Scientists Created A Black Hole

[Spatula]

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/17/black_holes_new_york/

Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York have created a very short-lived, very tiny black hole, or at least, a fireball that behaved quite a lot like one for a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second.

The scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) fired beams of gold nuclei into each other at relativistic speeds, creating a ball of plasma around 300m times hotter than the surface of the sun. According to Metro, a Daily Mail sister publication, some particles were then absorbed by the plasma in the same way that particles are absorbed by black holes.

While the research team at RHIC has described the work as groundbreaking, other scientists are unsure about that possible applications for the work. Ed Shuryak, a physicist at Stony Brook University, said that although the work was useful because "it will inspire thinking in that direction...it's going to be another thing to see if it bears any fruit."



I think that this is probably one of the coolest scientific creations of the past few years.

[Viper]

I love stuff like this.

It's applications are limited for probably another hundred or so years but worm holing is oen very feasible application using spontaneous containable black holes.

[Lucent Beam]

Pretty nifty.
Wouldn't it be sad / funny if they created a huge one and sucked everything in?
Screw nuclear wars or asteroids.. Earth will get eaten by a science experiment!

[Mathx]

How was this even observed in such a small period of time?

And I believe Black Holes have a Volume of actual 0 which makes them so devastating.

[Skull Kid]

They probably used a high-speed camera to record its action.

That is pretty amazing stuff. Imagine what this could lead to in the future.

[n1n9tean]

They probably used a high-speed camera to record its action.

That is pretty amazing stuff. Imagine what this could lead to in the future.

maybe they could get rid of all this garbage now instead of using landfills and dumping it into the ocean.

and maybe Canada can stop shipping it over here.

[Stalin]

but destroying the matter seems a highley inefficient way of cleaning up our mess, that would lad to problems where we start to dwindle on common elements

[Helios]

I wonder how long this is gonna take to have any real world application. Ive noticed whenever we do something amazing on the far end of the spectrum in science it takes decades for it to have any real benefit.

maybe they could get rid of all this garbage now instead of using landfills and dumping it into the ocean.

and maybe Canada can stop shipping it over here.

Thats crazy, with some further advances in technlogy nearly everything we throw away can be recycled. Besides at the rate of consumtion and trash buildup we have in the US alone if just thrown into a black hole would be taking a huge chunk of raw material off the planet.

Put it this way if this was an actual alternative to land fills we would have been throwing trash into the sun long time ago.

[DankHero]

instead of nuclear wars we will have black hole wars. "screw you Iraq!" creates black hole over iraq, everyone is sucked in.

well maybe not that extreme but it will be very cool to see what they end up doing with it. even though i'll be 50 before i see anything.

if they can create things that hot now, then in the future could we make another sun? i mean thats the fear in like millions of years that the sun will burn out isnt it? we could be like "hey bring out the spare sun"

[Loomer]

I wonder how long this is gonna take to have any real world application. Ive noticed whenever we do something amazing on the far end of the spectrum in science it takes decades for it to have any real benefit. Only once "the Holy Grail of Physics", the equation expected to explain the relationship between gravity and electroweak, will we be allowed to truly imagine what can be done with black holes, or anything that has to do with physics for that matter. This news is pretty interesting stuff. Yet potentially dangerous if you ask me since black holes are so mysterious.
instead of nuclear wars we will have black hole wars. "screw you Iraq!" creates black hole over iraq, everyone is sucked in. Would that make a difference? Time halts within a certain radius of a blackhole. I mean nothing seems to be changing. :(

[Helios]

Sun's not going out for 5 billion years. We'll have bigger things to worry about in 5 biillion years if were even still around.

We still wont be using black holes in quite a military fashion unless its full scale Xenocide.(word comes from the Orson Scott Card books for planey destruction)

Only once "the Holy Grail of Physics", the equation expected to explain the relationship between gravity and electroweak, will we be allowed to truly imagine what can be done with black holes, or anything that has to do with physics for that matter.

