Sunday, March 30, 2008
..but they're rechecking their calculations just to be sure.
Maybe we should conduct these experiments offsite, like on a space station...?
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A similar concern was expressed in 1999 over the Brookhaven National Labs (on Long Island in New York) RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) potential to create a blackhole.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/science/29blac.html
"Before Brookhaven began its gold collision experiments in 2000, it issued assurances that the experiment could not accidentally create a black hole that would destroy the earth. Laboratory officials say that is still the case."
Who knows. We're still here.
BNL has a Free Open House (July-August) that gives tours of their facilities. I saw the RHIC and other stuff like a research nuclear reactor that was leaking radioactive water into the Long Island aquifer until it was shut down. Long Island is a cancer hotspot - I wonder if there is any connection.
http://www.bnl.gov/community/summer_sunday.asp
http://www.bnl.gov/community/
I thought all the cool leading edge physics stuff only went on in the western US.
Before the Manhattan Project scientists tested the first nuke, they did calculate that the heat build-up in a fission explosion could cause a reaction between deuterium and nitrogen (meaning they could set fire to the world's atmosphere. But it was only a small chance, so they went ahead.
Scientists are pretty low-key, but they're really a bunch of cowboys (in the mostly good sense of the word :-)
I'm glad they're doing these black-hole related experiments, but it might be a good idea to do them on the space station, just in case..
Obviously if Black Holes do exist, they have limited reach because if there were even one Black Hole, EVERYTHING would be sucked in.
Here we are.
I'd guess that the relationship of black holes to "everything being sucked in" is kind of like the relationship of the sun to fire. Little black holes will have a small, local effect and very big interplanetary ones will have a very big effect.
I think they did create a very temporary, small black hole in Long Island, and yes we're still here.
We've already sort of tamed fire, lightning and nuclear fission. Black holes might have some common household uses, as transportation devices or garbage disposal units :-)