get this thread back in action.

Read my 20 April post. Carefully.

Interesting though, since HR still remains to be discovered, "theoretical" physicists are using this theory as their defense against doubters like me.

I seriously think people there should wake up and smell the coffee and take a practical approach.

I support the experiments taking place at CERN, but at least accept the Expectation (Safety Review) that Dr. Wagner and Dr. Sancho are proposing.

I am also surprised that the public is not alarmed yet. Not many around me are even aware that this experiment is making history.

Think about it for a moment, 7 billion people at STAKE. (That must insane)

Time for me to open a site where the world will know what is behind this.

We already have a general understanding of our universe, why put your nose in the wrong place, within the natural forces that constitute the environment.

I have the actual U.S. District Court files sitting with me (this very instant), and just going through both files make me want to wonder, what are these physicists really up to. Do they have a life? Or are these 5,000 people against the current issues in society? Although, I know they have a stingy amazement at what humans are capable of cracking the question of how the Universe Works? why risk life?

I've met Dr. Michio Kaku (a renowned theoretical physicist, Co-founder of String Theory) face to face and it strangely appears that he support this particle accelerator.

A recent issue from Scientific American notes that CERN is planning even an bigger project, particle accelerator, ILC in the years to come, which will be 30 km compared to existing LHC, 27 km.

My reason for lack of concern about the LHC experiments has nothing at all to do with HR (Hawkings Radiation), whether it exists or not.

If you read through this thread, you will find a lot of information that events with many times the energy of anything proposed at LHC happen naturally all the time in the Earth's upper atmosphere (as cosmic rays strike the Earth). None of these events have destroyed the Earth in the last 4 billion years. There is nothing CERN could do that would threaten the Earth, even if they wanted to.

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All moderation in purple

The "great wall of text" (by Wuggy) has been lifted from at least two web pages:


http://www.notepad.ch/blogs/index.ph...omsday-machine
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/02...dron-collider/

If you use other people's materials, at least acknowledge it

Pete

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There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.

Considering the Glast probe hasn't even been launched yet, I wouldn't expect it to detect much of anything, let alone Hawking's radiation.

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There is not enough energy in the entire solar system to produce a black hole and the energy in the solar flares far exceed the energy being used at CERN. The scientists at CERN are from the broadest spectrum of the human race in the history of any project. We are not talking about "famous last words" ala the Titanic sinking and this failing by something overlooked.

They have a powerful beamline to control and, to give you a hint, the beamline at Argonne Labs (like all beamlines) is so sensitive that if you accidently locked some 4 year old next to the beamline while the lead wall doors closed and locked him in, the sound waves of him saying just the word "Hey!" or a feather dropping on the floor or even one motion of his arm being raised or lowered would knock the beam off its track and shut the whole thing down.

We are dealing with particle physics here and not Newtonian physics. Gone are the days of running out of one's garage and screaming "Eureka! I have found it. Here's the blueprint and we make one hundred copies independently the patent is good!"

With particle accelerators you make a billion trials and must come up with predicted results 99.999% of the time before you can claim a discovery. If you publish anything before that you are fired and if a particle physicist makes just one mathematical mistake he or she is fired. Brookhaven come under similar paranoia a few years back when making a quark/gluon plasma in its collisions.

You are not looking at a bunch of rookies doing these experiments. All of them are extremely experienced at particle accerelerator physics and it is they who are the most critical of biological and chemical and geological sciences for being too ignorant and too inconsiderate of human safety in their own fields due to their misunderstanding of particle physics.

I know that, I stated GLAST Probe intentionally to emphasize the fact that CERN should for that satelite to detect whether HR really exists or not, and how that plays pivotal hole in the creation of black holes.

Then how would you explain the following link then? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4357613.stm

How would you explain the potential risk of this then: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4357613.stm ?

KappaMikey,

It should be pointed out that "theory" is not some hunch or some good approximation at all. The theory of flying is a description of how flying occurs, not whether or not flying is some hypothesis. Hypotheses and theories are not the same things. Before something can be classified a theory it must be validated by experiments. Relativity is not some hunch. If it wasn't valid radio dispatch communications between control towers and aircraft or between squad cars or fire trucks or buses and their respective dispatches wouldn't exist. Remote cameras for television wouldn't function either.

But the same applies to Hawking's Radiation. His concept is theory, it hasn't even been proven yet. How do you expect to carry on an experiment that you don't even the know the "real" consequences to?

You're ignoring Swift's post, among many others in this thread. Scientific reviews on risk were not just based on theory, but on observation. The number of high energy cosmic ray events (including ones striking each other in deep space, potentially resulting is relatively low velocity particles) were considered. The possible effects of hypothetical particles (tiny black holes and strangelets) were considered, and how they might affect the Earth, other planets, stars, pulsars, and so forth. (Stars are quite visible and big targets, pulsars are dense, etc.)

And, for all the billions of years of high energy events that dwarf these experiments, we see no evidence for the "bad" particles.

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

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