Report: Artifically-created black holes unlikely to destroy Earth

[Ilmater]

Physicists: Despite Fears, Black-Hole Factory Will Not Destroy Earth

Scientists may be able to generate a black hole as often as every second when the world's most powerful particle accelerator comes online in 2007.

This potential "black hole factory" has raised fears that a stray black hole could devour our planet whole.

The Lifeboat Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence, has stated that artificial black holes could "threaten all life on Earth" and so it proposes to set up "self-sustaining colonies elsewhere."

Now, normally I'd write these people off as crazies with tin-foil hats on, but then I read the next line:

But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.

MINISCULE?! ANY chance of total, planetary annihilation is, in my opinion, INCAPABLE of being miniscule. It is, rather, SIGNIFICANT by very definition. Doesn't that guy sound like the idiot that tied himself to the bottom of his truck so his friend could drive around and he could hear where a sound was coming from? "This is 'pretty much' safe, I think."

Granted, if you read the thing it does sound pretty unlikely, but Jesus Christ... shouldn't we stop fvcking with this stuff at some point? We're worried about stem cell research and these jacka$$es are creating fvcking BLACK HOLES underneath Switzerland. Priorities, people, priorities.

/rant

 

[thehstrybean]

That's OK...with a blackhole comes a wormhole, and wormholes=gating to other planets...


Oh, wait, the gov't shut that one down...

 

[Lonyo]

MINISCULE?! ANY chance of total, planetary annihilation is, in my opinion, INCAPABLE of being miniscule. It is, rather, SIGNIFICANT by very definition.

Umm, no.
The chances of the event occuring are miniscule, but if the event were to occur, it would be significant....

 

[Ulfhednar]

Is this from The Onion?

 

[Maximilian]

There would be ah heck all left!!

They should screw with this crap when we colonise another planet... screw with it on mars, do a doom 3 and mess with teleporation too.

 

[TuxDave]

Well the probability of the planet spontaneously vaporizing and reappearing 2 feet to the left would be pretty devastating but again highly unlikely.

 

[Toastedlightly]

Originally posted by: thehstrybean
That's OK...with a blackhole comes a wormhole, and wormholes=gating to other planets...


Oh, wait, the gov't shut that one down...

You want the G'ould here?!

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: Ulfhednar
Is this from The Onion?

Nope:

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060919_black_holes.html

 

[HN]

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly

Originally posted by: thehstrybean
That's OK...with a blackhole comes a wormhole, and wormholes=gating to other planets...


Oh, wait, the gov't shut that one down...

You want the G'ould here?!

why not? we already have the Trust:

Originally posted by: Ilmater
The Lifeboat Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence...

 

[randay]

All hail the Ori.

 

[Toastedlightly]

*points his staff weapon at TV executives*

 

[imported_LoKe]

Doesn't make too much of a difference to me, really. Even if the world did happen to end all of a sudden, everything would just...end...no time for everyone to get scared, panic, or get depressed. Instant death.

 

[QurazyQuisp]

Originally posted by: Ilmater

Physicists: Despite Fears, Black-Hole Factory Will Not Destroy Earth

Scientists may be able to generate a black hole as often as every second when the world's most powerful particle accelerator comes online in 2007.

This potential "black hole factory" has raised fears that a stray black hole could devour our planet whole.

The Lifeboat Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to safeguarding humanity from what it considers threats to our existence, has stated that artificial black holes could "threaten all life on Earth" and so it proposes to set up "self-sustaining colonies elsewhere."

Now, normally I'd write these people off as crazies with tin-foil hats on, but then I read the next line:

But the chance of planetary annihilation by this means "is totally miniscule," experimental physicist Greg Landsberg at Brown University in Providence, R.I., told LiveScience.

MINISCULE?! ANY chance of total, planetary annihilation is, in my opinion, INCAPABLE of being miniscule. It is, rather, SIGNIFICANT by very definition. Doesn't that guy sound like the idiot that tied himself to the bottom of his truck so his friend could drive around and he could hear where a sound was coming from? "This is 'pretty much' safe, I think."

Granted, if you read the thing it does sound pretty unlikely, but Jesus Christ... shouldn't we stop fvcking with this stuff at some point? We're worried about stem cell research and these jacka$$es are creating fvcking BLACK HOLES underneath Switzerland. Priorities, people, priorities.

/rant

I work at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. (Which is a particle accelerator, currently the most powerful cyclotron in the world, although not the biggest) When they were first planning on building it, one of the "drawbacks" if certain conditions existed, then the earth essentially disappears from existence. The probability of it happening is like 1/ some amazingly huge number, but none the less, it could happen. They figure that if there are enough precautions ,before an experiment is run, (such as several of the smartest people you will meet in your life checking over every experiment several times, I think it takes about 3 ? 4 years for an experiment to take place after it is first thought up) that it would bring down that number even more. It's been around since I believe 1969 and alas, the world still exists.

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: LoKe
Doesn't make too much of a difference to me, really. Even if the world did happen to end all of a suddenly, everything would just...end...no time for everyone to get scared, panic, or get depressed. Instant death.

Yeah, but sh1t is going pretty fvcking well for me, and I would rather it not end.

