- Scienceblogs has an Exclusive Interview with Senator John Edwards on Science-Related Topics
- Tommaso Dorigo has an excellent post on Black Hole production at the LHC (see also our post on Micro Black Holes)
- Arun pointed me towards this very insightful article If Iran were America
- Quotation of the week:
"Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom."~Francis Bacon
- Humor: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
"Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom."
ReplyDeleteUnderstood!
:)
now you're talking bee.
ReplyDeleteproducing black holes in lab surely is possible scenario. let's say there is enough energy at LHC (or if not LHC then some bigger, better machine in the future), then:
1 let's say gravity IS quantized, THEN somehow we might get a stable black hole, ie. in lowest state and not completely evaporating.
2 how we might do that? proposal: spray produced BH with electrons
to enlarge its longevity or horizont if needed for so long as to direct it and trap it into a some kind of magnetic bottle and hope magnetic field holds quantisation so BH would feel comfortable ie. stable.
best,
A.
btw. of course, electron spray is needed so that BH would feel magnetic field in first place
ReplyDeleteA.
proposal: spray produced BH with electrons
ReplyDeletehow do you think you get the electron into the black hole? the black hole cross-section is tiny, something like R^2, that is 10^{-7}/fm^2 or so. also, you'd have to be pretty fast, otherwise it's decayed long before that (lifetime roughly 10 fm/c, that is 10^-22 seconds). - B.
I don't know.
ReplyDeletewhat do you think, how it should/could be done?
A.
I think it can't be done.
ReplyDeletewait, I remembered: by being very precise and fast ;)
ReplyDeleteA.
indeed, I think my answer was very precise and fast ;-)
ReplyDeletebut wrong, as you didnt mentioned "precise and fast" possibility hehe
ReplyDeleteA.
the point is you can't be as precise and fast as necessary to feed the electrons into your black hole. it's the same reason why Horst's 'patent' to feed the garbage into black holes is, well, garbage.
ReplyDeleteyes, of course. your argument was: "you can't be precise and fast enough because these holes are just so darn tiny and small"
ReplyDeletegreat argument...
A.
yes, indeed. I've tried to find a way to feed them so they would grow but couldn't come up with anything sensible. it would take matter with a density of several thousand times nuclear matter (like e.g. inside a neutron star) to achieve that. on the other hand, we should be grateful they can't grow.
ReplyDeleteThat sign was a hoot. First, I thought you were dissing LQG, but then realised that String Theory is also a Road. The sign does sort of look like an Octopus, though.
ReplyDeleteI notice a post on Reference Frame by you on Global Warming ( a link anyway). Rather than get involved in polemics about how anthropogenic it is, or whether it is hubristic to assume Kyoto and carbon credits will change it, I promote EO Wilson's view of working and spending to preserve species diversity and habitat. Wilson is a wonderful speaker and author ( The Future of Life, The Ants, The Creation, etc) and has just got a 20 million grant to set up the Encyclopedia of Life, a Wikipedia of all the known species on earth.
Wikipedia is a partcipant. The eol website is under development, but you can go there. Acting to preserve habitat is different from doing one;s bit by installing some solar panels ( Gore's mansion) or buying a twirly GAWDAWFUL fluorescent bulb.
The IPCC and Gore-promoted "carbon credits" scheme will be a corrupt shell game like trading derivatives out of thin air ( pardon the pun).
Russia is already capitalising on it...soon I think instead of the Nigerian scams, carbon scams will proliferate.
Hi Gordon,
ReplyDeleteyes, I came across the eol website some time ago, my mum will love it (she's a biology teacher, I can imagine thousand of pupils copying essays ;-) ). It still bothers me if people dismiss any kind of ecological consciousness just because they don't believe global warming is caused by humans. There's no doubt that our presence on this planet has consequences that will fall back on us, and I think we should be very careful with that. Capitalism is blind to many needs that are not effective on short time and distance scales.
Best,
B.
Words burst out before wisdom is nourished. :(
ReplyDeleteSilence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom
ReplyDeleteGreat quote :-)
late to the show I always am... the Iran thing on Lew Rockwell was amusing but the author does take some liberties with the facts. So regardless of my support of Ron Paul (who gains much endorsement from lew rockwell) I should point out to you the following pdf
ReplyDeleteI read this over the winter (but not while snowboarding!) and it points out the serious problems with the 'iran is only doing nuclear research for energy (peaceful) use'. The economics as well as lack of raw materials point to great difficulties with that hypothesis. Irregardless, Natanz is the smaller problem - the heavy water plant at Arak is a more serious issue.
If you are at all interested in such things, the nonproliferation blogs armscontrolwonk.com and one by 'robot economist' are quite good and usually amusing as well.