Today, while reading about how scary science is to some people in the Introduction of a recent Signet Classic edition of Frankenstein, I stumbled (and nearly fell) over this sentence: “Some scientists file suits to stop a physics lab from creating a black hole that could–they fear–devour the Earth in a few moments.”
Um, really? Who? When? Where? Cite? There’s no further information about this supposed suit in the text. The sentence in question is just nestled in a list of current scientific research and some people’s reaction to it. For what it’s worth, the writer is Walter James Miller, Harvard professor of English, and the copyright for the piece in which the above claim is made is 2000.
Well, what do you people think? Did some scientists try to create a black hole, and did some lawyers try to stop them? I myself am skeptical . . . although something about this is ringing a bell for some reason.
Anyway, what do you people say? Sounds crazy to me, but then so is science these days.
Or more on point, Gregory Benford’s Cosm, in which a scientist slamming together uranium nuclei at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, inadvertantly creates miniature “big bangs” -disturbing events follow as the child universes grow and emit radiations.
There was some debate during construction of the RHIC, as to whether or not it would produce black holes. I don’t recall a lawsuit, and sadly, all they’ve gotten out of the collider so far is bits of the Quark Gluon plasma that filled the universe in the first few milliseconds after the big bang. AFAIK, they haven’t tried colliding uranium nuclei yet.
Sounds to me like a mangle report of the concerns over the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider back in '99. I don’t think there were any lawsuits filed, and the experiments went ahead as planned.
In case you were wondering, the Earth survived unscathed.
From what I understand, for a black hole to be produced you need a large amount of matter in a very small space; at a certain threshold it will collapse in on itself. However, I also understand that gravity is the weakest force at work in an atom. Given ideal conditions, what would be the least amount of matter you would need to create a black hole?
Well, I’ve got a guess:
The radius of a black hole R = 2MG/c[sup]2[/sup]
In gram centimeters, this simplifies to R = M x 1.48 x 10[sup]-28[/sup]
The planck length, the length at which quantum effects swamp classical effects, is around 1.6 x 10[sup]-33[/sup] cm.
Substituting that into the radius equation: 1.6 x 10[sup]-33[/sup] = M x 1.48 x 10[sup]-28[/sup] gives a minimal mass for a black hole of about 10 micrograms.
Disclaimer:
Not being a physicist, this could easily be wrong by several orders of magnitude.
I thought that the smallest black hole would be limited in its size by the rate it evaporates (via Hawking radiation) versus the rate it accumulates new matter by gravity sucking it in. A very small black hole will lose a proportionately large amount of its mass in a very small time through Hawking radiation, while a large black hole would take a very very very long time. But I’m also not a physicist.
Thank you all for the information, comments, and interesting links. It is obvious, reading between the lines, that these crazy scientists’ reckless experimentation will procede unchecked thanks to the fact that their lawyers are bigger than those of any one else. More seriously, I thought the information I read seemed wrong, and I’m glad you proved this assessment correct. Please continue the discussion, if you will, though I myself am done here. I knew as soon as I saw
that things were moving rapidly beyond anything I might understand.
Actually, there were several respected physicists who theorized in the earlyu 40’s that an atomic explosion in the atmosphere would result in chain reaction that would burn off the protective gaseous layer around the earth. Turns out they were wrong, but the possibility did not stop those Manhattan Project boys…
This is true in theory, but to the best of my knowledge the existence of Hawking radiation has not yet been confirmed by any actual observation. If some scientists actually were trying to create microscopic black holes based on the theory that they would surely evaporate before causing any trouble, I think some public outcry would be justified.
From my readings, this legend is quite a bit overstated. As I recall, Edward Teller (never one of the strongest technical physicists on the team; more of a big-picture idea guy) brought up this possibility not so much because he thought it was legit, but as a strategic move to push his alternate design proposal. Hans Bethe, a much better physicist, demonstrated pretty conclusively that Teller’s hypothesis was a fantasy. However, it’s not unreasonable to think that the less experienced people on the team might have been nagged by doubt after Teller made the suggestion. For example, some sources say Enrico Fermi reminded one of the generals about it shortly before the first test, probably to yank an authority figure’s chain for yucks.
I could have sworn Cecil has covered this, but an archive search turned up nothing. If anyone has better recollection of the facts, I’m all ears.
The number that Squink posted is (more or less) the Planck mass, and can be derived in much the same way that the Planck length is derived. All of the Planck units are obtained by taking the three most fundamental (we think) constants of nature, G, c, and hbar, and squishing them together in the appropriate manner. The Planck scale is not actually the scale at which quantum effects overwhelm classical, since an atom (for example) is far, far bigger than the Planck scale, but it’s still thoroughly quantum. What it is is the scale at which quantum gravity effects overwhelm classical gravity effects. We’ve never seen any quantum gravity effects, though, and we’re pretty much fumbling in the dark as to developing a theory describing them. In fact, we’re not sure that the Planck scale is the proper scale for them to manifest: That’s just our best back-of-the-envelope guess.
CurtC is correct that smaller black holes are hotter than large ones, and radiate more power. Therefore, smaller holes have much shorter lifespans than large ones (the lifespan of a hole is proportional to its mass cubed). However, this is only true up to a point. If we take what we currently know about Hawking radiation and try to extrapolate it to a Planck-sized hole, we get the absurd result that a hole that small would emit particles more massive than the hole itself. Without quantum gravity, we’re not really sure what would happen to a black hole that small, but the best guess is that it just becomes stable at some point and Hawking radiation stops.
And physicists were not trying to make black holes based on the assumption that they’d be safe. Based on our current understanding, there was only an astronomically small chance (less than one in a googol, if I recall correctly) that a hole would be created in the first place. And even if our current understanding were so fundamentally flawed that a black hole could be formed, we still have absolute confidence that it would be perfectly safe, since cosmic rays far more energetic than the particles in any human-made collider strike the Earth every day, and none of those has resulted in the end of the world.
You’re very, very close, but if you’re going to invite quibbles …
The issue arose very early in the American programme, during the meeting at Berkeley in July 1942, when Teller was first pushing for his idea of going for the Super (aka what became the H-bomb). However, I can’t think of any account of the event that suggests any tactical motive on his part for suggesting it. The possibility was just something that came up as he thought through the possible fusion reactions that might be ignited. Furthermore, I don’t see any viable non-technical motive for his bringing the idea up: the point was that a standard fission weapon might start such a catastrophe; building a Super would have seemed more likely to trigger it.
Bethe has consistently said over the years that he never thought the danger remotely reasonable, right from the moment Teller originally raised it. As the obvious expert to hand on stellar fusion, Bethe was then tasked to prove Teller wrong in detail. Which he did easily.
Meanwhile, Oppenheimer had bumped Teller’s hypothesis up to Arthur Compton, who was quite clear that even the remotest possibility of such a catastrophe would halt the project there and then. In the event, he was convinced by Bethe. The only hint of what might be taken as recklessness in the way events unfolded is that Serber, for one, later criticised Oppenheimer for unnecessarily raising the issue at the managerial level and panicing Compton.
Fermi raising the possibilty at Trinity is tied in with the messy, probably unresolvable, question of what the betting pools in the last 24 hours were. Some accounts (including General Groves’) have Fermi jokingly taking bets on the atmosphere igniting. However, rather than that deliberately yanking the brass, the reason this seems to have caused a problem is that Kenneth Bainbridge, the test director, reportedly lost his temper because he thought it was disturbing the lower ranks. Implicitly, Bainbridge knew that the scientists and the officers realised that the danger had been eliminated and hence that Fermi was joking.