Its not like we cant imagine right now, its called science-fiction. :) Once m-theory is completed we will have a realistic "box" of what we can/cant do.

[Loc]

I love stuff like this.

It's applications are limited for probably another hundred or so years but worm holing is oen very feasible application using spontaneous containable black holes.
We can get rid of our nuclear waste this way. But if you have researched the Montauk project, delving into this stuff can jack up the Time-Space continuum apparently like the stuff in Montauk...

[Loomer]

Its not like we cant imagine right now, its called science-fiction. :) Once m-theory is completed we will have a realistic "box" of what we can/cant do. Yes, that is what I wanted to say. I will be really giddy in 2007 when the Large Hadron Collider makes its first runs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHC

BTW haven't you noticed how reality based on string theory is stranger than much of sci-fi?

[Moses]

Doc Oct!

[Stalin]

Infinitly so....which just adds to its allure for me...

[Mathx]

They probably used a high-speed camera to record its action.

That is pretty amazing stuff. Imagine what this could lead to in the future.

I doubt that they would be able to catch an event using cameras whic are deigned to capture light signatures, meanwhile light itself can't escape from a Black Hole.

This is probably one of those experiments that they can only tell what they did after they analyzed the entire data or energy that was released, which means they could have done this 5 years ago, but only found out about what they did until now. :Nerdgasm:

[{Delta}]

Pretty nifty.
Wouldn't it be sad / funny if they created a huge one and sucked everything in?
Screw nuclear wars or asteroids.. Earth will get eaten by a science experiment!

It would be diffficult as black hole size also coorespond to thier temperature. At tiny sizes, they evaporate almost instantaniuosly.


It's applications are limited for probably another hundred or so years but worm holing is oen very feasible application using spontaneous containable black holes.

There is a long way to go. Interesting idea of the experiment, but it more or less it seemed to be "like" a black hole in the way it absorbed particles. I am curious to see if this it is just more or less it is "black like a black hole, therefore dress socks and black holes have somthing in common".


How was this even observed in such a small period of time?

And I believe Black Holes have a Volume of actual 0 which makes them so devastating.

It probably was not observed, but the predicted after effect were probably observed and hence they coorelated it back to say particle reactions were simmilar to those predicted.

Why you speak of space an time, volume has many meanings...and all of them are not equal unforenetly. Like the effect of lengh contraction. Lets say you are zipping down the z-axis around 0.9 light speed and are carriing a 20 foot ladder. Let us say you are going to run through a 10 foot barn with it. The people will be able to close both barn doors with your 20 foot ladder in a 10 foot barn due to effect of lengh contration in relativity. Everyone and everyone is in its own frame of time.


Would that make a difference? Time halts within a certain radius of a blackhole. I mean nothing seems to be changing.

Swartzchild radius is that sphere you speak of. The surface of that sphere goes by the fimilar name of the "event horizon". Time esentially seems to halt on you as the observer outside the blackhole would observe, as you would also appear to be stuck on the edge of the blackhole motionless with a reddish tint to you.

What would you see? Well, you would see light in a disc above you, unforetently, the history of the universe would wizz by you, but you would not be able to see it as light still takes time to travel across the universe, and light is also timeless in regard that it always travels at the same speed of "c".


BTW haven't you noticed how reality based on string theory is stranger than much of sci-fi?

String Theory is nice, and the new accelerator LHC hold some promise that it may be able to experimentally observe some predicitons of string theory...as they have gone without any experimental evidence in the last 20 or so years. On of the string theory physicts, Micheal Greene, acually spoke at my university on a number of things dealing with it. He still believe it is up to time to prove string theory wrong or not, and has no problems if it is incorrect. Even if it is incorrect, it would have been an interesting mathamathical venture that still may contribute elsewhere.

[Mr. Coww]

I wonder how the event happened, were they just cramming as much energy into a space as they could or a more bizzare way to make such a object. I find it hard to think that this has any real world applactions in the next 100 years if not longer due to the raw brute force would be needed.
Also they use a huge array of sensors to detect the decay and ejected particles too figure out what was there.
Look up what the colider looks like, the things are ungodly huge for such tiny bullets.

