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Comment Small Black Holes (Score 2) 220

Even if this collider could create a small black hole it wouldn't be a problem.

All black holes undergo a quantum mechanical equivilant of evaporation. The smaller they are, the quicker they evaporate their contents into the visible universe as radiation. The basic idea behind the theory is quantum tunneling. If you compress something into a very very small volume, and as the volume approaches the Plank scale, the probability that particles trapped (in the classical sense) inside this volume can exist outside it will increase. This happens because the Debroglie wavelength of the particles doesn't change.

Now, in order to create a black hole with the small ammount of matter inside the collider, you would be looking at a Shwartzchild radius in the Plank scale. Somewhere in the order of 10^-30 m. (Maybe someone can check me on this with the approximation R=GM/c^2....this value may be too low).

Anyway, at this scale the black hole would vanish in an incredibly short period of time. Far too short to vacuum cleaner the Earth into a blackhole spacetime.

Large black holes on the other hand evaporate on scales greater than the age of the universe. Something on the order of > 10^100 years.





Bones, do you know what you've done ? Pretty soon they'll want a peice of OUR action !!!

Star Trek, "A Peice of the Action"

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... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"

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