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Trioxin
Apprentece
10 Posts |
 Posted - Jul 18 2007 : 06:19:43 AM
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this brief section of an article was cut and pasted from kurzweilai.net
"What do you think of Sir Martin Rees' concerns about the risk of creating black holes on Earth in his book, Our Final Hour?"
"I haven't read his book, but perhaps Sir Martin Rees is referring to many press reports that claim that the Earth may be swallowed up by a black hole created by our machines. This started with a letter to the editor in Scientific American asking whether the RHIC accelerator in Brookhaven, Long Island, will create a black hole which will swallow up the earth. This was then picked up by the Sunday London Times who then splashed it on the international wire services, and all of a sudden, we physicists were deluged with hundreds of emails and telegrams asking whether or not we are going to destroy the world when we create a black hole in Long Island."
...am i still in the stone age or what?... what the hell is an RHIC accelerator?... and fancy b.s. sci net lingo or not- is it even practical for a black hole to even to exist in our ozone?
also check out this short cartoon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60UVNS57iMo ...very entertaining- and put on them thinkin' caps!
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"Launch the Polaris, the End doesn't scare us- When will this cease? The warheads will all Rust in Peace. |
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boron
Mad Scientist
Canada
223 Posts |
Posted - Jul 18 2007 : 09:45:41 AM
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Well an RHIC is:
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the
department's Brookhaven National Laboratory. RHIC is the world's newest and
biggest particle accelerator for nuclear physics research.
And this was taken from http://www.livescience.com/environment/060919_black_holes.html
Scientists could generate a black hole as often as every second when the world's most powerful particle accelerator comes online in 2007.
This potential "black hole factory" has raised fears that a stray black hole could devour our planet whole. The Lifeboat Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence, has stated that artificial black holes could "threaten all life on Earth" and so it proposes to set up "self-sustaining colonies elsewhere."
But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.
Black holes possible
The accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is under construction in an underground circular tunnel nearly 17 miles long at the world's largest physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva.
Black holes are among a handful of threats to the planet. But Earth is more resilient than you might think. >>>
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At its maximum, each particle beam the collider fires will pack as much energy as a 400-ton train traveling at 120 mph. By smashing particles together and investigating the debris, scientists hope to help solve mysteries such as the origin of mass and why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
If theories about the universe containing extra dimensions other than those of space and time are correct, the accelerator might also generate black holes, Landsberg and his colleague Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University in California calculated in 2001. Physicists Steve Giddings at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Scott Thomas at Stanford University in California reached similar conclusions.
Black holes possess gravitational fields so strong that nothing can escape them, not even light. They normally form when the remains of a dead star collapse under their own gravity, squeezing their mass together. Although black holes can't be seen, astronomers infer their existence by the gravitational effects they have on gas and stars around them.
Making black holes
A number of models of the universe suggest extra dimensions of reality exist that are each folded up into sizes ranging from as tiny as a proton, or roughly a millionth of a billionth of a meter, to as big as a fraction of a millimeter. At distances comparable to the size of these extra dimensions, gravity becomes far stronger, these models suggest. If this is true, the collider will cram enough energy together to initiate gravitational collapses that produce black holes.
If any of the models are right, the accelerator should create a black hole anywhere from every second to every day, each roughly possessing 5,000 times the mass of a proton and each a thousandth of a proton in size or smaller, Landsberg said.
Still, any fears that such black holes will consume the Earth are groundless, Landsberg said.
For one thing, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking calculated all black holes should emit radiation, and that tiny black holes should lose more mass than they absorb, evaporating within a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, "before they could gobble up any significant amount of matter," Landsberg said.
Not destroyed yet
CERN spokesman and former research physicist James Gillies also pointed out that Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn't been destroyed yet.
"Still, let's assume that even if Hawking is a genius, he's wrong, and that such black holes are more stable," Landsberg said. Nearly all of the black holes will be traveling fast enough from the accelerator to escape Earth's gravity. "Even if you produced 10 million black holes a year, only 10 would basically get trapped, orbiting around its center," Landsberg said.
However, such trapped black holes are so tiny, they could pass through a block of iron the distance from the Earth to the Moon and not hit anything. They would each take about 100 hours to gobble up one proton.
At that rate, even if one did not take into account the fact that each black hole would slow down every time it gobbled up a proton, and thus suck down matter at an even slower rate, "about 100 protons would be destroyed every year by such a black hole, so it would take much more than the age of universe to destroy even one milligram of Earth material," Landsberg concluded. "It's quite hard to destroy the Earth."
If the Large Hadron Collider does create black holes, not only will it prove that extra dimensions of the universe exist, but the radiation that decaying black holes emit could yield clues that help finally unite all the current ideas about the forces of nature under a "theory of everything."
Hope that cleared it up.