[Viper]

60 years ago, computers were over 40 tons and took up a large apartment and processing power was 1/10 of your electronic wrist watch. What we're capable of in 100 years is beyond our current comprehension.

[Stalin]

yeah, technology is an astoundingly fast moving social trend.

[Helios]

60 years ago, computers were over 40 tons and took up a large apartment and processing power was 1/10 of your electronic wrist watch. What we're capable of in 100 years is beyond our current comprehension.

The sci-fi genre was a lot smaller 60 years ago as well. Anyone with a decent amount of analytical skills and imagination can see clearly what can be done in the next century. If one is to believe our current technology is "phenomenal" then surely it would be beyond their comprehension.

[Viper]

The only way we can accurately predict what will be technologically possible within 100 years is to discredit all possibility for breakthrough and discovery.

[Ihsiin]

How can you have a tiny black hole? Black holes are supposed to have a volume of 0.

[goku2057]

Put it this way if this was an actual alternative to land fills we would have been throwing trash into the sun long time ago.

Fuck no we wouldn't. It would take an absobanant amount of cash to do that. If we could create a black hole to suck stuff in, it would be much cheaper.

[Loc]

How can you have a tiny black hole? Black holes are supposed to have a volume of 0.
Didn't Stephen Hawking say that black holes give off some radiation crap that gives them a life of a million million years? Since this one was a baby one, its life was probably deemed short. But anyways the implications of a black hole is phenomenol, we may be able to dump out nuclear waste into it and walk away.

[frosty]

Then raises the question of, where does it go exactly, most if not all would be destroyed, at least as we have figured it. but ya' never know what happens when you cross the event horizon...

[{Delta}]

The only way we can accurately predict what will be technologically possible within 100 years is to discredit all possibility for breakthrough and discovery.

Im still waiting for my flying car... :( There is the worse asumption that we blow ourselfs up and are back to square one again...banging a stick on a rock.





How can you have a tiny black hole? Black holes are supposed to have a volume of 0.

Black holes do have a volume, and it is more or less infinate. So, how does one find the black hole volume? Well , you first start with the surface area of the event horizon ( IE , the radius at which gravity pulls everything in) and times it by the lengh of time that the black hole will be in exestance. This is due to relativistic effects such that everything o the inside is not operating on the same time scale on the outside. Were I imagine you saw "zero volume" would be mention of the black hole "singularity", or as matter would call it "the last stop" where everything is crushed downward into a astronimcally small point.


Didn't Stephen Hawking say that black holes give off some radiation crap that gives them a life of a million million years? Since this one was a baby one, its life was probably deemed short. But anyways the implications of a black hole is phenomenol, we may be able to dump out nuclear waste into it and walk away.

Yes, this would be hawking radation. For large black hole, this radition is actually "dull" in brightness, and low in temperature. For tiny black holes, it is quite high, hence thier shorter lifetimes compared to supermassive blackholes.

On the other note, we can still use radioactive waste for fuel again. In many cases, fuel rod's that are "spent" still contain a large number of fissible atoms and can be re-proccessed into new fuel rods. A problem in the US is that we are currently not allowed to reprocess our material, so everything is considered waste. We will not want to totally get rid of the waste because in time we can go back and re-process it if nuclear material has a premium. So, why is this a problem? Well, the products that fission produces are only about radioactive for ~300 years. The problem is that the atoms that were not used, like uranium and plutonium isotopes, stay radioactive for thousands of years. There are other issues with the current US nuclear energy plan as most of our reactors are not "breeder" reactors, like those used primarily in europe and asia. Breeder reactors can actually create addtion fuel by the use of using non-fissable Uranium-238 as shield of sorts, which the fuel rods convert it into plutonium-239.


Then raises the question of, where does it go exactly, most if not all would be destroyed, at least as we have figured it. but ya' never know what happens when you cross the event horizon...

