io9: Black Hole

The Truth About Microscopic Black Holes and the Utter Destruction of Earth

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 08:00:00 PDT

Science fiction is rife with tales of experiments that run out of control and blow up the planet or exterminate all life or something. Maybe that's why two U.S. researchers sued the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), trying to get an injunction that would prevent them from building their Large Hadron Collider. Their reason? Concern that it would create an apocalyptic mini-black hole here on Earth. Many debated whether their fears were pure cranksterism or held a grain of truth. Now a physics professor has researched the issue and discovered the truth about the LHC's inherent risks to all humanity.

The Large Hadron Collider, once operational, will fire beams of protons into each other at energy levels never seen on Earth. We don't really know what will happen when experiments begin (or we wouldn't bother running the experiments), and there are fears that all kinds of weird, hypothetical particles could be created that will devour the planet, or that a small but stable black hole will begin consuming all nearby matter. Steve Giddings, Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara, studied the risks. His conclusions:

The chances of a microscopic black hole forming are impossibly small.
Cosmic rays smash into particles all the time at very high energies. We probably would have noticed if the universe was being chewed up by an endless torrent of ravenous mini black holes.
In the incredibly unlikely event that a microscopic black hole forms, it would exist for "a nano-nano-nanosecond." Not long enough to do any damage, in other words.
Giddings even studied what would happen if a long chain if bizarre events occurred, and a stable micro black hole formed. The result would be...nothing much. Even a stable microscopic black hole would be harmless.

To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed. Image by: CERN via Science Daily.

If The Large Hadron Collider Produced A Microscopic Black Hole, It Probably Wouldn't Matter. [Science Daily]

Look into the Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:52:04 PDT

No it's not some Heidiggerian metaphor, that pushpin really does mark the black hole at the center of our lives. Meet Sagittarius A, the ginormous black hole that resides in mega-gravitational splendor at the center of the Milky Way, sucking up energy and spitting it back out in the form of X-rays and even hotter, crazier particles too. Do you dare look more closely at its firey depths?

Well, obviously you do. So here you go.

These two images are taken from a high-def virtual tour of the galaxy, thanks to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which is packed with beautiful images that you can zoom around in just by moving your mouse. It's like the Google maps version of the whole galaxy.

A Glimpse of the Milky Way [official site]

David Fincher Catches Mutant STD From Charles Burns

Kevin Kelly — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:00:54 PST

Director David Fincher is going to direct Charles Burns' graphic novel Black Hole, based on a screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, which is a creepy quartet in itself. If you haven't picked it up by now, Burns' black-ink heavy story deals with a group of teenagers who catch a bizarre STD called The Bug, which causes extreme physical mutations. Eventually the kids become outcasts, creating their own small societies at the fringes of cities and towns. This sounds intriguing, although hopefully the end result will fare a bit better than Beowulf, which Avary and Gaiman also collaborated on the script for. We're also interested to see what The Finch does with Rendezvous with Rama, which he's also directing. [Hollywood Reporter]

Crucial Super-Ginormous Black Hole Update

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:30:36 PST

A team of Finnish scientists have measured the biggest black hole ever. Actually, it's a binary black hole system that powers a nearby quasar, and is 18 billion times more massive than Sol (our local star). [BBC News]

Black Hole Shoots Pink Jet Of Death

charliejane — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:15:23 PST

A supermassive black hole is blasting a powerful jet, smashing a nearby galaxy in the system known as 3C321, NASA says. The jet's unprecedented "galactic violence" could wreak destruction on any planets in its path, and could create a burst of new stars. Image by AP/NASA.