Reminder: LHC lights off Sept 10th

[Singular Intellect]

You would be more accurate if you stated that our current knowledge and understanding of physics and the universe decrees FTL an impossible concept.

It's one thing to make positive statements regarding established theories making specific predictions...quite another to assert the universe somehow bends to our understanding of it.

The universe has historically proven that is more than capable of breaking our theories; no theory has ever 'broken' the universe, and never will since they are merely the best reflection of it possible at the time.

Nothing has ever happened before the initiator of the event happened [that we are currently aware of.] Nothing has ever had more energy come out of it than went in total [that we are currently aware of.] There are things we know to be true and give the status of law [and can be accepted as such until conflicting evidence is discovered.] Unless you can show how thermodynamics and relativity/causality can be got around, then it's simply impossible, no matter what new physics we find, [even if they demand complete rewrites of current theories into more complex and advanced ones?] Learning more about a square peg won't allow you to fit it in a circular hole [unless you find a circular hole big enough that the square peg fits into the round hole regardless of different geometric configurations ], so to speak.

I've bolded what additions I made to your post, AV. I would earnestly point out I by no means did so to be irritating or as an attempt to be clever. I'm doing so to demostrate that I quite agree with you, but how my perception on the issue is not quite the same as yours.

Yes, we have incredibly useful and seemingly accurate theories about our universe, and I won't dream of seriously contesting them without quite a bit of verifiable evidence and reason to support such an endeavor.

However, when one considers how utterly insignificant the physical size and length of time our presence is relative to the universe, declaring our mind bogglingly limited testing field results (as compared to the rest of the universe) as pertaining to all of existence is akin to examining the properties of a single grain of sand and then asserting those properties as reflecting the behavior and attributes of all matter in the solar system.

[Singular Intellect]

The hack attacks from concerned idiots is saddening. Aren't we supposed to be living in enlightened times now?

One could argue it seems that while the pinnacle of enlightenment at the top of the pyramid gets higher, the base of ignorance also gets that much larger.

[Anguirus]

The hack attacks from concerned idiots is saddening. Aren't we supposed to be living in enlightened times now?

One could argue it seems that while the pinnacle of enlightenment at the top of the pyramid gets higher, the base of ignorance also gets that much larger.

Um...I guess one "could" argue this, but I see no logical reason for cultural enlightenment to follow the same set of rules as ancient architecture.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Ivory tower syndrome. The masses are more learned than they were in the past, but now indulge in more tedious and stupid past-times to while away, despite the greater sum of human knowledge.

How else do you explain modern celebrity worship in all its vacuous glory? Or the criticisms of £4bn being spent on this project to better understand the universe, while others demand more cash be spent on the Olympics: a glorified school sports day stretched to two weeks where being faster, stronger or more flexible than other humans is somehow groundbreaking and praiseworthy?

[Surlethe]

A few interesting technical corrections.

Black holes have mass, for one thing, and any black holes created by the LHC would be so small that they just pass through matter, only growing in size when they actually run into something. Since it's affected by gravity (because it has mass), it would be constantly under the affect of earth's gravity, so it would be bobbing around in the center until it picked up material.

It wouldn't just bob around in the center; it would be a simple harmonic oscillator from the surface on one side to the surface on the other -- i.e., from CERN to wherever is diametrically opposite CERN in the southern hemisphere. I'm sure you've done that basic mechanics problem where you have an airless hole drilled right through the Earth's center of mass and you drop a bowling ball or person in. It's exactly the same physical situation: negligible friction and an exactly parabolic potential.

As for the ISS, the gravitational pull of the black hole that would grow to absorb the earth would, in fact, be no bigger than the earth's itself; at no point did it gain MORE mass than that of the earth, afterall, since all it absorbed is... the earth. So the black hole would be earth sized and floating around the sun just peachy keen, maintaining the earth's gravity and therefore the ISS's orbit around the earth's gravitational body.

Yep. Technically, it would be Earth-massed; its radius would probably be something in the neighborhood of a baseball's. An Earth-sized black hole is actually amazingly large when you come to think of it; most neutron stars are only several miles in diameter, and black holes are even denser.

[Dooey Jo]

Since the black hole would be formed from two protons, it seems likely that it would retain their electrical charge, in which case it should bounce around quite a bit. At least until it's eaten two electrons.

[Joviwan]

Technical Corrections

Aaah, thanks muchly! Good to know I was on the right track at least.

So with that in mind, how long would the "eating earth" process take? The person I got this particular theory from said that the moment the black-hole grew to eat a molecule, it would blossom in 'size' so quickly that the earth would be destroyed before anyone really knew what was going on.

[Surlethe]

Since the black hole would be formed from two protons, it seems likely that it would retain their electrical charge, in which case it should bounce around quite a bit. At least until it's eaten two electrons.

Ah, true. I suppose I'm assuming tacitly that it's electrically neutral.

So with that in mind, how long would the "eating earth" process take? The person I got this particular theory from said that the moment the black-hole grew to eat a molecule, it would blossom in 'size' so quickly that the earth would be destroyed before anyone really knew what was going on.

I really don't know, to be honest. My gut feeling is that it would grow extremely slowly, because to be even a nanometer in radius (i.e., on the order of ten atomic diameters) it would have had to accumulate the mass of Mt Everest. The initial black hole, with a mass of 3e-27 kg, would have a radius of 5e-52 cm -- so a diameter of 1e-51 cm. Apparently, the radius of a proton is on the order of 1e-13 cm. So this black hole could probably pass right through a proton with no interaction, so long as it is electrically neutral. When you're talking about this order of distance, quantum effects dominate, so probably whether subatomic particles fall into the black hole is a matter of probability. Hell, I don't even know if you can treat the black hole as a discrete object; it's probably smeared out, too. And to boot, we don't know how QM interacts with curved spacetime. It's all a big question mark. But my gut feeling is that it would take quite a long time for it to accumulate enough mass to be even as large as a proton.

