Lab fireball 'may be black hole'

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2005-03-17 07:25am

A fireball created in a US particle accelerator has the characteristics of a black hole, a physicist has said.

It was generated at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York, US, which smashes beams of gold nuclei together at near light speeds.

Horatiu Nastase says his calculations show that the core of the fireball has a striking similarity to a black hole.

His work has been published on the pre-print website arxiv.org and is reported in New Scientist magazine.

When the gold nuclei smash into each other they are broken down into particles called quarks and gluons.

These form a ball of plasma about 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. It can be detected because it absorbs jets of particles produced by the beam collisions.

But Nastase, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, says there is something unusual about this fireball.

Ten times as many jets were being absorbed by the fireball as were predicted by calculations.

The Brown researcher thinks the particles are disappearing into the fireball's core and reappearing as thermal radiation, just as matter falls into a black hole and comes out as "Hawking" radiation.

BBC

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-03-17 08:46am

Anyone recall that Doomwatch TV movie from '98? In that movie of the popular '70s disaster prevention show, they had a power company that made an artificial black hole, a charged rotating one, that was kept in place by a huge EM field. They used it to throw away nuclear waste and recoup on energy from Hawking radiation. Problem was, after the Doomwatch group found out about the covering up of this project, they discovered that the black hole would never disappear in a suitable timeline and that the thing would have to be kept there forever, essentially. But the building may rot away long before. I wish I could see that again.

Well, first thing that popped into my head anyway. If a black hole was produced, it'd be so small as to evaporate within a short time or fall through to the centre of the planet and take many millenia to reach any real size. anyway.

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2005-03-17 09:08am

Creepy. Perhaps they should be a bit careful.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2005-03-17 09:20am

Found and saved.

If a black hole formed that was heavy enough to exist for long enough to not almost immediately evaporate formed, then it would devour the earth in short order.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2005-03-17 09:38am

My first thought was that this could lead to a lucrative defense contract, until I realized that a blackhole weapon would completely fuck up the Earth. Then I realized that it could still lead to a lucrative government contract, only more in the way of "extortion" than "research grant".

Mobiboros · Post by **Mobiboros** » 2005-03-17 09:46am

HemlockGrey wrote:My first thought was that this could lead to a lucrative defense contract, until I realized that a blackhole weapon would completely fuck up the Earth. Then I realized that it could still lead to a lucrative government contract, only more in the way of "extortion" than "research grant".

The problem being that the RHIC ring is located at Brookhaven National Labs which is a Department of Energy facility. So anything they discover is already under government contract.

SWPIGWANG · Post by **SWPIGWANG** » 2005-03-17 09:58am

nonetheless, this could lead to more grants.....nothing gets government money like fancy, cool sounding stuff. :p

As for blackhole weapons, gravity is no go becasuse it would be too heavy(duh), and hawking's radiation would close it to blow up the producer unless the blackhole is too heavy to be useful.

kheegster · Post by **kheegster** » 2005-03-17 12:51pm

Very interesting stuff....I think it's a great interface between particle physics and general relativity, if true. Anyway don't lose any sleep over a runaway BH devouring the entire world. As the article notes, the effect of gravity is laughably small compared with the other fundamental forces at anything other than astronomical scales.

kheegster · Post by **kheegster** » 2005-03-17 03:20pm

Hmm...I was just glancing through the pre-print paper mentioned in the article. Strangely, he was the sole author of the paper. I've never seen particle physics papers with less than at least a dozen co-authors before.

Sharp-kun · Post by **Sharp-kun** » 2005-03-17 03:47pm

How long till people start to panic over this?

Mobiboros · Post by **Mobiboros** » 2005-03-17 03:53pm

Sharp-kun wrote:How long till people start to panic over this?

People constantly panic over the research at BNL. Live 15 minutes from the facility and you hear people panic and over-react all the time. This will only add to it.

Boyish-Tigerlilly · Post by **Boyish-Tigerlilly** » 2005-03-17 05:24pm

That's so fucking cool. I wonder if they will give follow ups.

Thinkmarble · Post by **Thinkmarble** » 2005-03-17 06:46pm

Preprint as pdf

tumbletom · Post by **tumbletom** » 2005-03-17 07:11pm

Sharp-kun wrote:How long till people start to panic over this?

Mini black holes are like anything Nuh-ku-lar----they are teh ev1l!!!!

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2005-03-17 07:11pm

Can it be moved, 'disassembled' and recreated?

Because if so, hey, build on in every nuclear reactor in the country, toss the waste in once a month, and then disassemble it. Nice clean way of nuclear waste disposal.

If not, well, I'd be careful trying to play with black holes with our level of technology.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2005-03-17 07:28pm

Maybe we'll get lucky and get some new physics from this. I've got my fingers crossed for some kind of FTL in my lifetime... Please oh please oh please let me conquer Alpha Centauri.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-03-17 09:23pm

Solauren wrote:Can it be moved, 'disassembled' and recreated?

Because if so, hey, build on in every nuclear reactor in the country, toss the waste in once a month, and then disassemble it. Nice clean way of nuclear waste disposal.

If not, well, I'd be careful trying to play with black holes with our level of technology.

How does one disassemble a black hole? It isn't a chest of drawers, there are certain problems when dealing with a point in space-time that disobeys fundamental laws of physics. Your idea is good in theory, like that TV movie I mentioned. But do you really trust every nuke reactor owning nation on the planet with a black hole waste system?

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2005-03-17 10:20pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:
Solauren wrote:Can it be moved, 'disassembled' and recreated?

Because if so, hey, build on in every nuclear reactor in the country, toss the waste in once a month, and then disassemble it. Nice clean way of nuclear waste disposal.

