Black Hole Explosions: Hawking's 1974 Letter to Nature

[stoomart]

In Hawking's "Black hole explosions?" 1974 letter to Nature, he states:

There might, however, be much smaller black holes which were formed by fluctuations in the early Universe. Any such black hole of mass less than 10¹⁵ g would have evaporated by now. Near the end of its life the rate of emission would be very high and about 10³⁰ erg would be released in the last 0.1 s. This is a fairly small explosion by astronomical standards but it is equivalent to about 1 million 1 Mton hydrogen bombs.

My question is: wouldn't it be a terrible idea to generate a black hole of any size in a particle accelerator?

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v248/n5443/abs/248030a0.html

 

[Orodruin]

You seem to be missing out on the fact that you can never get a black hole evaporation more energetic than whatever you put in the beam.

Any black hole generated would evaporate extremely fast.

 

[stoomart]

You seem to be missing out on the fact that you can never get a black hole evaporation more energetic than whatever you put in the beam.

Any black hole generated would evaporate extremely fast.

That makes sense. I guess the key from the letter is "released in the last 0.1 s"; the generated black whole would evaporate in an exponentially shorter time than 0.1 s due its trivial mass. Thanks as always.

 

[rootone]

... wouldn't it be a terrible idea to generate a black hole of any size in a particle accelerator?

Yes it would, but a particle accelerator can't produce a black hole of any size.
Tiny ones that are short lived, well maybe.

 

[mfb]

That makes sense. I guess the key from the letter is "released in the last 0.1 s"; the generated black whole would evaporate in an exponentially shorter time than 0.1 s due its trivial mass. Thanks as always.

Right. It would evaporate within at most a few Planck times.

Yes it would, but a particle accelerator can't produce a black hole of any size.
Tiny ones that are short lived, well maybe.

A "tiny one" is a size I think.
No signs of black holes at the LHC, and theories suggesting that they could be produced were very speculative anyway.

 

[Chronos]

The energy necessary to produce a black hole of any size is huge. The smallest possible theoretical mass for a black hole is the Planck mass - 10¹⁸ GeV. That is far beyond the reach of any existing, or even imagined, collider.

 

[mfb]

The energy necessary to produce a black hole of any size is huge. The smallest possible theoretical mass for a black hole is the Planck mass - 10¹⁸ GeV. That is far beyond the reach of any existing, or even imagined, collider.

If there is no new physics below the Planck scale. Extra dimensions or other additional things could make the Planck scale much lower, and allow black hole formation with a few TeV - in the range of the LHC.

 

[Chronos]

Agreed, my observations are constrained to physics as currently known.