September 9th, 2008, 7:27 am
QuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaIf a Higgs boson decays in a forest, and no detector is there to observe it, does anyone get a Nobel?The black hole doomsday scenario is almost certainly not going to happen. But given our singular lack of experimental experience with singularities, I think some might be forgiven for being worried that this is one test of theoretical physics that shouldn't be done on Earth.The Drake equation and Fermi paradox have considered the potentially finite lifespan of advanced civilizations but the ET hunters always assumed that war was the likely mechanism for self-extinction. But perhaps cat-killing curiosity and LHC-style physics is the real reason we see no other intelligent life in the galaxy. Any sufficiently advanced civilization will ultimately stumble on to particle physics, make a black hole, and disappear in a gamma ray burst. The fact that an LHC is much cheaper than a self-sustaining presence in outerspace would mean that a civilization would create its blackhole before it creates space colonies far enough from the mother planet to survive the blackhole's formation.Nice bit of logic!I agree the blank-hole is unlikely, but we have never observed Hawking radation, and we all know about Physics knowlege in and around small singularaties and the issues that produces. So it is all very well being confident but....When the switched on the first nuclear pile in the squash they were concerned about thermal runaway and the potential for the core to get so hot it would burn through the planet core "to China" (hence the term China Syndrome) - they even installed a man with an axe to cut the ropes that held the graphite rods to stop the reactor. When they detonated the first atomic bomb, there were similar concerns that the all the oxygen in the atmosphere would burn.
Last edited by
rmax on September 8th, 2008, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.