Can We Confine Energy to Create Microscopic Black Holes?

[Frank Schroer]

TL;DR

Is it possible to confine energy in order to create a black hole?

After binge watching Steins;Gate, it has had me thinking about black holes. In the show it mentioned the idea of microscopic black holes(CERN). That being said, if matter and energy have an "equivalence", and if the Schwarzschild radius depends on mass, then would it be possible to confine a certain amount of energy that would result in a black hole. I am imagining a supernova going off in an indestructible geometry of some sort(confinement). However, I guess one should consider the contents of the energy itself, being photons or other particles who have a short half life. This would cause unstable I am sure... The idea of quantum or microscopic black holes are very interesting to think about.

 

[PeterDonis]

would it be possible to confine a certain amount of energy that would result in a black hole

In principle, yes. In fact, "energy" doesn't really refer to a kind of "stuff", it's just another name for the property that all "stuff" has of causing spacetime curvature. If you pack enough "stuff" of any kind into a small enough space, it will form a black hole.

The simplest actual mathematical solution describing something like "energy" (by which I assume you mean something like "radiation") forming a black hole would be a model where a spherical shell of, say, radially ingoing electromagnetic radiation collapsed into a black hole.

I guess one should consider the contents of the energy itself, being photons or other particles who have a short half life

Photons don't have a short half-life; they are stable. I'm not sure what other particles you are thinking of.

 

[PeterDonis]

microscopic black holes(CERN)

Please note that the LHC never produced any of these, nor was it actually expected to. The concentration of energy that would be required to form a micro-black hole is many, many orders of magnitude higher than the highest the LHC can produce.