How difficult would it be to create a black hole?

If we wanted to, I mean.

You might recall that when the Large Hadron Collider was being built that there was speculation that they might accidentally create a black hole that would destroy the Earth.

Unfortunately for intelligent life in the universe this didn’t happen. But if we wanted to create a black hole on Earth, would it be possible - even theoretically?

According to this it might take less energy thank thought to create an adorable miniature black hole (too tiny to pose a threat to Earth).

:confused:

It seems the article you linked to contains your answer: the most recent theories suggest that the high-energy-collision method would require energies that are trillions of times greater than the [del]Superconducting Monkey Collider[/del] Large Hadron Collider can currently provide. That’s pretty difficult.

It might be easier just to collect a shitload of mass in one place and let it all collapse under its own gravity.

Such a collection of mass is commonly known as a star. With a mass at least 1.4 times that of the Sun, it will indeed collapse to form a black hole.

But this scheme has some drawbacks:

  • the cost of finding & transporting that much mass
  • a long (multi-billion-year) wait for the tiresome radiation phase to run its course
  • the unpleasant supernova event
  • the unhandy size of the resulting black hole

For any mass at a particular density, calculate its Schwartzchild radius and apply enough pressure to drop it below that. Easy.

-the city permits
-the Environmental Impact Statement
-zoning laws

This could be quite brief. (Getting authorities to sign off on it perhaps less so.)

And the first Abrams Star Trek movie made it seem so easy!

All you needed was a container Acme© Red Mass (“Make Black Holes anywhere you want them! Amaze your friends! Keep out of reach of miners and coyotes.”)

Red tape, or would it be black tape in this case?

To clear up a couple of points:

First, before the LHC was fired up, there really was a serious hypothesis that it might be able to make black holes. This would have been Really Really Cool, as it could have provided a way for uss to learn huge amounts about how the Universe works, and could even eventually lead to things like near-limitless energy production for nearly free. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

Second, even if the LHC had been able to make black holes, we knew with 100% certainty that they wouldn’t be dangerous. According to the best models we have, any such black hole produced would have a lifespan so short it would never get a chance to eat anything. And even if those models were wrong, nature provides particle collisions orders of magnitude more energetic than the LHC on a regular basis, many of them within the atmosphere of the Earth, and none of them has yet destroyed the Earth in any way.

Third, the simplest and most plausible models we have predict that it would be impossible to produce a black hole using any remotely realistic particle accelerator (using current accelerator technology, it would require a machine the size of the Solar System). The hypotheses that the LHC might produce some were due to some plausible but less likely models which, if true, would make it much easier. The particular models which said it would be possible at the LHC have now been pretty much ruled out, by virtue of the fact that the LHC didn’t do it… but that doesn’t say anything about other models which predict a requirement greater than the LHC but less than the Planck energy. Those models might or might not be true, and until we build more powerful accelerators to test them, we really don’t know. It might require those solar-system-sized machines after all… or it might just require one just a little bigger than what we’ve got. It’s much less plausible now, but it could still happen.

Here’s a more serious answer : http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.1803.pdf

To summarize : you need about 1 million tons of mass energy crammed into the space of a single wave of UV light. In order to do this, you would build a series of (solar system spanning) relativistic mass drivers that would accelerate metal rods, totalling at least 1 million tons in mass after you correct for their relativistic mass, to impact with each other at a single point.

I haven’t done a detailed study, though I suspect tearing Luna (earth’s moon) down for raw materials is probably more than enough building materials to build this thing.

You would need self replicating factories in order to accomplish this task. If you had said factories, it would probably take a few decades.

The reason to make a black hole is that it (theroetically) converts matter to energy perfectly. 100% total conversion. This is much more efficient than fusion as a power source, and it would enable you to reach a significant fraction of the speed of light with a starship. (also, it’s so efficient than a bussard ramjet would actually work : a big magnetic scoop would collect hydrogen that you would feed to your black hole)

Which is why the Romulans use them…
I just can’t figure out how they tow the thing around.

You feed the black hole a diet biased in electric charge (either more electrons than protons or vice versa. You fling the particles you aren’t feeding the black hole to space so that your spacecraft remains neutrally charged)

Now that the black hole has a charge, you can affect it with big honking magnets. These are some really really big magnets. You use them to keep that black hole stuck where it belongs at the focal point of your starship engine’s reflector (a giant parabolic dish that reflects gamma rays)’

That’s a semi-plausible way to do it in real life. (semi plausible because for one thing, it depends on assumptions about black holes that might be totally wrong given we have never seen one up close. Also I don’t know if the best superconducting awesomesauce electromagnets would be strong enough. There’s also a “minor” technical problem that the black hole is emitting hundreds of petawatts of energy, and I’m not sure how you keep magnets cold given they are right next to a continuously detonating 100 megaton + fission bomb)

In Star Trek, they have space magic.

Is a black hole less black than a Vantablack hole?

Black holes could be used to generate vast amounts of power in at least three different ways, but none of them can fairly be described as 100% efficient. Option 1, you can feed the black hole garbage and let it Hawking radiate back out, but the majority of the radiation will be in neutrinos, which is basically wasted. Option 2, you can give the black hole a magnetic charge. This might be possible without a black hole, but it’s certainly possible with one. Any object with magnetic charge can be used to catalyze proton decay. Again, this has a base efficiency of 100%, but most of it will again be in useless neutrinos. Option 3, you can drop things into the hole to extract gravitational potential energy. This is at most 50% efficient, but the energy you get out will mostly be in useful forms.

Probably not, though it might depend on the size of the black hole. Vantablack absorbs approximately 99.96% of incident radiation. A black hole, by definition, absorbs all incident radiation, but it gives off Hawking radiation, some of which might be photons (I think). If it’s small enough (and far enough from everything else that it doesn’t pick up additional mass/energy from nearby anything), the black hole gives off more radiation than it absorbs, and gradually loses mass until it evaporates completely.

The Penrose mechanism, which converts the leeches energy off a spinning black hole, decreasing its angular momentum, is one way of extracting energy from a black hole and it also may be what is responsible for the extremely energetic radiation seen in quasars.

On Romulus, black hole tows you.

You’d have to find a pretty husky fat person to sit on it. Might not be easy to find, especially with all this concern about fitness lately.

Right. I’ll just go get my truck.

The fact that black holes give off Hawking radiation doesn’t mean that they’re not black. In fact, they give off radiation precisely because they’re black. An ideal blackbody will absorb all radiation which hits it, and will also emit radiation in a very characteristic spectrum depending on its temperature. A great many objects can be approximated as blackbodies. For Vantablack coatings, it’s an extremely good approximation. For black holes, it isn’t an approximation at all: It’s exact.