Where does it go, you never quite know. But, it is safe to speculate it becomes what matter is, and that is just energy. Ye old E=mc^2 energy-mass equivalnce. And then dissapates over long periods of time...depending on the black hole's size. Time is not the same in black holes...Actually, relative to us it is almost not moving at all.

The laws of physics as we known break down at the entrace of a hole, and also at the start of the big bang. We can rewind back to the bang, billions of years ago, but no further. Comic background radiation that fills space is actually an artifact of it, as at one time our expanding universe was at a given temperature and emmiiting perticular radation .

[Stalin]

didn't hawking revise his theorums about two three years ago and changed his opinion to that of that there is no event horizon, because of that radiation leakage...the event horizon is the point of no return, therefore if things are returning (albeit not as they were) shouldn't that proove the non existence of an event horizon.

i mean i'm not as well versed in this crap anymore, so feel free to explain it further to me

[frosty]

nothing is actually escaping the black hole, but matter is materializing at the surface of the event horizon. This in turn is said to deplete some of the black hole's energy.

[Ihsiin]

Black holes do have a volume, and it is more or less infinate. So, how does one find the black hole volume? Well , you first start with the surface area of the event horizon ( IE , the radius at which gravity pulls everything in) and times it by the lengh of time that the black hole will be in exestance. This is due to relativistic effects such that everything o the inside is not operating on the same time scale on the outside. Were I imagine you saw "zero volume" would be mention of the black hole "singularity", or as matter would call it "the last stop" where everything is crushed downward into a astronimcally small point.

A black holes volume (i.e. the volume of the singularity) is infinitely small, and as close to 0 as to make no odds. The size of the event horizon is proportional to the gravity of the black hole, the bigger the gravity, the larger the event horizon, but then if the said gravity reaches bellow a certain point, doesn't the black hole stop being a black hole?

[Viper]

Right, that's Hawkings radiation itself. Just as they begin to breach the EH, part/anti-particle pairs break up and one of the atomic particles are ejected back out into space. Once something is in, it's in.

[{Delta}]

didn't hawking revise his theorums about two three years ago and changed his opinion to that of that there is no event horizon, because of that radiation leakage...the event horizon is the point of no return, therefore if things are returning (albeit not as they were) shouldn't that proove the non existence of an event horizon.

i mean i'm not as well versed in this crap anymore, so feel free to explain it further to me

Aye, he di change his thoery about 2004, but it involved wiether or not information was completely destoryed by the blackhole. A rule of Quantum physics is that information can never completely be destory, so Hawking now states that he believe that the effets of QM (Quantum Mechanics, just easier to say this way) still apply inside the black hole instead of what when first stated they didn't some time back. Hence, information is not totally destoryed and can still retain some information on the insides of the blackhole.

For the other part about stuff getting out, I am going to lump the following simmilars together.

nothing is actually escaping the black hole, but matter is materializing at the surface of the event horizon. This in turn is said to deplete some of the black hole's energy.

Right, that's Hawkings radiation itself. Just as they begin to breach the EH, part/anti-particle pairs break up and one of the atomic particles are ejected back out into space. Once something is in, it's in.

As frosty infered, and viper named, at the edge of the event horizon, particle and anti particle pairs are created. When one falls in, a quantum effect known as "quantum tunneling" can tunnel energy out of the black hole and into the other particle, which causes the black hole to lose energy, and hence mass from E=mc^2 ( Or E=(gamma)*mc^2 , for non rest masses). The extra energy orginates from the black hole's horrible warped space time putting energy into the pair. Another interesting fact is that the larger black holes radiate slower than smaller ones, hence depending both on how much energy is going in and the mass of the black hole, there is a point such that black holes could either be gaining more energy than losing, or vice versa.



A black holes volume (i.e. the volume of the singularity) is infinitely small, and as close to 0 as to make no odds. The size of the event horizon is proportional to the gravity of the black hole, the bigger the gravity, the larger the event horizon, but then if the said gravity reaches bellow a certain point, doesn't the black hole stop being a black hole?

