Yeah right: that's called "Schwinger radiation".
What are you talking about??? The Giddings and Mangano paper said in clear language that neutral, CR-produced mBH's will get stopped neither by the Earth, nor by the Sun. Perhaps that is why we are still here!

Since when have fireballs been the issue? And by the way, black holes do emit radiation: it's called Hawking radiation.

There are a lot of screws and welds in the theory as well! Let's hope it's solid!

Yes, political, but also scientific in that the science says that the risk of metastable mBH's is non negligible. But of course the science is not even half the issue. I'm more concerned with CERN's diplomatic immunity that makes scientific arguments utterly irrelevant.

OK, enough circles for a while. Do you all see the obvious flaw in Casadio et al.'s paper that's been bugging me? First they say that while the mBH still has some momentum left over from it's creation, it will grow rapidly, but then once it comes to rest, the picture is that there will be this tiny mBH lost in a vast solar system of atomic nuclei such that the chances that it will continue to run into matter will be nil, thus causing the mBH to starve to death by Hawking evaporation.

But the problem is, even if the mBH is at rest with respect to the center of the Earth, conditions inside the Earth are high temperature and high pressure. In other words, the atoms and molecules that make up the center of the Earth have high individual kinetic energy. (Remember? Temperature is the result of the movement of atoms and molecules?) My rough back-of-the-envolope calculations tell me that iron atoms will be vibrating with an average velocity of about 2.5 km/sec. (The speed of sound down there is on the order of 6 km/s.) So even if the mBH is sitting still, ordinary vibration will ensure that matter is constantly bumping into it. Once a cavity is created, the pressure will immediately cause the surrounding matter to implode. Besides, what's to stop a black hole from ingesting an electron if wants? Electrons would impart a negative charge, thus the mBH would have a strong Coulomb force that would attract positively charged nuclei. So it's not at all clear that during the Bondi accretion phase that growth would not outstrip evaporation.

CERN does not have diplomatic immunity, that is a specific status given to diplomats. CERN is answerable to the European Parliament,

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OK fine. Since CERN has its own special status within international law, we will call it CERNomatic immunity instead. And don't forget that CERN is also answerable to the United Nations! It's truly wonderful. . . .

Because people that haven't been getting the facts since the first BH like Fire Ball was made in an etirely different collider, have latched onto the term Black Hole to describe these Fire Balls, due to a baddly wrtten article about them in New Scientist.

So everyone thinks Colliders make Black Holes now, which they DONT.

Yes, Black Holes emit Hawking radiation. Hawking radiation is not Light, it is a form of Quantum Particle Radiation.

What has been observed occasionaly in colliders is a Fire Ball that has enough Gravity that Quantum Partiles cannot escape. Light however can, and does escape these miniture beasties.

Therefore it is not a black hole, and no Collider has yet produced a black hole.

Anyone stating they have made black holes in colliders is taking a poorly written news article, (not a published scientific paper), that has since been corrected by a later article, and is intentionaly missrepresting the data.

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Good points all, dgavin. Only problem is that no one on this thread anyway has argued that that the RHIC fireball was more than a black hole analog or precursor. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe only one was detected at RHIC.) To me the significance of the fireball is that it potentially shows that they are getting close to the power levels required to produce potentially real black holes.

You shouldn't twist words Warren! Answerable doesn't mean that they're not responsible. Speaking of: this appears to be your major concern. That a bunch of irresponsible, mindless and dangerously playful geeks meddle with the world! But this isn't George W. Bush messing around. These are people who are not in the least interested in killing themselves with their new toy.

Extracelestial

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Hi Extracelestial,

According to the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs, CERN does in fact enjoy immunity:

I see you're from Germany, so here's the original text:
From LHC Kritik

Actually, I think I described them as irresponsible cowboys. But your reference to George W. Bush is apropos. When he went into Iraq, it was supposed to be a slam-dunk piece-of-cake. It didn't turn out to be so easy, did it? There is the law of unintended consequences we must worry about. When our planet is at stake we cannot afford to make a mistake.

