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End of the world due in nine days


CoFarmer

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Black holes don't destroy the universe. They are all over the universe now. The middle of our galaxy probably has a huge black hole located there. Think of a black hole as being a large star that takes up very little space. A large star doesn't automatically suck in everything around it; most things nearby (planets, comets, asteroids) are orbiting around it. The same is true of a black hole. When a large star collapses and forms a black hole it doesn't gain any more gravitational pull then when it was a still a star.

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I only read a portion of this thread, but you guys realize that the risk that some warn of is not a black hole as you normally assume, aka something that sucks in for extended periods of time?

What is being warned of is a microscopic black hole that, in a fraction of a second, absorbs material in the vicinity and directly afterwards explodes. The energy being released from that (basically your mass that has been absorbs right before converted to energy) is estimated around 12 Mt TNT, that means a good size cold war hydrogen bomb or about 800 Nagasaki bombs.

So it would just wipe out Switzerland, some of France and Bavaria, in other words who would really care?

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It's the latest of the Hadron bashing papers, reference #18 in the collider's wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#cite_note-2008_Plaga-17

It don't say I believe that paper, I was just pointing out that what the critics (whether they are nuts or not) don't warn of a suck-up black hole. It's a simple explosion.

If I understand this correctly, then a microscopic black hole will always explode after abording the same amount of matter (called the Eddington limit) and hence always have the same energy in the explosion, which some esitimated as 12 Mt.

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You know what I really wonder about?

Say you are an underwriter for a big liability insurance corporation, and this new customer wants liability coverage. You need to make up a suitable premium, which will be based on risk.

The report from your risk analysis team comes back and they say "these dudes might create a black hole that might swallow up Earth or the Universe or somefink".

I wanna see that premium :)smile.gif

(what's with these stupid default smileys? Do I really have to drag my own around now?)

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This is getting nauseating. Nutty "The End is Nigh" people are waving their signs here, there, everywhere!

Because the preprint archive, arXiv, is basically open to everyone, lots of absolutely humorous submissions appear there on almost daily basis. Having a submission on the preprint archive does not equal to "publishing", let alone papers appearing on professionally recognized peer-reviewed journals.

Whether we go to loony land or not, A response was drafted by professional people with degrees, probably because this marketplace of ideas has received so much attention lately, for some peculiar, odd reason.

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This is getting nauseating. Nutty "The End is Nigh" people are waving their signs here, there, everywhere!

Because the preprint archive, arXiv, is basically open to everyone, lots of absolutely humorous submissions appear there on almost daily basis. Having a submission on the preprint archive does not equal to "publishing", let alone papers appearing on professionally recognized peer-reviewed journals.

Whether we go to loony land or not, A response was drafted by professional people with degrees, probably because this marketplace of ideas has received so much attention lately, for some peculiar, odd reason.

The response is very low on physics, too. The problem is that, for crying out loud, nobody has even observed a micro black hole even through some obscure sensory out in the wild yet, much less measured anything about one. We know basically nothing about it except for Hawking's theory that he pulled out of thin air because it fit some existing phenomenons.

It comes down to both sides evaluating the available theories as to which one fits their experience and their so-far view of the world better.

BTW, the timeframe in this thread title is off, the thing isn't going to full power beam until late October, and I wouldn't be surprised if the preparatory diet beam they test the thing with in the weeks before doesn't quite cooperate.

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The response is very low on physics, too. The problem is that, for crying out loud, nobody has even observed a micro black hole even through some obscure sensory out in the wild yet, much less measured anything about one. We know basically nothing about it except for Hawking's theory that he pulled out of thin air because it fit some existing phenomenons.

It comes down to both sides evaluating the available theories as to which one fits their experience and their so-far view of the world better.

BTW, the timeframe in this thread title is off, the thing isn't going to full power beam until late October, and I wouldn't be surprised if the preparatory diet beam they test the thing with in the weeks before doesn't quite cooperate.

Have you ever heard of observational constraints? We know for sure that mBHs are not 'xploding around us. Can you relate what that means? :)

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We know basically nothing about it except for Hawking's theory that he pulled out of thin air because it fit some existing phenomenons.

wow - nice contradiction in a single sentence!:eek:

As for a microblack hole generating a 12mT explosion - E=mc^2

How heavy is this black hole going to be? 2x10^-8 kg is apaprently the smallest stable black hole

Let's see - that'd give about 18 gigajoules of energy available (assuming I've dealt adequately with about 20 "0"'s!!)....well to put that in perspective, 1 ton of TNT has about 4 Gigajoules.....so the micro-black hole contains about as much energy as about 4.5 ton TNT equvalent.

and that assumes that all the energy is released in any explosion.

I guess that would make a mess....but I suspect it would leave Switzerland on the map....and if it were happening anywhere close by (say anywhere in/on the Earth) I think we'd notice it too.

unless I've mistaken my basic physics somewhere I don't think I'll lose too much sleep....

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All joking aside, this happens whenever a new technology or experiment appears that has some slim possibility to destroy mankind as we know it. I mean take nuclear weapons/energy, same thing "oh god we're all going to die". Its just natural to protest against something that they think is scary :D

That may be so, but I'm going to delay starting my shopping for Christmas just in case.

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And I always thought the French would be our undoing...or maybe the Canadians, French-Canadians at that, but never the Swiss

All along, in their secret Alpine underground laboratories and fortresses they have been planning this greatest of evils. Now they are about to spring this on the unsuspecting Earth: "Surrender all to us or see it destroyed! MWAHAHAHAHA!"

Or something like that.

Michael

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wow - nice contradiction in a single sentence!:eek: As for a microblack hole generating a 12mT explosion - E=mc^2 How heavy is this black hole going to be? 2x10^-8 kg is apaprently the smallest stable black hole Let's see - that'd give about 18 gigajoules of energy available (assuming I've dealt adequately with about 20 "0"'s!!)....well to put that in perspective' date= 1 ton of TNT has about 4 Gigajoules.....so the micro-black hole contains about as much energy as about 4.5 ton TNT equvalent. and that assumes that all the energy is released in any explosion. I guess that would make a mess....but I suspect it would leave Switzerland on the map....and if it were happening anywhere close by (say anywhere in/on the Earth) I think we'd notice it too. unless I've mistaken my basic physics somewhere I don't think I'll lose too much sleep....

Again, I can't vouch that what the Hadron bashing paper says it accurate, but the answer to your question from the paper is that this smallest black holes, when existing inside matter (such as air, soil) will not stay that small. It'll absort matter and then explode right away, and that is supposed to happen after it absorbed energy worth about 12 Mt TNT equivalent.

I guess we'll just have to try :D

(stupid smileys grin.gif)

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Have you ever heard of observational constraints? We know for sure that mBHs are not 'xploding around us. Can you relate what that means? :)

My understanding is that if they are in space they can't asorb the matter needed to then explode, but that the situation is different when one is embedded in matter (such as Swiss chocolate).

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My understanding is that if they are in space they can't asorb the matter needed to then explode, but that the situation is different when one is embedded in matter (such as Swiss chocolate).

Nah, sounds rubbish.

From their "perspective" (~ frame of reference), it's "void" whether they reside in the STP or in the outer reaches of our Solar System. These are subatomic states, near the Planck scale, even if some very speculative assertions go as far as proposing ordinary and not so ordinary electrons are mBHs. They are not suckers, they blow only imaginary particles. Quite slackers, they are. :)

Or have you confused this thing with this probabilistic effect?

And besides, not all mathematical formulations have any existing, real world representations.

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