Could the Earth really get swallowed up by a black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider?
” a friend wrote me recently. Hmmm. I’m not sure on that one. I’ll flag it in my inbox and get back to him after grading lab exercises and writing that overdue departmental report. (By the way, the LHC started up on schedule a few weeks ago, but then some magnets burned out, and a months-long repair is underway.) Are we all going to die? Yes. But are we all going to die in a flash of glory as we get sucked down a micro black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider? Probably not, but, ouch, that would hurt. As I tell my Intro Astronomy students, “It’s not the gravity that gets you, it’s the tidal forces!” Free-falling feet-first into a black hole wouldn’t even be noticeable if the gravitational pull on your feet wasn’t hugely greater than the pull on your head. The result is not pretty. You get stretched well beyond the breaking point and eventually disintegrate into individual molecules. It’s a good way to recycle, but not an easy way to say goodbye to friends. What is Walter Wagner