The CERN people know that there is a nonzero risk, but they think it is small. To them, the calculated risk is worth it. To them, the unexamined life is not worth living. (Besides there are jobs and Nobel Prizes on the line: if the LHC gets flushed down the toilet, it's back to playing guitar for 50 euros per night at some dive bar somewhere. Well, maybe they can get a job as a "quant" at some hedge fund somewhere--if there are any left standing! ) In other words, they get a direct benefit out of the LHC if nothing bad happens. But you and I will not benefit.

Does a gap in our knowledge automatically generate a duty to close that gap? Certainly not in everyday life. That's why we have privacy laws. So why should we expect such a duty when it comes to the Wissenschaft? Future, unborn generations will not think less of us if we decide to forgo the experiment.

Do you find it ironic that the Nobel Prize was endowed by a man because he felt guilty about the form of technology that he unleashed upon his fellow humans?

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Actualy it's more of an analog to the sigularity before the big bang, then to a black hole.

Which is actualy the point of colliders, to get matter to the state it existed at just after the big bang.

If anything what they produced more closely resembles a theroretical White Hole. An situation where gravity prevents all matter from escaping, but not light. And you are right in that only one was made.

No one knows what it truely is though. Could be a White Hole like contruct, could be a fifth state of matter never considered before. It's hard to say.

Even if somehow a Black Hole was made, I thinks it's been shown plenty of times that it would take trillions of years for such a puny thing to grow to a size to be harmfull to a planet. Nothing to be worried over.

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Why does it have spacial status in international law? It's an agency of the EU Parliament.

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You tell me, you're the European.

By the Orders of Her Majesty:

The Protocol

Straight from the horse's mouth (i.e., the CERN Document Server): New Protocol grants CERN privileges and immunities

Face it: unlike Union Carbide or Exxon, CERN cannot be sued.

Not true at all! Those 5-D buggers would grow fast enough to be "potentially problematic" according to Giddings and Mangano. That's why they go to the trouble to flesh out their astrophysical argument.

But hey, I like your signature: "There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives."

If you care to to study the protocol it is concerned with exemption from restrictions on work permits for staff from outside the EU and exemption from hosting state taxation. It was recently extended to include countries that were previously not hosting any establishments or staff. Anyone who is a citizen of the EU is free to take CERN to the EU court which is the one with juristiction and it is still subject to the EU Parliament and the EU Commission.

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Yeah right--like that lawsuit they filed before the European Court of Human Rights that disappeared without a trace. . . .

Evidence please...

Besides the Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ) ist NOT the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR)...

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The evidence is the utter lack of evidence that anything at all is happening. If you can dig up anything, I would be very interested; my efforts to uncover anything have been in vain. To an outside observer, it looks like there's some sandbagging going on.

OK, you're saying that anyone who wanted could sue CERN for third-party effects in the so-called Court of Justice (ECJ)??? If it were that easy, I wonder why nobody has tried that avenue yet. My reading of the European opponents of the LHC at LHC Kritik is that they've had less luck getting legal traction than Sancho did in Hawaii. Which wasn't very much.

However, I think we can agree that no national court or tribunal has the right to sue CERN. Do you think that's fair?

Why is it any different to 'Crown Immunity' in the UK?

What is there to sue them for? You have to have a good case or the court won't hear it.

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Looks like Fox News issued a retraction of their Wednesday article:

The article does provide a good example of the circularity used by the safety arguments, though:
The safety argument is theory-based, and to confirm the theory, the experiment will have to be run.

In the end Gordon assures us: "we are pretty sure that the collider is safe and will not be causing any trouble to people living on Earth." Pretty sure? I'm pretty sure the Steelers will win tonight. Anybody want to bet a planet? To make it fair, I'll bet the Earth that Pittsburgh wins if someone else will bet Mars that Arizona wins.

What is "Crown immunity"? I don't think we have that in the States.

Third party effects, like loss of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If it's such a weak case, then there should be no harm in trying the case in court, right? If anything, it would enhance the legitimacy of CERN's position. So let's set up an international tribunal. Richard A. Posner will preside. I hope you don't mind!