 

[imported_LoKe]

Originally posted by: Ilmater

Originally posted by: LoKe
Doesn't make too much of a difference to me, really. Even if the world did happen to end all of a suddenly, everything would just...end...no time for everyone to get scared, panic, or get depressed. Instant death.

Yeah, but sh1t is going pretty fvcking well for me, and I would rather it not end.

What difference does it make? If everything suddenly ended, you wouldn't know any better. You'd die at the peak of your life (unfortunately?). Not like you can miss what you had when you're dead.

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: QurazyQuisp
I work at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. (Which is a particle accelerator, currently the most powerful cyclotron in the world, although not the biggest) When they were first planning on building it, one of the "drawbacks" if certain conditions existed, then the earth essentially disappears from existence. The probability of it happening is like 1/ some amazingly huge number, but none the less, it could happen. They figure that if there are enough precautions ,before an experiment is run, (such as several of the smartest people you will meet in your life checking over every experiment several times, I think it takes about 3 ? 4 years for an experiment to take place after it is first thought up) that it would bring down that number even more. It's been around since I believe 1969 and alas, the world still exists.

My answer to that is simple: the chances of anyone being hit by lightning are pretty ridiculously small, but it does happen sometimes. They don't make those fractional probabilities for things that CAN'T happen, they make them for things that don't happen OFTEN.

 

[mobobuff]

Black Hole Factory. Does that remind anyone else of the old Looney Toons gag of a black hole from a box that creates a hole in anything?

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: LoKe

Originally posted by: Ilmater

Originally posted by: LoKe
Doesn't make too much of a difference to me, really. Even if the world did happen to end all of a suddenly, everything would just...end...no time for everyone to get scared, panic, or get depressed. Instant death.

Yeah, but sh1t is going pretty fvcking well for me, and I would rather it not end.

What difference does it make? If everything suddenly ended, you wouldn't know any better. You'd die at the peak of your life (unfortunately?). Not like you can miss what you had when you're dead.

Yeah, but in the off chance there's an afterlife, I'll have to weigh all the sex I could have had in the rest of my life here on earth (5 times just last weekend) against some douchebags that want to know why there is more matter than anti-matter. Even if I only have sex one more time from here on out, I want that more than I want to know why there isn't more anti-matter.

 

[QurazyQuisp]

Originally posted by: Ilmater

Originally posted by: QurazyQuisp
I work at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University. (Which is a particle accelerator, currently the most powerful cyclotron in the world, although not the biggest) When they were first planning on building it, one of the "drawbacks" if certain conditions existed, then the earth essentially disappears from existence. The probability of it happening is like 1/ some amazingly huge number, but none the less, it could happen. They figure that if there are enough precautions ,before an experiment is run, (such as several of the smartest people you will meet in your life checking over every experiment several times, I think it takes about 3 ? 4 years for an experiment to take place after it is first thought up) that it would bring down that number even more. It's been around since I believe 1969 and alas, the world still exists.

My answer to that is simple: the chances of anyone being hit by lightning are pretty ridiculously small, but it does happen sometimes. They don't make those fractional probabilities for things that CAN'T happen, they make them for things that don't happen OFTEN.

You could see it as something that hasn't happened, because it has yet to happen... as far as we know it could never happen, because we have never seen what we see as the proper condition exist yet.

 

[TheoPetro]

Are they talking about schrodinger's black holes? like ones with point singularities. I honeslty dont know how much I would want the chance of a singulairty forming ANYWHERE near earth. Atleast while im alive. I mean if one is created its not like we would be alive long enough to do anything anyway. This may just be me being ignorent of the subject though.

 

[HN]

Originally posted by: Ilmater

Originally posted by: LoKe

Originally posted by: Ilmater

Originally posted by: LoKe
Doesn't make too much of a difference to me, really. Even if the world did happen to end all of a suddenly, everything would just...end...no time for everyone to get scared, panic, or get depressed. Instant death.

Yeah, but sh1t is going pretty fvcking well for me, and I would rather it not end.

What difference does it make? If everything suddenly ended, you wouldn't know any better. You'd die at the peak of your life (unfortunately?). Not like you can miss what you had when you're dead.

Yeah, but in the off chance there's an afterlife, I'll have to weigh all the sex I could have had in the rest of my life here on earth (5 times just last weekend) against some douchebags that want to know why there is more matter than anti-matter. Even if I only have sex one more time from here on out, I want that more than I want to know why there isn't more anti-matter.

think positive, man. afterlife poon is the BEST! like makeup sex, only more translucent.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Tell that to Spider-Man

 

[Ilmater]

Originally posted by: QurazyQuisp
You could see it as something that hasn't happened, because it has yet to happen... as far as we know it could never happen, because we have never seen what we see as the proper condition exist yet.

True. Let me better explain this with a movie quote:

"What are my chances?"
"Not good."
"You mean, not good like one out of a hundred?"
"I'd say more like one out of a million."
...
"So you're sayin' there's a chance!!!"

 

[blackllotus]

Lets not be ignorant here. Remember that there are no mass/gravitational attraction requirements on a black hole. A black hole created by a high powered collision between two particles will have the mass and gravitational effects of those two particles (minus a small amount). All in all its probably more likely that a uranium atom could annihilate the earth than one of these mini black holes.

 

[Howard]

Dumb & Dumber?