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Will Black Holes swallow Switzerland?
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Several weeks ago I wrote an article about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. To summarize, the LHC is located in a tunnel 27 kilometers (17 miles) in circumference 175 meters beneath the Swiss-French border near the city of Geneva Switzerland.
On September 10, 2008, a beam of protons were successfully launch in the main ring of the LHC but due to problems with two superconducting bending magnets, the Collider was shut down on September 19th. It is anticipated that the problems will be resolved and this massive machine will be switched back on in October of this year.
Following the publication of an earlier article on "Finding the 'God Particle'..", I received several comments questioning the safety of the experiments that are to be undertaken once the Collider is back on line.
Make no mistake about it, this is one powerful machine. When it finally gets going at full power, trillions of protons will be set in motion along the magnetic track and set racing in opposite direction at speeds exceeding 99.999999 percent the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) while engaging in more than 500,000 head-on collisions each second.
The collision of these highly accelerated protons at breathtaking speeds will provide a momentary burst of a phenomenal reservoir of energy and, according to Albert Einstein's famous formula (E=mc2), that reservoir of energy will quickly be converted into a broad variety of more elementary particles.
With all this energy created below the Swiss-French border, one of the several safety concerns involves the possible creation of Micro Black Holes. In this article, I will try to address the possible effects of a man made mini Black Holes popping into existence beneath the City of Geneva.
What is a Black Hole?
Simply put, as originally conceived, a Black Hole is a object so massive and dense that its gravitational field traps anything and everything that gets too close and where nothing can escape its gravity. Since not even light can escape a Black Hole, the term "Black Hole" was born.
While it has been confirmed that massive Black Holes permeate the universe; closer to home, a super massive Black Hole rests (and grows) the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy. In reality however, a Black Hole can have any mass. Think of the ordinary apple that tempted Adam and Eve and motivated Newton to discover the laws of gravity. Take that apple and squeeze it to an almost infinitely small size (about a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a meter across) and you'd have a mini black hole - with the mass of an apple.
From the LHC's conception, physicists realized that the proton-proton collisions might pack so much energy into such a small volume of space that microscopic black holes, holes even lighter than the one created by the apple, may form.
So the question is, since a Black Hole has such a ravenous appetite, wouldn't a mini Black Hole created by the massive Collider pose a problem? If a Black Hole is created near Geneva could it proceed to swallow Switzerland on a journey that will inevitably devour the planet?
While there may be other concerns related to the LHC, the fear that a Black Hole will devour Switzerland is unwarranted. Here's Why:
Steven Hawking, the great English physicist, established that a tiny Black Hole on a microscopic level; the kind that may be created beneath the streets of Geneva, would disintegrate in a tiny fraction of a second. Long enough to be identified and studied but short enough to avoid growing into anything larger. According Dr. Hawking, "Black Holes Aren't Completely Black" since they actually emit a stream of what is now referred to as Hawking radiation which will eventually lead to the evaporation of all Black Holes. Given enough time, even a massive black hole will vanish.
But how do we know that Dr. Hawking is correct when he postulates that any Black Hole which may be created at the LHC will disintegrate instead of growing and devouring the Earth. Are we willing to bet the fate of our plant on an untested theory? If the Collider does contain enough energy to create a mini black hole, is there any real proof that the LHC will only create black holes that will instantaneously evaporate? Well, fortunately, the answer is yes! That answer can been found in the life cycle of "Cosmic rays".
Cosmic rays are high energy particles that constantly rain down on Earth with energies that are far in excess of those attainable by the LHC. When an extremely energetic cosmic particle hits a proton or neutron in the atmosphere with sufficient force, a cosmic ray could create a tiny black hole. Since these cosmic events, which have been occurring since almost the beginning of time, haven't resulted in the end of times; the LHC's comparatively tame energy collisions most assuredly won't either.
Of course, if all the scientists are wrong, they won't be around to say they're sorry.
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