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The RHIC Black Hole

The RHIC Black Hole. Or: How I Learned that Man-Made Black Holes Exist But They Are Too Small to Hurt Me, or Are They?. Erik Johnson 5 May 2005. Overview. What is RHIC? Did they really make a black hole there? What are the implications of this black hole, if they actually made one?.

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The RHIC Black Hole

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  1. The RHIC Black Hole Or: How I Learned that Man-Made Black Holes Exist But They Are Too Small to Hurt Me, or Are They? Erik Johnson 5 May 2005

  2. Overview • What is RHIC? • Did they really make a black hole there? • What are the implications of this black hole, if they actually made one?

  3. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider(RHIC) • Commissioned byBrookhaven National Lab • First Successful Operation in Summer 2000 • Drives two intersectingbeams of Gold ions head-on

  4. Safety First • If RHIC has the ability to create a black hole why does it exist? • Isn’t the prospect of a man made black hole dangerous to the world?

  5. “Disaster Scenarios” at RHIC A “Review of Speculative ‘Disaster Scenarios’ at RHIC” was released in 1999 • Concerns include: • Formation of a black hole or gravitational singularity • Initiation of transition to lower vacuum state • Formation of “strangelet” that accretes ordinary matter • These types of concerns are not new

  6. Black Holes and Gravitational Singularities • Study concludes there is no danger of black holes at RHIC • Two reasons why we don’t have to worry • Collisions at RHIC are small scale • Cosmic ray collisions occur frequently with no ill effects

  7. Conditions for Black Holes • Smallest black hole possible is 10-35 meters in diameter with mass of 10 micrograms • Energy required to create this black hole is many times larger than the most powerful accelerators can achieve • This size black hole would evaporate in 10-42 seconds due to Hawking Radiation

  8. Cosmic Ray Collisions • Collisions between heavy ions in cosmic rays are similar to those in RHIC • The relatively frequent occurrence of these collisions with no ill effect suggests the collisions in RHIC should be safe

  9. Now that we know they can’t produce a black hole, let’s discuss the black hole recently created at RHIC!

  10. The RHIC Black Hole • February 2005: A preprint of a paper compares a RHIC fireball to a dual black hole • This fireball is the result of collisions at RHIC

  11. “Dual” Black Hole? • Dual in this context does NOT refer to the number two • Instead, dual suggests that the collision can be modeled with a theoretical black hole • 10 dimensional black hole calculation used to describe strong interaction in four dimensions

  12. Implications • If this collision can be modeled with a black hole, close range effects of black holes could still be studied • The nature of RHIC collisions is conducive to researching Hawking Radiation

  13. Questions? • References: • H. Nastase. “The RHIC fireball as a dual black hole”. http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0501068 • “Review of Speculative ‘Disaster Scenarios’ at RHIC” http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/docs/rhicreport.pdf. • RHIC homepage: http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/default.htm • http://www.kressworks.com/Science/A_black_hole_ate_my_planet.htm

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