Bold1. They tried but they could not even explain what exactly is their case and therefore the court did not accept the case.

Bold2: Correct, as CERN is under European legislation and LAW you have to turn to the European Court of Justice. And yes it is fair.
Because which law would you choose to judge the case? British law? German Law? French Law? Polish Law? Or possibly Irish? They differ you know. We do not have a harmonized european law, just many national legislators making their own laws according to european guidelines. We are on route to harmonize the many national laws into one truely european law, but we still have some way ahead. At the moment, when you sue in a memberstate, you are judged by the national law of that country. And as I already said, they do differ.
Thats why projects like CERN (you know EUROPEAN project) are placed under european law.

Oh and besides... Switzerland does not even belong to the European Community... So their law would differ even more. ;-)

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I am pretty sure that all the air in the room I am in isnt going to all go in to one corner and leave me in a vaccum. It isnt too hard a calculation, and IIRC, about a 10^-60 chance.

I am pretty sure that I am not going to get hit with a meteor.

I am pretty sure that a rogue star isnt going to flip the poles of the Earth.

I am pretty sure that I am not going to spontaneously combust.

I am pretty sure that I am not going to win the lottery every day for the rest of my life (about 10^-60000)

But I am not certain about any of these.

Guess what? CERN scientists live on Earth, their families live on Earth. They actually know what the risks are. They arent nutjobs who spend their weekends with a cat in their lap practicing their "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."

Your using media reports to try to bolster your arguement shows your flawed reasoning. You expect someone who dosent even understand what a hadron is to be able to accurately report the science, and dont even see that the media has a vested interest in generating news by reporting nonsense.

Give me a break! I'm pretty sure English is your first language. In case it's not, though, you should know that there are gradations of "sure". There is plain old, unqualified "sure" as in "I'm sure that I won't win the lottery every day for the rest of my life", and then there is "fairly sure", as in "I'm fairly sure the bus will show up on time". In between those is "pretty sure", as in "I'm pretty sure that the LHC won't destroy the planet". Heck, I'm pretty sure that the planet won't be destroyed. But "pretty sure" isn't good enough. Nothing less than reasonable certainty is good enough.

Also, the CERN scientists do not in fact know what the odds are. The odds are either 1 or 0; anything in between are merely informed betting odds of the kind used for horse races. And even if the CERN scientists did know the odds, they are prevented from saying anything other than zero:

James Gillies on CERN's censorship policies

From the New Yorker:

Quote:

Engelen [CERN's chief scientific officer] said that CERN officials are now instructed, with respect to the L.H.C.’s world-destroying potential, “not to say that the probability is very small but that the probability is zero.” (emphasis in the original)

As for the idea that CERN scientists would not risk their own family's lives: that's utterly ridiculous. Every time they put their son or daughter in a car or airplane, they are taking a small risk with their lives. I do it too. But whereas I don't mind subjecting my daughter to a 1 in a million chance of a fiery death, I do object strenuously to subjecting the Home Planet to a needless 1 in a million chance. There is a difference. Do you see it?

That is interesting. Is there a written opinion that says that?

If I were a Swiss citizen, considering that the LHC is mostly under Geneva, I would want that the operations at CERN to not be above Swiss law. We have a bit of the same problem here. California would like to impose stricter clean air standards than the federal government mandates. I think I heard that President Obama will allow individual states to set their own environmental standards (which I agree with). But that's off topic and intrudes on American politics. 'Nuff said.

