Black Holes

[Zorland]

In what I expect will be a useless attempt to get people to stop bothering me about black holes, I would like to explain a bit about forces, black holes, and CERN.

*Gravity is a very weak force. You might not have realized this because the common conception is that gravity is a "law of nature we can't break"; you can't fly off the Earth, thus gravity is super duper strong. Well, this is not really true. I will quote a number for you, and then give a real life example. There are four (depending on how you count) basic types of forces that we know about. Gravity is the weakest. Another commonly know force is the electromagnetic force (electricity from the wall, magnetism from a magnet, etc). The electromagnetic force is 10^39 times stronger than gravity. That's the same ratio as the mass of the sun to the mass of 1 grain of salt.

"Bah, numbers!" you say. "Who cares about them!" Well consider this: There's probably a book within reach of you right now. Try to pick up the book. Did it work? Do you realize you just overcame the gravitation force of *the entire earth* with just a small bit of electromagnetic force (you probably can't even tell that your hands have electric charge at all). Gravity is very very weak. It only seems strong because you can lump a bunch of mass together a lot easier than you can lump a bunch of charge together.

*The gravitation (=force of gravity from a specific object) of an object is not affected by its shape. Think of the sun. It's a big sphere of some size. If we imagine shrinking the sun down to half its size, then the force on the earth from the sun would be exactly the same. If we expanded the sun to be twice as large, the force on the earth from the sun would be exactly the same. If somehow (and it's impossible as far as we know) the sun suddenly became a black hole, the force on the earth from the black hole sun (hehe) would be exactly the same.

Likewise, the gravitation of two protons on the rest of the earth is quite small. It doesn't matter how much you squish them together. In fact, if you packed those protons so tightly that they became a black hole, you could hold that black hole in your hand, since the gravitation <<< electromagnetic repulsion.

*Black holes have a certain density. That is, a certain amount of mass per volume. You can equally think of this as a certain energy per volume (e=mcc). The reason some people claim black holes will be formed at CERN is because we are smashing a lot of energy into a small space. (Even though the science does not support the conclusion of creating the black holes). However, with what you have just learned, you should feel safe in knowing that even if such a black hole were to be created, it could make no trouble. In fact, it would just evaporate in less than a second.

Rest easy,
Z

[Imrahil]

But... but... the anti-matter! Dan Browne proved it!

Kidding, thanks for the info, interesting, I didn't know that.

[Koom]

That was very interesting. I'm assuming you work on the Collider which some newspapers (Ie- the Daily Mail) would have us believe is going to end the world.
Interesting that you have time to play Eq though, reminds me of a Frankie Boyle comedy sketch.... "Cure cancer? Auch no... I want to see how many fruit pastels it takes to choke a Kestrel"

:D

[Genadine]

So, why does light get pulled into a Black hole? I was under the impression that light being an electromagnetic wave would be able to run away but the very thing 'black' hole is or was thinking because light cannot escape from it.

Genuine question btw if you can explain it to me would be cool.

G

[qujam]

The gravitational field of a black hole (hence the reason its black) is so strong it can capture light waves. Due to wave-particle duality, even electromagnetic waves have, at least a theoretical, mass. If something has sufficent gravitational field to attract even light it is by definition a black hole. Therefore to have that amount of gravitational force, it requires a large mass. Hence the impossiblity of a black hole on the scale of 2 protons.

[Jolene]

I understand it this way.
The real dangerous black holes have the gravity field of several suns.
So when you shrink our sun to the size of a tomato it still would have the same gravity field and would do nothing to us regarding the gravity. It is just hard to see, the tomato I mean. So something could fly into the gravity field of the tomato and will be trapped there.
The huge black holes (not huge in size, they can also be a tomato) are the result of many, many, many shrunken suns. More and more stars fall into this trap and squeeze more and more. So in the end you have a tomato with the force of 10000000 of suns and those swallow all light, other planets and things that come to close to the Event Horizon.
So to create something so dangerous that it would destroy our earth you would have to collect several suns and make a tomato out of them.

Correct?

[Abadonn]

We're all dooooomed !

[Xack]

The Tomato of Death!

[qujam]

You should work at CERN Jolene

[Pede]

But i still wanna cyber you about your job.. it is the only fun I have since Rigs retired