The most exciting physics at LHC could be the production of Backholes
July 8th, 2007
Are we going to find blackholes at LHC? Really? is it really likely? nope; Is it even possible? umm, very remotely!
Starting LHC is like “going west” a couple of centuries ago, or going on a sea voyage four or five centuries ago. One never knows what will one find!
In certain situations, if all the stars line up (pun intended), a couple of the theories floating around suggest that there may be a production of blackholes at the energy range accessible to LHC. Models with TeV-scale gravity scenarios include models where the theory has large extra dimensions, (LED) and ones where the gravity gets stronger at short distances.
So how does one look for Blackholes that MAY form at LHC? The blackholes, when formed, will spin to get rid of the dipole moment (so called shedding the hair) and this spinning process will create electromagnetic and gravitational waves.
Under the right circumstances, LHC can produce one blackhole per second, yes thats a very large number indeed!
This will also imply that there is new physics at the sub millimeter level, there is nothing to suggest if it is indeed the case, but wouldn’t it be nice if there was!
By the way, if you are concerned that the blackholes created at LHC might swallow the earth, don’t be; even if they are created, they will decay instantly. Also, the Earth is bombed by a lot of very high-energy cosmic rays and the collisions is comparable to the LHC energies. So far, these collisions haven’t destroyed the Earth, so it is reasonable that some additional collisions we create won’t be able to do so either. Relax!
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