In other words, the Swiss Army is not bound by NATO or EU contraints??? Outstanding!
Now this is totally unfair. The mainstream media coverage is nearly uniformly pro-slanted toward CERN and the LHC. The vast majority of stories that mention black holes, it's not the LHC that's the story, it's the crackpots, and how they are in league with the forces of anti-science--like intelligent design and creationism! I must say that I was disappointed that FOX put out that second article. But it just goes to show my point: even FOX News could not withstand the pressure. Did you notice that the 2nd article didn't even provide a link to the first? They didn't even say that it was a FOX News report! And that's too bad. Because the first article had a point--as did "KFC" in the arxivblog.com blog. First they tell us it's however many trillionths of a second, then they say it could be as long as several minutes. Well? Which IS IT? It doesn't inspire confidence. But now they ask us to believe them when they say it doesn't "seem" possible that the world could end. Doesn't seem possible? Why the weasel word? That's a statement that's not even up to Wikipedia standards. That was the point of the first FOX News article: we are betting the planet because it doesn't seem possible that the world will end, according to the latest, revised theory. (What can we expect next week?) CERN should have hired Mel Brooks instead of Philip Glass: this drama has less to do with Einstein On the Beach than with Space Balls.

What does the Swiss Army not being bound by NATO or EU constraints have to do with CERN?
None of the EU member states has any constraints on the military. There is no EU military command as such.
NATO has nothing to do with anything connected with the EU.

Crown immunity means that 'emanations' of the Crown are not susceptible to prosecution for offences either created by statute or of the common law.

It does not afford any protection from investigation but the Crown cannot be prosecuted. Instead a system of Crown censure and Crown notices is used, publicising the inspectors' findings.
Crown immunity also does not give protection from a civil claim for compensation.

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I call Penn and Teller's Showtime show.

The people who actually know what the LHC does are more than reasonably certain that there is no danger. If there was any real hint that there was danger, they wouldnt do it. It is people who dont know who keep this topic alive. It is foolish.

If 'resonable certainty' is the requirement, why arent we trying to make a meteor defence. After all, we are absolutely certain, which is more certain than 'reasonably certain' that Earth is going to get smacked by a rock atsome point.
I call the show again.

The CERN scientist have a really good idea what the odds are. They are zero

You dont.

You simply refuse to believe that there is no chance, to the point of a conspiracy to hide the fact that there is a danger.
The Swiss army is not bound by EU or NATO since it is not a member of either.
Have you ever considered that 'if it blows up the planet, it leads', is a variant of 'if it bleeds it leads'?

If the media did not see a way to make controversy here, you would never have heared about this. Just like you dont get good coverage of anything scientific.

Resorting to conspiracy mode really kinda proves my point

I'm not sure what math they are using, but a 22 iron atom massed black hole (BH) only attracts matter at a simmilar rate to just 22 equivlent iron atoms.



If a mini BH was stable, then it could be expect to absorb a rare electron out of many that come close. The rest of them enter quantum orbits just as if the BH was an atomic nucleous.



Because the mini BH would capture electron into orbits, even if temporary ones, it has the same same resistance to absorbing other matter that regular atoms do.



So there is no difference to absorbsion rates then for regular matter, upto a certain point where the mini BH is massive enough that it no longer capture electrons, but pulls them into itself. Thats around 2kg of mass (roughly). Only at that point and after will it grow fast.



Before then it aquires mass at a rate of 1 electron ever 5 seconds (again this is a rough aproximation). To aquire the mass of equivlent of an additional iron atom, it would take 5.31 days. To get to the size it would need to be able to overcome electron pressure to hit a point of run away absorbsion, (about 2kg mass) it would therefor take 291,232,242,516,489,000,000,000 years.

So it is not anything to worry over.

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Warren, when you were told that any mBH generated at CERN would not pose a problem because it would evaporate through Hawking radiation within microseconds, you said Hawking radiation might not exist. Now, you invoke Hawking radiation to counter dgavin.

Please, choose one or the other and make your arguments fit your choice.

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It's true that at first I was focused on the idea that Hawking radiation might fail altogether. After all, it has never been observed empiriclly. On the other hand, Hawking radiation is the simplest explanation that agrees with quantum mechanics. As Giddings and Mangano point out, although the possibility that Hawking radiation could fail is not totally excluded by theory and experiment, it would require the existence of some sort of heretofore unknown persistence mechanism. Also, if there were no Hawking radiation, then Schwinger radiation (that's the type that rapidly dissipates any net charge possessed by the black hole, ensuring that the black hole remains neutral) wouldn't work either. That would in turn entail that such metastable black holes would most likely be charged, in which case CR-produced mBH's would be stopped by the atmosphere, in which case, the fact that the Earth is still here would exclude the existence of such mBH's.

