Pre-Y2K panic had its moments, but it never left us wondering, “How would it feel to be devoured by a black hole?” Here’s a snippet from an ABC News article published 2 years ago, before the Large Hadron Collider was a hot topic:
Although scientists haven’t directly observed a black hole (since a black hole swallows light), they have observed the effect of a black hole on surrounding material. Astronomers say the first sign of a black hole’s approach would be subtle changes in the night sky. The gravity from a black hole would distort Earth’s orbit and we’d begin to notice differences in the orbits of other planets and stars in the galaxy.
If a rogue black hole ever closed in on our solar system and crept up next to Earth, the resulting havoc would seem like the wildest science fiction. Either Earth would career out of its orbit, spinning out of the solar system, or in the opposite direction, toward the sun, and we’d suffer a deadly warming.
Enter the LHC (via BBC):
…There are a small but significant group of naysayers who worry that the LHC is not 100% safe. Opponents say it is possible the collider could produce micro black holes and dangerous “strangelets”, and that catastrophic effects from these cannot be ruled out.
Afraid? This blog post on backreaction.blogspot.com should calm you down:
In short: If tiny black holes were produced because large extra dimensions did exist in the necessary number with the necessary radius, and if they did not evaporate within 10-26 seconds as expected (Hawking evaporation is considered a very robust prediction, so this scenario is not confirmed by well founded theories), most of them would have such a high velocity that they escaped the gravitational field of the Earth for good. Even if they travelled straight through the centre of the Earth, the few nucleons they can hit wouldn’t change their momentum in an appreciable way.
Phewf!
