New black hole fashion trend- the doughnut look
Physicists in Switzerland are inching closer and closer to bringing the most feared space monster to Earth, but don’t worry, they’ll be making harmless, microscopic versions of the fiend just so we can understand the universe better.
Using the Light Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists Henriette Elvang of MIT and Pau Figueras of the University of Barcelona are pulling out all the stops to test theories regarding space and time. The version of the black hole that they will be making will look a lot different from the ones in space, though. Elwang explains that the Earth-made hole will look more like a tiny black Saturn, meaning it will have one central black orb and a black ring, both of which will spin at high speeds to maintain the existence of the body if only for a few milliseconds.
“If you just had a ring, it would collapse. It’s essential that it rotates to keep balanced,” says Elwang.
Both the ring and the core are defined by their event horizons- virtual boundaries where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. What can be seen would be very similar to a flattened microscopic chocolate doughnut.
So why don’t they make bigger ones so everyone can see?
That’s because they can’t. These tiny black holes can only exist in a plane with four dimensions- length, width, height and time. We humans exist in three dimesions, so in a manner of saying, we don’t live in the same reality where these things exist. However, scientists have discovered that in very small spaces, the third and fourth dimensions can actually be reconciled. If they smash protons in very small quantities with about a thousand times the gravity of the same subatomic particle, a tiny black hole will be born.
Of course, all of this is theoretical, but if all goes well, detectors in the LHC will light up to herald the vindication of theories by Stephen Hawking and those who followed him.
There’s still a lot of doubt as to whether or not the black hole can stabilize before it dissipates, but the scientists in Geneva say that in a few years, it is very likely that they’ll create a much smaller black hole to actually bridge the gap between the third and fourth dimensions.
Via new scientist
Physicists in Switzerland are inching closer and closer to bringing the most feared space monster to Earth, but don’t worry, they’ll be making harmless, microscopic versions of the fiend just so we can understand the universe better.
Using the Light Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists Henriette Elvang of MIT and Pau Figueras of the University of Barcelona are pulling out all the stops to test theories regarding space and time. The version of the black hole that they will be making will look a lot different from the ones in space, though. Elwang explains that the Earth-made hole will look more like a tiny black Saturn, meaning it will have one central black orb and a black ring, both of which will spin at high speeds to maintain the existence of the body if only for a few milliseconds.
“If you just had a ring, it would collapse. It’s essential that it rotates to keep balanced,” says Elwang.
Both the ring and the core are defined by their event horizons- virtual boundaries where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. What can be seen would be very similar to a flattened microscopic chocolate doughnut.
So why don’t they make bigger ones so everyone can see?
That’s because they can’t. These tiny black holes can only exist in a plane with four dimensions- length, width, height and time. We humans exist in three dimesions, so in a manner of saying, we don’t live in the same reality where these things exist. However, scientists have discovered that in very small spaces, the third and fourth dimensions can actually be reconciled. If they smash protons in very small quantities with about a thousand times the gravity of the same subatomic particle, a tiny black hole will be born.
Of course, all of this is theoretical, but if all goes well, detectors in the LHC will light up to herald the vindication of theories by Stephen Hawking and those who followed him.
There’s still a lot of doubt as to whether or not the black hole can stabilize before it dissipates, but the scientists in Geneva say that in a few years, it is very likely that they’ll create a much smaller black hole to actually bridge the gap between the third and fourth dimensions.
Via new scientist
