Re: CERN Atom Smasher May End the World

In article <elgNj.183303$pM4.110660@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, bryan.derksen@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
(Bryan Derksen) says...
> Batroc Z. Leaper wrote:
> > In article <slrng08ncj.n4f.tim@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, 
> > tim@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Tim Little) says...
> >> But if it did eat up a proton, then it would be positively charged
and
> >> vastly more likely to eat an electron further along in its path.
> >> Electromagnetic interaction is much, much stronger than
gravitaitonal.
> > 
> > I thought of that, but it's not obvious to me that a black hole could 
> > exhibit electrical charge.  EM interactions are mediated by photons,
and 
> > photons don't make it out of a black hole.  
> 
> But charge is conserved, so the black hole _has_ to be charged. It's one

> of the few physical characteristics a black hole can have (the others 
> being mass and angular momentum, see 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_hair_theorem>).

It's also not obvious to me that not exhibiting electrical charge is the 
same as violating conservation of charge.  The event horizon could be 
analogous to a Faraday cage.  Granted, that's a pretty loose analogy, 
but you get the idea.  The charge could be there, it just couldn't 
interact with anything outside the event horizon.

Virtual or not, photons all have the same properties.

If black holes can in fact exhibit electrical charge, a lot of work 
needs to be done on the nature and origin of EM forces.