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Comment by hugh | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone ever figured out (or even estimated) how long it would actually take to destroy the world if we did succeed in creating a black hole on the surface?

Assuming it didn't evaporate and started out at rest, it'd presumably fall straight through the floor, picking up mass as it went, but I'm not sure exactly how much. Once it got to the core it would overshoot, hollowing out a bit more of the core, but some kind of drag would eventually slow it down, leaving it in some kind of oddly-shaped cavity near the core. I have no idea whether this would wind up stable, but I'm guessing that eventually the core would collapse towards it, and once it started losing its structure the whole planet would collapse in.

But I have no idea how long all this would take. Minutes? Hours? Years?

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If that machine creates a black hole, it will be the mass of two protons, and have an effect only on other objects within a length of a few protons. It will cease to exist within seconds, the only evidence being a slight change in the speed of protons passing nearby.

Why would it fall through the floor? The LHC creates 100,000 times stronger gravity then the earth in a confined space. Would the black hole not be confined in a small spot that is no larger then a speck of dust with temperatures colder then space. With nothing to feed from and an environment unlike anywhere else, would it ever survive for longer then the short burst...

We would probably die pretty fast, because all the atmosphere would be sucked in, plus the black hole would create a big shock wave while sucking the earths surface and probably the great amount of radiation would kill us instantly, im no physicist, all i know about black holes, i know from the discovery channel and wikipedia, if i am wrong, please tell me, im dieing to know :D

If it were small enough, it could only suck in a few atoms at a time. So, it could take a substantial amount of time to expand in the beginning.

Would it grow exponentially? Would it be possible to cut around it and launch it out into space?

I've heard from some pretty reliable sources that a small black hole WAS created, but gravity pulled it towards the Earth core. It simply got away and now they are trying to ignore the incident. Who knows how long it will take it to eat Earth inside out?

How would they even be able to tell if they'd done it?

Hmm interesting. What happens if a mini black hole is launched into the sun. Is it possible it just gets consumed?

The black hole would consume the sun eventually, yes.

You couldn't cut around it, because it would fall out the bottom of any container you tried to put it in.

Perhaps you could give it a charge (by firing electrons at it) and then confine it electrostatically or magnetically.

I can't see that the atmosphere is likely to get sucked in -- not in the early stages. Until it becomes very massive (i.e. has absorbed a significant portion of the Earth's mass) it's only going to have a significant effect on things that are very close to it.

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