It would probably be clearer to say the "mass" of the black hole is proportional to the size of the event horizion. Nothing wrong with it the other way really, it is just you have to say, mass causes gravity, hence. But...What I think you trying to say is that if somthing is a black hole, when is radiates enough energy away does is stop being a black hole? Well, it is more like dominos in a way. Once it is started, the black hole compacts mass more densely than it was when it started. Therefore, lets say we made a blackhole and gave it no energy. Let us now say it radiated away half its mass..it would still be a black hole because its mass and density are such that they meet the limit known of the schwartzchild radius...in which mass compacted down to a centain density and radius wil form a black hole. So what of this domino comparison? Well, in a way once the black hole cycle is started, it does not end at the same point it beings, Ie non-linear.

[frosty]

I have a question... say you were on mars, our black hole suddenly expands to a massive size and begins to swallow the galaxy, as earth crossed the EH, an observer on mars would see events happening on earth slow down to a standstill, due to the warping of space and time... would they see the events resume at a normal pace once the EH swallowed mars as well.. in other words, what would be seen past the EH. I'm sure nobody knows for sure, since we've never recieved info from there, but what is generally thought to happen...

[Viper]

I believe with the ripping apart of your molecular structure you'd see very little.
j/k

[frosty]

well of course, but i'm speaking about if something were able to transmit some sort of data on what the innards looked like...

[Ihsiin]

It would probably be clearer to say the "mass" of the black hole is proportional to the size of the event horizion. Nothing wrong with it the other way really, it is just you have to say, mass causes gravity, hence. But...What I think you trying to say is that if somthing is a black hole, when is radiates enough energy away does is stop being a black hole? Well, it is more like dominos in a way. Once it is started, the black hole compacts mass more densely than it was when it started. Therefore, lets say we made a blackhole and gave it no energy. Let us now say it radiated away half its mass..it would still be a black hole because its mass and density are such that they meet the limit known of the schwartzchild radius...in which mass compacted down to a centain density and radius wil form a black hole. So what of this domino comparison? Well, in a way once the black hole cycle is started, it does not end at the same point it beings, Ie non-linear.

Good point, but the black hole would have to start with an enormous mass (3 or 4 solar masses I believe) to initiate this domino effect. A black hole, at least to begin with, can be nothing other than massive.

[{Delta}]

I have a question... say you were on mars, our black hole suddenly expands to a massive size and begins to swallow the galaxy, as earth crossed the EH, an observer on mars would see events happening on earth slow down to a standstill, due to the warping of space and time... would they see the events resume at a normal pace once the EH swallowed mars as well.. in other words, what would be seen past the EH. I'm sure nobody knows for sure, since we've never recieved info from there, but what is generally thought to happen...

What would we see? Well, once you are in this "slowed" timeframe, compared to normal space-time as we usually see it, it would not be terribly long before you hit the singularity. As far as viper mentioned, and guess he has probably heard about it as well, the larger the black hole the smaller the gravitional gradiant, IE how fast the acceleration of gravity changes. In small black holes, these tidal forces increase per unit lengh enough that it would result in a pulling apart of your matter. It is speculated that if you looked outward you would see a disc of light that was comming from out universe, not to mention a hailing of x-ray and gamma radiation. Time in the black hole would almost be stagnent, therefore the history of the universe would esentially wizz by you as momments later you reached the end of the trail, see "Squeeze, boom bang, crunch".




Good point, but the black hole would have to start with an enormous mass (3 or 4 solar masses I believe) to initiate this domino effect. A black hole, at least to begin with, can be nothing other than massive.

You can actually take any mass and cram it small enough to make a black hole. The radius that a mass would have to be crushed is as follows :

r = 2Gm/ c^2 , G: universal Gravitional constant, m : is mass of object , C: is speed of light, and r: schwarzchild radius. It is true, as you have said, it requires a usually very heavy concentration of mass to start black hole . But speaking in terms of our own sun, we would have to crush the mass of he sun to only a few kilometers across to achieve it's schwarzchild radius density. But, once is starts, it runs it course, like dominos.