WonderQuest with April Holladay, Article printer-friendly version

Making black holes in the lab, and Space's extra dimension

Q: Can scientists create a black hole in a laboratory?  What would it take to create a black hole in a lab?  Teodor, Bucharest, Romania

A simulated event at of the LHC of the european particle physics institute, the CERN. This simulation depicting the decay of a Higgs particle following a collision of two protons in the CMS experiment. Simulation courtesy of CERN and Wikipedia.

A simulated collision of two protons at the European particle physics institute’s, the CERN’s, collider. Two protons collide; this depicts the resulting decay of a Higgs particle.  Perhaps we shall soon see a similar decay — except a black hole!  Simulation courtesy of CERN and Wikipedia.

A: This, the second of a three part article, tells how to create a black hole in the lab.  It is difficult.  We can't make a black hole in the world we know, because no collider can smash mass into a small enough space.  The resulting density has to be the so-called Planck's value of 1097 kilograms per cubic meter — which man cannot achieve. 

Exploding stars can, but we're talking about a man-made lab — a collider that smashes protons together at near light speeds.  Our puny efforts don't come close:  a density of about 1034 kilograms per cubic meter is about the best we can do, and that only in 2008 when the Swiss upgrade the Large Hadron Collider (HLC)*.

But what if the Universe is different?  Maybe the Planck value would be smaller, in that case.  Maybe, then, man could generate the needed energies.  No maybes about it!  Given an extra, nicely warped dimension, we can do it.  Here's how.

Suppose the real Universe has a Space with four dimensions (or more).   Furthermore, suppose the extra dimension warps gravity, so that gravity becomes huge in the extra dimension of Space.  (I'll explain warped dimensions next week.) 

Then the Planck value shrinks into a black-hole density the LHC can produce.  In fact, the upgraded LHC may be able to crank out a micro black hole each second.  Such a black hole's lifetime is only about ten trillion trillionths of a second (10-27 seconds).  In that brief instant, however, we can tell if a black hole was born, because it dies a wild death.  According to Stephen Hawking, the dying micro hole will spew hordes of very-high energy particles in all directions.  If we see an imprint of such radiation, then we will know the Universe is a far stranger place than the one our senses detect.  One in which we can create black holes in the lab.

Well, I've run out of room, again.  Next week, I shall continue the story of Space's extra dimensions and making black holes in the lab.

*  A brief note on sizes:  10 -23 is 10 divided by a trillion trillion, a very small number.  1034 is almost a trillion trillion trillion, a very large number.

Further Reading:

Making black holes in the lab, Part 1, WonderQuest

How black holes trap light, WonderQuest

How black holes die, WonderQuest

Tracking black holes — do they exist?  WonderQuest

Quantum black holes, Scientific American

Fermilab at Work, Fermilab

How do physicists study particles, CERN

Black holes at Future Coliders and Beyond by Greg Landsberg, Brown University

Warped Passages: unraveling the mysteries of the universe's hidden dimensions by Lisa Randall, Harvard University

The Charm of Strange Quarks: Mysteries and Revolutions of Particle Physics

Universe review

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(Answered June 11, 2007)

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