If not, well, I'd be careful trying to play with black holes with our level of technology.
How does one disassemble a black hole? It isn't a chest of drawers, there are certain problems when dealing with a point in space-time that disobeys fundamental laws of physics. Your idea is good in theory, like that TV movie I mentioned. But do you really trust every nuke reactor owning nation on the planet with a black hole waste system?

I think he meant the machine, maybe, because if you could create a mini black hole every so often at these places it couild help with the nuclear waste problem.

Robert Walper · Post by **Robert Walper** » 2005-03-17 10:42pm

I'm pretty skeptical, but haven't read the actual article. Did they or didn't actually create one? My immediate reaction was "Yeah right...bullshit."

Isn't a a black hole by definition a collapsed star with gravitation strength so strong not even light can escape? I don't see how hell we could've created one unless the term black hole is being used loosely here...

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-03-17 10:58pm

Robert Walper wrote:I'm pretty skeptical, but haven't read the actual article. Did they or didn't actually create one? My immediate reaction was "Yeah right...bullshit."

Isn't a a black hole by definition a collapsed star with gravitation strength so strong not even light can escape? I don't see how hell we could've created one unless the term black hole is being used loosely here...

You're relying on a very basic definition of a black hole. Intense gravitational disruption as caused by a certain mass star dying and collapsing is one way for them to form, another is to have a high energy impact occur that disrupts sub-atomic particles. The smashing of these atoms is able to simulate the Big Bang which has been done before, yet you don't see people calling bullshit because we haven't destroyed this universe or made a smaller one in the lab for instance. It's generally bad practice to call bullshit on something that is printed in such an esteemed physics journal like arXiv.org.

The black hole would likely be smaller than an atom and easily able to miss if it wasn't for such well controlled environments. It may evaporate in no time at all if it isn't fed for a while, but as to what they plan on doing with it, who knows?

If you have any further questions, I'm sure Kuroneko will be happy to jump in and answer them. It has been a few years since I did any real hard physics work.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2005-03-18 03:03am

SyntaxVorlon wrote:Found and saved.

If a black hole formed that was heavy enough to exist for long enough to not almost immediately evaporate formed, then it would devour the earth in short order.

Don't worry, the Lions, Tigers, and Bears will save the Earth.

A cookie for the reference, obviously.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2005-03-18 03:38am

It would be the story with my favorite Jewish/Palestinian romance.

Give me the cookie, oh nicest of all Russians.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2005-03-18 10:18am

Hyperion, and I wish I could get that cookie but I know Imperial Overlord has already got it.

Thinkmarble · Post by **Thinkmarble** » 2005-03-18 11:27am

Admiral Valdemar wrote: It's generally bad practice to call bullshit on something that is printed in such an esteemed physics journal like arXiv.org.

arXiv.org is not an esteemed physics journal.
It is a preprint server.
A preprint server without peer review at that.
It is a useful tool but do not overestimate it's credibility.

Kuroneko · Post by **Kuroneko** » 2005-03-18 11:52am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Anyone recall that Doomwatch TV movie from '98? In that movie of the popular '70s disaster prevention show, they had a power company that made an artificial black hole, a charged rotating one, that was kept in place by a huge EM field. They used it to throw away nuclear waste and recoup on energy from Hawking radiation.

That makes very little sense, since Hawking radiation is a soup of particles, particularly for charged black holes, which lose their charge fairly quickly. All this would accomplish is make the surroundings radioactive, indeed more much more radiactive than the original nuclear waste.

HemlockGrey wrote:My first thought was that this could lead to a lucrative defense contract, until I realized that a blackhole weapon would completely fuck up the Earth.

Fortunately, black holes of that size are harmless.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:You're relying on a very basic definition of a black hole. Intense gravitational disruption as caused by a certain mass star dying and collapsing is one way for them to form, another is to have a high energy impact occur that disrupts sub-atomic particles.

Right; classically, a black hole is a region with an event horizon in all reference frames. Arguably, this last condition is inherent in the notion of 'event horizon', but many use it more liberally, by including Rindler horizons (a type of horizon present in accelerated reference frames). In relativity, this would be caused by any sufficiently dense collection of mass-energy, with the actual amount of mass-energy completely irrelevant, except of course as a matter of scale. However, the black holes in that paper are not classical.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:It's generally bad practice to call bullshit on something that is printed in such an esteemed physics journal like arXiv.org.

You're right in that it should not be simply dismissed in such a fashion, but suspending judgement until further notice is not unreasonable in this case, paticularly since the field of string theory is not as yet as well-established as relativity and quantum mechanics. I don't wish to disparage arxiv.org, but it is still a preprint service. While at this time newly-coming authors have to be endorsed by those already present, and papers have been forcibly pulled from arxiv.org before (most heinously on the grounds of plagiarism), and many more revised based on peer input, the fact that it publishes preprints means that the papers present are submitted before they undergo peer review. That is actually what it is there for--to widely disseminate papers so they can be peer reviewed by a very wide audience rather than a handful of academics as in most journals.

Dual black holes are not classical--they don't even have a singularity, but they do have an event horizon. This in itself is not too suprising, since they are products of string theory, but the author's liberal switch to classical results seems strange (the mass/temperature relationship is the result of Bekenstein entropy and Hawking radiation). On one hand, there should not be anything wrong with it per see--they depend on the event horizon rather than singularity; one the other, unlike relativity, QM/string theory do have an absolute scale (Planck), which is why one would expect such use to be valid on the large-scale only. Then again, I'm unfamiliar with string theory in the first place, so just because it runs counter to my intuition should not be a condemnation; I'll just wait and see what other string theorists say about it.