Is it just me or is the large Hadron collider really scary in how it can start a black hole chain reaction?
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/could-the-lhc-make-an-...
TL:DR:
1.) If these miniature black holes exist, the Earth has been getting hit by them for billions of years, and it’s still here. 2.) If you do create a miniature black hole, they will decay, via Hawking Radiation, on ridiculously small timescales. 3.) You can compute the rate at which a black hole eats matter, and it’s not even close to being as small as the lifetime of our planet.
the rate at which a black hole eats matter...
...it’s not even close to being as small as the
lifetime of our planet.
I think it's important to note that these things being discussed would potentially be micro-singularities, smaller than anything that might be visible to the naked eye.
Otherwise, it's pretty obvious that a planetary-scale black hole could handily destroy the earth in short order, by way of mere collision, whether consumes all of the earth's matter beyond its event horizon or not.
...anyway, yeah, the LHC's capacity for stranglets is otherwise negligible, and not very worrisome at all.
On the other hand, some ants playing with insecticide indeed searched for a sustained chain reaction and yieled x3 the anticipated output during operation Castle Bravo
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/those-who-witnessed-castle-...
On the other hand, the universe still looks pretty empty of extraterrestrial civilizations, despite the availability of nice planets and so forth. Perhaps they were all pretty certain too.
Also what exactly is a "black hole chain reaction"? How are these black holes possible exactly? The energy involved in a single proton are not enough for a stable microscopic black hole to form. This is presuming it even CAN form (its at best a hypothesis) given our understanding of gravity.
We don't have exactly a kickass theory (that's why we built the LHC in the fisrt place) and all we can talk (predict) about black holes formation is merely hypotetical.
I don't think we are in danger with this experiments other than draining taxpayers money at virtually zero ROI
If a theory can't explain nor predict origin of Black Holes, Dark Matter and say what Gravity actually is and why happens, then that doesn't qualify as Kickass in my book.
Show me teleportation and controllable antigravity and we can talk kickass again.
Could our theories be wrong here? Sure, but worrying about this is just like the scientists worried we would ignite our atmosphere with nuclear testing. That is, its unlikely at best and needless worry in general.
I only know about this because as a kid I read a lot of pre-space-age sci-fi, and there was a story either by Heinlein or Asimov where the solution to this "danger" was to put nuclear fusion plants in orbit.
That gives you, a.o. https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/docs1/00329010.pdf
Safety factor to get some nitrogen ignition is a worrying 1.5 when using fusion bombs of a thousand cubic meters, but even then, the reaction will fizzle out (at least, that's what I get from the abstract)
A scientist makes a fanciful comment in jest and the media just runs with it. There's nothing to be concerned with going on at CERN. We can't even come close to the energies nature produces every day.