quarks can form mini blackholes

robertjford80

this passage is from Paul Davies' the Last Three Minutes:

From time to time, two quarks will approach each other very closely. Still more rarely, all three quarks will find themselves in extremely close proximity. It is possible that the quarks will get so close that the gravitational force between them, normally utterly negligible, will overwhelm all else. If this happens, the quarks will fall together to make a minuscule black hole. In effect, the proton collapses under its own gravity by quantum-mechanical tunneling. The resulting minihole is highly unstable—recall the Hawking process—and more or less instantly vanishes, creating a positron. Estimates of the lifetime for proton decay via this route are very uncertain, and vary from 10 to the 45 years to a stupendous 10 to the 220 years

I have a very difficult time believing and understanding this. Why would two quarks being in close proximity create a black hole? A nucleus is only 3 orders of magnitude larger than a quark which i like mount everest compared to a human so i would think that quarks would approach each other a lot more often than 10^45 years. Second, when this black hole occurs, what happens to the neighboring protons? Just what is this black hole made of? Quarks?

Bill_K

robertjford80, It's really embarrassing, what you apparently have to say these days to sell a popular science book. Note the word "Conjectures" in the title of this book, and believe me, that's an understatement.

A proton is about one fermi (10^-13 cm) across. The size of a quark is unknown, experimentally smaller than 10^-16 cm. Current theory, the Standard Model, treats it as pointlike, but that could change if and when the Standard Model is replaced by a deeper theory. Davies' conjecture is based on the assumption that the Standard Model remains valid for, oh about 30 orders of magnitude smaller. Quarks would have to remain pointlike to within this distance, and approach each other to where their gravitational attraction overwhelms the strong force.

Before this happens, all the air molecules in the room will jump into my pocket.

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