One Black hole vs Another.

[Diogenes]

Meaning the Legal System vs. the LHC.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24611/

[Robthebob]

I've heard of one thing, that the cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere is higher energy than what the LHC is capable of. Looks like there's no real case against the LHC.

[IntLibber]

I've heard of one thing, that the cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere is higher energy than what the LHC is capable of. Looks like there's no real case against the LHC.

That sounds reasonable given the most energetic ones are produced by Gamma Ray Bursts. The luddism against LHC is indicative of the anthropocentric conceit you see in these people, thinking mankind is capable of destroying the planet.

[clonan]

That sounds reasonable given the most energetic ones are produced by Gamma Ray Bursts. The luddism against LHC is indicative of the anthropocentric conceit you see in these people, thinking mankind is capable of destroying the planet.

Of COURSE mankind can destroy the planet. We could do so for most of the last 50 years. There is another thread that is talking about Russia moving an asteroid... etc...

We can destroy the planet... just probably not by accident. Anthropocentric thinking is not wrong but it also shouldn't stop advancement.

[pfrit]

That sounds reasonable given the most energetic ones are produced by Gamma Ray Bursts. The luddism against LHC is indicative of the anthropocentric conceit you see in these people, thinking mankind is capable of destroying the planet.

Of COURSE mankind can destroy the planet. We could do so for most of the last 50 years. There is another thread that is talking about Russia moving an asteroid... etc...

We can destroy the planet... just probably not by accident. Anthropocentric thinking is not wrong but it also shouldn't stop advancement.

We can't destroy the planet. I seriously doubt that we could destroy life on the planet. At a minimum, archea are completely safe from us. I doubt we could even wipe out all chordata in a reasonable way. I think that any effort we did to wipe out humankind would fail and if it suceeded would take a long time and a lot of people willing to kill themselves in the end. Civilisation, OTOH, would be comparibly easy.

[KitemanSA]

I've heard of one thing, that the cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere is higher energy than what the LHC is capable of. Looks like there's no real case against the LHC.

There may be a fatal distinction between the two. And this is really blue sky
It may be that the higher energy cosmic rays create micro black holes in the ionisphere that dissolve before they can reach sufficient mass density to feed them faster than they dissolve, while those made in the LHC find very high density feeding material soon enough to replace their losses and grow. Grow until they consume the Earth. Bwahh ha ha ha.

Or not.

[blaisepascal]

I've heard of one thing, that the cosmic rays hitting our atmosphere is higher energy than what the LHC is capable of. Looks like there's no real case against the LHC.

There may be a fatal distinction between the two. And this is really blue sky
It may be that the higher energy cosmic rays create micro black holes in the ionisphere that dissolve before they can reach sufficient mass density to feed them faster than they dissolve, while those made in the LHC find very high density feeding material soon enough to replace their losses and grow. Grow until they consume the Earth. Bwahh ha ha ha.

It's easy to figure out... The maximum collision energy in the LHC is 14TeV, which has a mass equivalence of 25 zeptograms, or about a quarter of the mass of a hemoglobin molecule. The Schwartzchild radius associated with that mass is about 4x10^-50 m, or roughly 15 orders of magnitude smaller than the Plank length. The time for such a black hole to evaporate would be around 2x10^-84 s, during which time it couldn't move even a significant fraction of its diameter (2x10^-85 light-seconds is 25 orders of magnitude smaller than the black hole's Schwartzchild radius).

Or not.

Quite.

[dch24]

It's easy to figure out... The maximum collision energy in the LHC is 14TeV, which has a mass equivalence of 25 zeptograms, or about a quarter of the mass of a hemoglobin molecule. The Schwartzchild radius associated with that mass is about 4x10^-50 m, or roughly 15 orders of magnitude smaller than the Plank length. The time for such a black hole to evaporate would be around 2x10^-84 s, during which time it couldn't move even a significant fraction of its diameter (2x10^-85 light-seconds is 25 orders of magnitude smaller than the black hole's Schwartzchild radius).

I guess I had never run the numbers, but I assumed it was something similar to this.

But still... wow. It's not even close.

[MSimon]

Yeah. But the LHC could make millions of particles a second and if they clump together - still nothing.

Dang.

I was hoping to avoid paying rent once they turn the durn thing on.

Maybe I could tell the landlord that a LHC black hole ate my check. That won't work. He is an engineer.

[TallDave]

I seriously doubt that we could destroy life on the planet.

I definitely agree re our current weapons.

OTOH, a multi-trillion-dollar effort to drop a medium-to-large large asteroid on the planet is probably doable, and could easily do for the chordata. Not sure how big it needs to be to get all the archaea... but I imagine that's doable too, and would probably just take a decade longer.

That's just life at the bottom of a gravity well, I guess...

[pfrit]

I seriously doubt that we could destroy life on the planet.

I definitely agree re our current weapons.

OTOH, a multi-trillion-dollar effort to drop a medium-to-large large asteroid on the planet is probably doable, and could easily do for the chordata. Not sure how big it needs to be to get all the archaea... but I imagine that's doable too, and would probably just take a decade longer.

That's just life at the bottom of a gravity well, I guess...

To kill all chodata, you would need to add enough energy to vaporize the oceans. For archea, you would need to melt the top 5 miles of all the rock on the planet at once. Probably more. They have yet to dig a well deep enough not to find life in the rock. Possible? Maybe Mars would have enough umpf to do it, but not much smaller. Easier to make a black hole and swallow the whole earth. When people talk about ending life on the earth, they either mean humans or humans and cute creatures. Wiping out worms is probably beyond us. Forget single cells creatures. People come and go, but ...

[Helius]

All righty then. Its a plan.

[TallDave]

That's just life at the bottom of a gravity well, I guess...

To kill all chodata, you would need to add enough energy to vaporize the oceans. For archea, you would need to melt the top 5 miles of all the rock on the planet at once. Probably more. They have yet to dig a well deep enough not to find life in the rock. Possible? Maybe Mars would have enough umpf to do it, but not much smaller. Easier to make a black hole and swallow the whole earth. When people talk about ending life on the earth, they either mean humans or humans and cute creatures. Wiping out worms is probably beyond us. Forget single cells creatures. People come and go, but ...

Yes, I was thinking a total subduction event would probably be necessary to get all the archaea (I'm assuming only the crust has life in it).

I'm not sure we need anything nearly as large as Mars, though. Venus undergoes total subduction on its own now and then. I imagine a big enough asteroid might do the trick. I think you'd just need to generate a large enough ripple through the mantle.

Chicxulub wasn't big enough, but another factor of ten maybe?

This may not be a perfect answer, but according to Charles Cockell: "Perhaps, just under four billion years ago, the Earth could have been hit by asteroids up to 400 kilometers across, forty times bigger than the one that is supposed to have been responsible for the K/T extinctions. Such an asteroid would boil away the oceans and transform the atmosphere into one of steam and molten rock." The resulting temperatures would be "well beyond the upper limit for life and the surface of the Earth would have been baked free of living microbes."

Source: Cockell, Charles S. Impossible Extinction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003: 88.

He doesn't address life sheltered deep in the crust though, apparently.