scientists to create black holes in lab

[VV o n g B a]

sounds like a dr. evil plan to take over the world. :lol:
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But there are two major problems with observing the last gasp of a black hole. For one thing, the nearest black holes we know of are light-years away, making accurate measurements of Hawking Radiation nearly impossible. Secondly, black holes take a huge amount of time to evaporate, the time being proportional to their mass. Even relatively small stellar black holes would take longer than the current age of the universe to dissipate, and the monster black holes in the middle of galaxies may be the last things to exist in our universe, taking ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years to die away (sorry, I just have to do that sometimes. That is the actual estimate of how long a massive black hole will last).

So what do you do if you can't wait around that long? For the best chance to observe Hawking Radiation and evaporation, you'd want a black hole that was much closer than naturally occurring black holes, and much less massive. It's a common misconception that you have to have a huge amount of mass to create a black hole. Any amount of mass will do, as long as you cram it into a sufficiently small space. A super-massive black hole with the mass of a billion Suns might be the size of our Solar System, but the Earth could be a black hole too if you packed it into the volume of a marble. Even a person will do, although you'd have to cram them into the space occupied by a single electron.

This line of reasoning has led scientists to the inevitable: If we really want to observe black holes and how they radiate, we'll have to whip them up in our own laboratories. And that's exactly what we are on the threshold of being able to do. Now, there is no kind of technology with the ability to physically crush matter to black hole densities, but there's an easy away around that. Einstein showed us that matter and energy are equivalent, so you can also make a black hole by pushing a huge amount of energy into a tiny volume. For those kinds of experiments, there's an obvious choice: particle accelerators. And the next generation is just about to be unveiled.

Amazingly, scientists are becoming increasingly confident that they will be able to create black holes on demand, in quantity, using the new atom-smashers due to come online in the next five years. Some estimates suggest that the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN -the acronym is in French) will be able to create an average of one black hole each second. LHC will bombard protons and antiprotons together with such a force that the collision will create temperatures and energy densities not seen since the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. This should be enough to pop off numerous tiny black holes, with masses of just a few hundred protons. Black holes of this size will evaporate almost instantly, their existence detectable only by dying bursts of Hawking radiation.
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full story (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0523/p25s02-stss.html)

[angelwiththesword]

black hole technology could prove to be the next fuel source by taking advantage of the energy dissipated when one dies, or the energy created when one is made.

though not an efficient energy source, it would be a clean one.

[VV o n g B a]

Originally posted by angelwiththesword@May 27 2003, 05:18 PM
black hole technology could prove to be the next fuel source by taking advantage of the energy dissipated when one dies, or the energy created when one is made.

though not an efficient energy source, it would be a clean one.
hadn't heard of this. u mean, scientists think they can get more energy out of a dissipating black hole than the energy they took to create it? or if it's the other way, how can they get energy out of creating a black hole?

[angelwiththesword]

due to the law of conservation of energy, it is a fact that energy or matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.

typically, we see that turning any kind of matter (solids, liquids, gas) into either another form of matter or energy creates a massive amount of excess energy.

a great example of this is a hydrogen bomb, or an atom bomb.
when a hydrogen atom is fused with another hydrogen atom, or when a neutron is shot into the nucleus of a uranium atom, you get a massive outburst of energy.
we take advantage of this every day through thermonuclear weaponry, and through nuclear power plants.

when you squeeze something into a very very small object, it is essentially like fusing things together, and the product is a large burst of energy.
or when you shoot protons and anti-protons together, the resulting cancellation, or annihalation of either party also produces a large burst of energy.

since all subsequent "filth" that is produced would be sucked into the black hole the instant it is made, black hole technology would prove to be a very clean way to produce energy.

[537]

I thought Fission is what creates energy, and Fusion is what requires energy. Nobody has been able to provide an energy source through Nuclear Fusion yet....

