Re: CERN Atom Smasher May End the World

In article <slrng086q6.jgv.tim@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, 
tim@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Tim Little) says...
> On 2008-04-14, Luke Campbell <lwcamp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > (B) High energy collisions can create long lived dangerous black
> > holes.  Consequently, collisions of cosmic rays with matter
> > throughout the galaxy will have created a number of high velocity
> > black holes which should be zipping through our planet with some
> > frequency.  Where are they?
> 
> I don't think we'd detect them.  If they don't decay then they
> probably only interact gravitationally - and their mass would still be
> tiny.  Who would notice if a flood of such microholes passing through
> ate even a few billion atomic m***** worth of material per second,
> throughout the volume of the Earth?  Maybe a neutrino detector would,
> but I expect they'd throw out such a signal as spurious.

Why would you think they would not decay?  

Also, a quantum black hole's appetite would not be electrically neutral.  
If it hit a nucleus, there would be a lot of orphan electrons zipping 
around.  

I think it is most likely that high energy collisions just don't 
manufacture quantum black holes.