[Darkdrium]

Ok, ignorant question here, but can a black hole of that size even exist? Without evaporating almost instantly I mean.

[Dooey Jo]

The initial black hole, with a mass of 3e-27 kg, would have a radius of 5e-52 cm -- so a diameter of 1e-51 cm.

You forgot that the protons are accelerated
If they have ~10 TeV (combined), the radius of the hole should be around 1e-48 cm. This is still ridiculously small, of course, but who knows at what distance a particle would be considered eaten. Electrons and other particles are considered point-like after all.

Ok, ignorant question here, but can a black hole of that size even exist? Without evaporating almost instantly I mean.

Not if current theories apply to such a black hole, which they might not.

[Surlethe]

The initial black hole, with a mass of 3e-27 kg, would have a radius of 5e-52 cm -- so a diameter of 1e-51 cm.

You forgot that the protons are accelerated
If they have ~10 TeV (combined), the radius of the hole should be around 1e-48 cm.

Bah. Still orders of magnitude tinier than a proton.

This is still ridiculously small, of course, but who knows at what distance a particle would be considered eaten. Electrons and other particles are considered point-like after all.

Well, they are considered point-like classically, but when you're dealing with that level they're not point-like at all; they're spread out probabilistically. It's really weird.

[starslayer]

Yep. Technically, it would be Earth-massed; its radius would probably be something in the neighborhood of a baseball's.

Just a nitpick, but an Earth-mass black hole has a radius that is almost exactly that of your average ping-pong ball. Even the Sun, were it to suddenly collapse to a black hole, would only be a about a kilometer wide, IIRC.

Ok, ignorant question here, but can a black hole of that size even exist? Without evaporating almost instantly I mean.

Assuming Hawking radiation exists, a black hole with the mass of two protons (I'll ignore their ~10TeV of KE, just because I'm lazy and it really doesn't matter much here) will exist for, oh, 1.5E-96 seconds. This is 53 orders of magnitude shorter than the Planck time, the shortest possible time. This is just a long-winded way of agreeing with Dooey Jo.

[Dooey Jo]

Well, they are considered point-like classically, but when you're dealing with that level they're not point-like at all; they're spread out probabilistically. It's really weird.

That's what I meant (though I realised later that it was pretty strangely phrased). Even though they are considered point-like, they don't have to get infinitely close, or even anything near 10^-48 cm of each other, in order to interact. A really tiny black hole may behave in a similar fashion, at least electromagnetically if not gravitationally. But that's just weird.

[Korto]

Just before Test Shot Baker in 1946, Vice Admiral William H. Blandy had to make this newsreel to quell the fears of the public over the pending atomic shot:

The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the atmosphere, destroying all the oxygen. It will not blow a hole in the bottom of the ocean, causing all the water to run out and all the ships at sea to settle to the bottom. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics called me, setting off these bombs to satisfy some personal whim.

(my bolding)
Sorry, but I really have to know. Causing all the water to run out to where?

[Patrick Degan]

Just before Test Shot Baker in 1946, Vice Admiral William H. Blandy had to make this newsreel to quell the fears of the public over the pending atomic shot:

The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the atmosphere, destroying all the oxygen. It will not blow a hole in the bottom of the ocean, causing all the water to run out and all the ships at sea to settle to the bottom. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics called me, setting off these bombs to satisfy some personal whim.

(my bolding)
Sorry, but I really have to know. Causing all the water to run out to where?

Into the inner Hollow Earth, of course.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its called 'Pelucidar', actually

[Kuroneko]

Well, they are considered point-like classically, but when you're dealing with that level they're not point-like at all; they're spread out probabilistically. It's really weird.

This is somewhat of a thorny issue. While it is true that common descriptions of electrons are that they are point-like in classical physics and cloud-like in quantum mechanics, the two theories actually say the complete opposite: classical electromagnetism is logically incompatible with point-like charges, while in quantum mechanics, it is not the electron itself that gets smeared, but only its position. In classical EM, the momentum density of the electromagnetic field is proportional to the Poynting vector, E×B, which is nonzero for a moving charge, meaning that electric charge is at least in part responsible for the inertial mass. It turns out that if the electron's mass is solely due to its field, then it must have a radius of about 1fm (the exact number depenends on the distribution of charge within the electron), while a truly point-like charge would have infinite electromagnetic mass. Thus, 1fm is the lower limit on the electron radius required by classical electromagnetism. In QM, the electron is point-like, or in any case smaller than its own Compton wavelength, meaning it cannot have any parts.

As an interesting note, considerations of electron's electromagnetic mass gave E = mc² years before the special theory of relativity, while erroneous calculations gave E = (3/4)mc² even before that. For high velocities, the electromagnetic field lags behind the charge, deforming it in the direction of motion, which gives an additional factor of 1/sqrt(1-v²/c²).

Assuming Hawking radiation exists, a black hole with the mass of two protons (I'll ignore their ~10TeV of KE, just because I'm lazy and it really doesn't matter much here) will exist for, oh, 1.5E-96 seconds.

You probably shouldn't ignore it, since the KE is about four orders more than the proton mass, but it doesn't really affect the conclusion much.

[starslayer]

You probably shouldn't ignore it, since the KE is about four orders more than the proton mass, but it doesn't really affect the conclusion much.

Well sure, but we're dealing with 53 orders of magnitude. As you said, it doesn't affect the conclusion at all, really.