However, Plaga's and now Casadio et al.'s analyses don't depend on Hawking radiation to fail completely. Rather, it's a race between Hawking radiation and accretion that determines whether mBH's get big enough fast enough to be potentially problematic. The effect of this argument on p_catastrophe is that it does away with the ontologically expensive, a priori improbabability of a new mechanism that suppresses Hawking radiation, and it ensures that any mBH's will rapidly neutralize themselves through Schwinger radiation, so that the CR-produced mBH's would not in fact get trapped by Earth's gravity, and so the mere presence of the Earth cannot exclude such mBH's. In other words, disaster scenarios with Hawking radiation are actually more plausible than scenarios that rely on the ad hoc suppression of Hawking radiation.

While we're on the scenario where there is Hawking radiation, let me add that a little while ago I pointed out what I thought was an error Casadio et al.'s paper. In their model they assume that an mBH will grow fast until it stops until it comes to "rest", at which point, only the mBH's gravity will cause further influxes of matter, and since the mBH's Schwartzchild radius (~1 angstrom) is much smaller than an atom, then the rate of influx will go to close to zero, meanwhile Hawking radiation will continue unabated, and the mBH will rapidly evaporate away.

However, deep within the interior of the Earth, there is no such thing as rest. The molecules surrounding the mBH would be at around 7,000 K. One can take the figure for the average kinetic energy, and solving for the foruma K.E. = 1/2 m v² and substituting the mass of an Fe atom, I got an average velocity of 2.5 km/s for vibrating iron atoms. I'm in the right ball park because the speed of sound down there is on the order of 6 km/s.

I actually put the question to Lubos Motl himself. Here was his response:

So that tells me I'm on the right track. Assuming that Casadio and Plaga did not in fact make the 23 order of magnitude error (Giddings and Mangano are ignoring Plaga for the time being, and Dr. Motl has, by his own admission, only taken a cursory glance at Plaga and Casadio), Casadio is in fact in error by not taking into account the background velocity of the atoms composing the medium in which the mBH would be immersed in.

Now I haven't done the calculations, but it shouldn't be too hard to substitute a velocity of 2.5 km/s, for the early-Bondi accretion phase, and see if that outraces the Hawking radiation. If so, we had better hope that we don't exist in 5 dimensions!

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Not exactly, but it's in the comments section of his blog. So it's hardly a secret. Here's the link to the comments.

I think they must be ignoring the fact that a mini Black Hole, would caputure electrons into orbits, the same as normal atoms do.

And it's not somethign one can really ignore and still be accurate. A 7000k temperature is not even enough to prevent the capture of free electrons. Even if it can only hold onto them temporarily this would give black holes that same electron resistance to other matter.

As soon as a BH accretes it's own electron shell, it's collision rates drop to that of normal matter.

At that point hawking radiation should take over and it would evaporate. But even if it somehow didn't it would take a long long time to accrete anymore matter.

I can't think of any mechanism that would prevent an atom sized black hole from acreeting it's own electron shell.

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So it's not a private email, it's a public comment. Then we can discuss it.

I'm sorry, but what I get from all this is that you were "against" Hawking radiation until it wasn't a problem to your "scenarios." Then you were okay with it, especially since you could use it in arguing against dgavin.

Seems like a version of cherry picking.

Well, you did some cherry picking there, too, in an attempt to support your scenarios. So, I picked a couple of cherries that seem not to support you:
* Plaga doesn't make any sense.
* The evaporation rate by Hawking radiation (which you seem to accept now) is 10²⁰ faster than the mBH growth rate.
* And "velocities of objects that were flying near the black hole before it was there are higher than the velocities that can reasonably be obtained by the black hole's gravitational action," which would seem to say the mBH can't capture them.

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