David |
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Trioxin
Apprentece
10 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2007 : 02:12:39 AM
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wow..yea, thank man- very informative...i tried to look around online for a few but couldnt find much. .
very, very interesting
-R |
"Launch the Polaris, the End doesn't scare us- When will this cease? The warheads will all Rust in Peace. |
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boron
Mad Scientist
Canada
223 Posts |
Posted - Jul 19 2007 : 09:22:23 AM
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| Some pretty cool stuff... |
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mrgone
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1176 Posts |
Posted - Jan 26 2008 : 11:26:37 AM
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| I think God would stick his finger in it until the next world is done. You see, He is in a few of those dimentions from time to time and knows what's up. You could say, He's "been there done that". |
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cyclopsitis
Nobel Prize Winner
Canada
732 Posts |
Posted - Jan 26 2008 : 11:49:23 PM
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| mrgone I agree! I just stand in awe of what I see and what I can't see. I can't even try to understand it and that is proof enough for me that things had to be created by a higher being. |
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mrgone
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1176 Posts |
Posted - Jan 27 2008 : 06:02:22 AM
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| No doubt in my heart or mind. But I'm not trying to belittle the topic by any means. These are some very interesting concepts. I have always since a little kid been fascinated with particle accelerators and the physics and chemistry discovered by them. Just, we must keep it all in perspective. Arrogance is the enemy of knowledge. Humility is what keeps us asking questions. |
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Jan 27 2008 : 10:11:33 AM
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Seems like typical fear mongering by those who don't understand. Not that I know much about theoretical physics, but to even suggest something like that could happen is ridiculous.
It's a bit like the so-called health hazards posed by electromagnetic radiation. Every few years there's a flurry of articles that says we're all doomed because of (insert popular wireless technology here) and we must stop using it immediately. The fear in the UK currently over WiFi stuff in schools is simply laughable. |
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binaryblade
Apprentice
Canada
136 Posts |
Posted - Jan 29 2008 : 3:25:45 PM
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| In the Medieval ages, any appearance of electricity was the work of god and magic. |
Suddenly I realize that I, like most of humanity, only know enough to be dangerous. |
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mrgone
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1176 Posts |
Posted - Jan 29 2008 : 6:28:08 PM
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| And even before that they did math that blows us away. We still can't duplicate the pyramids. |
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binaryblade
Apprentice
Canada
136 Posts |
Posted - Jan 29 2008 : 11:00:27 PM
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| who says we can't, although amazing feats of engineering, man power and endurace there have been plenty proof of concept experiments to show how it could have beed done. The question is not can we duplicate the pyramids but why would we? |
Suddenly I realize that I, like most of humanity, only know enough to be dangerous. |
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mrgone
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1176 Posts |
Posted - Jan 30 2008 : 09:54:51 AM
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I don't believe we have the technology to move 15 ton blocks around and place them with such precision. The sidewalks around them are more level than anything we can produce.
There's alot of wierd technology around those things. I heard that recently they found they were actually there before the Egyption civilization. That the hieroglyphics was just Egyption graffiti.
Anyway, what say you about the mathematical abilities of some of the ancient Greeks? What about Leonardo da Vinci or Copernacus?
I guess what bothered me about your earlier statement, is you made it sound as if there were no advanced civilizations before now. As if men were just primitive superstitious beings in the past. You pointed out a Medieval period of time. Well yes, This was a period of the dark ages where knowledge was supressed and books were burned by rulers who sought control over the masses. Religion was removed from the people. Certainly they thought anything they didn't understand was magic. They were deliberately dumbed down.
Have you ever read the "Book of Enoh"? It's all over the internet. You can get it in a flash. It was discovered as part of the Dead Sea Scrolls and in fact it was part of the bible before the King James. It was common knowledge up until about 400 years after Christ. |
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Jan 30 2008 : 09:55:59 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by mrgone
And even before that they did math that blows us away. We still can't duplicate the pyramids.
Of course we can. It would just cost a stupid amount of money.
The Egyptians had no hope of accomplishing things we do everyday. Just typing into this forum is so far beyond their realm of comprehension that probably even our best linguists could not even make them grasp the concept. Could the Egyptians build a space station? A hydroelectric power plant? A bridge from the mainland to Prince Edward Island? Nope...  |
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mrgone
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1176 Posts |
Posted - Jan 30 2008 : 10:08:13 AM
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| Another simultaneous post. So let me cover here by saying, I don't believe the Egyptians built the pyramids and in fact, coincidentally, they might have been the power plants we seek today. |
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binaryblade
Apprentice
Canada
136 Posts |
Posted - Jan 31 2008 : 3:57:51 PM
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| My point is this, particle physics and Quantum Mechanics are today's medieval electricity. people fear it because they don't understand it, and even worse than not understanding is being afraid to try. The Greeks and the Persians had a wonderously developed culture but their Pythagorean threom is out Tensor Matricies. They were Meticulus yes but still lack the understanding that we have today and hopefully we lack the understanding that people 1000 years from know will take for granted. As for the Book of Enoh, just because something was written 2000 years ago doesn't make it true. |
Suddenly I realize that I, like most of humanity, only know enough to be dangerous. |
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mrgone
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1176 Posts |
Posted - Jan 31 2008 : 5:14:36 PM
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| 2000 years? Try more like 5000. Did you read it? Where do you think math comes from? Trust me. Those mathematicians could whip are ass, computer or no computer. |
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Black Hole Machine?
