[Cadaver]

Link

This is very interesting if true! According to newscientist.com, these phenomena last 10-23 seconds. I'd be nervous as hell to have a black hole in my lab for half a minute... even if gravity isn't strong at such energies!

[turtle777]

I want one in my trash bin !

-t

[turtle777]

Btw, the "10-23 seconds" seems to be a translation error. It was meant to be 10.0e-23, 10^-23 !

-t

[starman]

Oh, this sucks.

[subego]

However, even if the ball of plasma is a black hole, it is not thought to pose a threat.

Famous last words.

[Millennium]

Once you get outside of a black hole's event horizon, the gravity isn't any stronger than it is for a star of that mass. It's only inside the event horizon that you get the super-strong gravity that characterizes these things.

Given that, if they were to create a black hole with a very small mass, then it shouldn't pose much of a real threat, unless it were somehow allowed to take on more mass. It still gives me the creeps, though; I know I wouldn't want to risk dropping one.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by turtle777:
Btw, the "10-23 seconds" seems to be a translation error. It was meant to be 10.0e-23, 10^-23 !

-t

Sounds a bit more manageable. Even so, I'm quite torn (no pun intended) about the whole idea. While the scientist in me knows there's virtually no danger whatsoever, the non-scientist in me is very anxiety-ridden about it.

[wataru]

There are a number of alternate, non-black hole explanations for this; checkout the Slashdot commentary on this story for links to several of them.

[malvolio]

Science is dangerous!

They might invent a time machine, and then somebody could insert a link to g o a t s e in this thread.

[saltines17]

ha, I was just joking last week about how I wish I could make one of those

[entrox]

Even if they create a real black hole, it won't pose any danger to us. These things are created in a particle accelerator and fly around at insane speeds (a few percent of c). By the time a black hole accumulated enough mass to slow down and start mayhem, it would already be far, far away from the solar system.

Chill. There are far more probable doomsday scenarios.. like the universe disappearing in a puff of logic.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

[entrox]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:

Maximilian!

[OreoCookie]

The black hole evaporates (the less mass it has, the higher the rate of evaporation). To put it in simple words: Hawking radiation makes the whole thing disappear, and the lighter the hole, the less mass there is to hold radiation back.

If you want a more detailed explanation, just ask.

I've read some articles that some suspect soon black holes will be produced at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in Switzerland.

[dreilly1]

Why does it seem fitting that when they finally find a black hole on Earth, it turns out that it's on Long Island?

[iREZ]

I can't wait till black holes are used to revolutionize the vacuum cleaner industry .

[deej5871]

Originally posted by malvolio:
Science is dangerous!

They might invent a time machine, and then somebody could insert a link to g o a t s e in this thread.

Originally posted by saltines17:
ha, I was just joking last week about how I wish I could make one of those

You should have specified black holes in your post, because for a second I thought you meant you wish you could make a "g o a t s e" pic...

[budster101]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Once you get outside of a black hole's event horizon, the gravity isn't any stronger than it is for a star of that mass. It's only inside the event horizon that you get the super-strong gravity that characterizes these things.

Given that, if they were to create a black hole with a very small mass, then it shouldn't pose much of a real threat, unless it were somehow allowed to take on more mass. It still gives me the creeps, though; I know I wouldn't want to risk dropping one.

How does one control a black hole? (For those clowns in here that think they can beat me to the punch-line, I stated 'black hole' not black ho- )

What does one feed a black hole? Twinkies? Oh, wait, ho-ho's...

I thought that when one encounters the event horizon of a BH, one would be accelerated beyond the speed of light.

[ghporter]

Actually, I don't think anyone would want a "tiny black hole" for their trash bin or their floor sweeper. The radiation released as matter is pulled in, even small amounts of matter into a really, really tiny black hole would be pretty harsh. Note that detection of black holes has been for the most part based on detection of the x-rays released. You'd be able to look THROUGH the sofa to see if it was clean underneath!

By the way, wasn't there a conspiracy movie a few years back that centered on building black holes for power? Morgan Freeman was in it...

I like this idea less and less...

[saltines17]

Originally posted by deej5871:
You should have specified black holes in your post, because for a second I thought you meant you wish you could make a "g o a t s e" pic...

LOL

[MrForgetable]

i wonder if they release nova rays to fry us all.