[VV o n g B a]

Originally posted by angelwiththesword@May 30 2003, 09:01 AM
due to the law of conservation of energy, it is a fact that energy or matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.

typically, we see that turning any kind of matter (solids, liquids, gas) into either another form of matter or energy creates a massive amount of excess energy.

a great example of this is a hydrogen bomb, or an atom bomb.
when a hydrogen atom is fused with another hydrogen atom, or when a neutron is shot into the nucleus of a uranium atom, you get a massive outburst of energy.
we take advantage of this every day through thermonuclear weaponry, and through nuclear power plants.

when you squeeze something into a very very small object, it is essentially like fusing things together, and the product is a large burst of energy.
or when you shoot protons and anti-protons together, the resulting cancellation, or annihalation of either party also produces a large burst of energy.

since all subsequent "filth" that is produced would be sucked into the black hole the instant it is made, black hole technology would prove to be a very clean way to produce energy.
well, how do they propose to capture the energy? nuclear energy is captured as heat/steam. do they propose to use the black hole's radiation? would they have to constantly feed it with fuel?

[angelwiththesword]

Originally posted by 537@May 30 2003, 06:11 AM
I thought Fission is what creates energy, and Fusion is what requires energy. Nobody has been able to provide an energy source through Nuclear Fusion yet....
correction.
fission can be controlled, and fusion cannot.

fusion is actually several times more powerful than fission.

as an example, the most powerful Atom Bomb made was about 22 kilotonnes (equivalent to 22,000 sticks of TNT), whereas the current Thermonuclear Warheads (aka fusion bombs) are about 10 megatonnes (equivalent to 10,000,000 sticks of TNT).

it'd be great if we could control fusion, since it is much more powerful, and much more efficient, creating very little waste.

[angelwiththesword]

well, how do they propose to capture the energy? nuclear energy is captured as heat/steam. do they propose to use the black hole's radiation? would they have to constantly feed it with fuel?

nuclear energy is captured as thermal energy, which is transformed into kinetic energy by moving turbines, which then transforms the kinetic energy to electrical potential energy.

i would imagine they would use the same process to capture blackhole energy, or at least one that is similar.

i'm not a mechanical engineer, or a physicist, so i couldn't tell you how to capture the energy. i can one conjecture with information already known.

[John0101]

Wow, I never knew we had this kinda of technology. I wonder how's modern physics gonna like like in 30 years.

[mr. x]

gosh u guys are uber nerds

all i know about black holes is that they suck stuff up and that they arent really black

[Six_Mahjin]

well, black holes aren't really holes either :smile:

[mr. x]

well, black holes aren't really holes either :smile:
u learn something new everyday

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Shouldn't you be able to generate energy just by throwing stuff into a black hole? (Like garbage. Kill two birds with one stone). It should shoot off gamma rays as it falls past the event horizon, right? Then you just put the garbage and the black hole in the middle of a giant tank of water, and the water will absorb the radiation by heating up and becoming steam. The only trouble is preventing the water from falling into the black hole too. I guess put the whole thing in a doughnut shape. Black hole goes in the center. Put it inside a hard metal container which is open at the top and is bigger than the black hole's event horizon. Throw garbage, criminals, cats, etc. into the metal container. And down the black hole they go.

Question: is it possible to move a black hole?

we take advantage of this every day through thermonuclear weaponry
I see ... who is this "we" you're talking about?

I for one welcome our new nuclear overlords.

[Shogun Empress]

I wonder when they will be able to make Acme Donut Holes so that I could just pull it out of my purse, stick it to a wall, step inside the Black Hole to exit the side of a wall thats several miles away, then peel it off the wall so I can put it inside my purse again. What a time saver!

[krome]

Tangent: If they could ever harness the static electricity in the sky and lightning, couldn't that be a tremendous and viable source of clean alternative energy?

[VV o n g B a]

Tangent: If they could ever harness the static electricity in the sky and lightning, couldn't that be a tremendous and viable source of clean alternative energy?
yes. but there isn't anything available that can accept that amount of energy in that amount of time.

[krome]

^ Well, maybe that's what we should be working on, then? To break out of our status-quo box, we HAVE to think outside the box. That's where the solution lies. I mean, it's free juice from heaven. How much better can it get??? Totally clean and ready-to-use! No need to inefficiently convert heat or mechanical motion into electricity, no waste, by-products, pollution, etc...

Also, you could harness the static electricity that exists before it discharges as lightning. Then, it's not a huge sudden wattage. I'll bet Tesla had some shyt worked out for this.