Re: SCIENCE: CERN upgrade will create black holes

From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 02 2001 - 13:30:11 MDT


At 07:57 AM 10/2/2001 -0700, you wrote:

>This Nature article (subscription may be required):
> http://www.nature.com/nsu/011004/011004-8.html
>points out work by Dimopoulos & Landsberg [1]
>that suggests when the CERN upgrade is completed
>in 2005, it will be capable of producing black holes.
>They will be a million times smaller than the nucleus
>of an atom and evaporate almost instantly.
>
>Robert
>============================================
>1. Dimopoulos, S. & Landsberg, G.
> Black holes at the Large Hadron Collider.
> Physical Review Letters, 87, 161602, (2001).

What sort of energies would we be talking about here? The cosmic rays that
bombard Earth are pretty darn powerful, but I haven't run into any
references to them causing black holes. And if CERN produces collisions of
unprecedented energy, would there be any danger of something going Horribly
Wrong - producing a black hole that *doesn't* evaporate, say?



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