Ok, but what actually happens when the LHC inadvertently creates a black hole that sucks you into it? And what is a black hole anyway? Who better to answer the first question than the coolest astrophysicist since Carl Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He sums it up in the video below, and if you want more detail I highly recommend his latest book Death By Black Hole, a wonderful collection of some of his most fascinating essays.
Now, let me try to explain what a black hole is and why spaghettification is the only option. I got an A in astronomy class and own a nice telescope, but that's about it for my credentials, so don't nitpick on the details please.
First, Einstein sat in his living room and figured out the secrets of the universe by thinking about it. No joke. I read somewhere that Einstein was so ahead of his time, that if he hadn't figured out general relativity, we still might not have figured it out by now. His math also predicted something called a black hole. He didn't actually believe in them though. But then in the 70's we found one, Cygnus X-1, and Rush wrote an awesome 2-part epic about it. But that's another story.
A black hole is basically what happens when big stars (3x bigger than our sun) run out of fuel and collapse upon themselves. It is believed that our galaxy contains a super massive black hole at it's core, as do most other galaxies. Anyway, all this complex nuclear reaction stuff goes on (look it up if you want) when the star dies and then it collapses and the result is an object with a lot of mass in a relatively small space.
Mass attracts other mass, and this is what we call gravity. The easiest way to imagine it is a bowling ball lying on a trampoline. Roll a billiard ball toward it and it curves around the indentation. Take the earth, it's a big massive object so you and me are the billiard ball being affected by it's mass and falling towards it (it's just the floor under your feet that is stopping you). So, it seems like gravity is a pretty strong force in the universe right? Holding all this stuff to the earth? No, you idiot! Think about it - lift up your cell phone in the air. You are easily overcoming the gravitational field of the entire earth with your wimpy arm. Gravity is weak as shit. But a black hole has gravity so powerful that no matter how strong your arm is, you could never lift up that cell phone. That's you how dense these things are.
Now here's where it gets weird. The gravity is so strong that light, or radio waves, cannot get out of it either. Hence the name. So like, let's say you're in a black hole, and you shine a flashlight out, someone on the outside couldn't see it. I mean, they couldn't see you either, but the flashlight example is easier to grasp. And this is how a lot of people explain why you can't ever get out of a black hole, cause light is the speed limit of the universe, and no spaceship can go faster, so therefore nobody can get out. But that's sort of a cop out. I mean, it's totally true, but for the average person you can just think, big whoop, I'll just build a spaceship faster than the speed of light. Cool, I'm with you. But...
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Here's where is gets really weird. Einstein also figured out that space and time are connected. They are like a mesh, called space-time. So not only is the black hole pulling you and your flashlight inward, it's also pulling time. So you're in your spaceship that can fly faster than light. You start flying out of the black hole. Well tough shit, cause time is going into the black hole. The center of the black hole is tomorrow. So you can fly your little ship as fast as you want, but that's not gonna stop tomorrow from happening and you're gonna be spaghettified. |
That shit is so cool it makes me cry.
Previously in Misc/Awesome:
- 12/28: Terrible Boyfriend/ Girlfriend Generator.
- 12/1: The John Waters Advent Calendar-it starts today
- 11/28: It Chooses You: All I Want for Christmas is Everything from Miranda July's Pop-Up Shop
- 11/3: Things I'd Move to Minnesota For
- 9/6: PHOTOS: Maloof $$ Money Cup
- 9/2: PHOTOS: Chantilly Model Train Show
- 9/1: Libby's List: 5 Things I Want Right Now...
- 8/22: PHOTOS: Best Friends Day
- 8/10: PHOTOS: Lawn Mover Racing, Eastern Seaboard Regionals @ Bowles Farm
- 7/26: Special List: Things the BYGays Want Now That We Can Marry In DC (and NY!)
God loves a cheerful giver.
now i have huey lewis playing in my head. thanks.
genuinely fascinating.
so much so I feel Cale you should write a popular science column on BYT. Fuck indie rock, lets talk about astrophysics and molecular and cellular biochemistry more often. I'm serious.
what is equally fascinating is how you guys found all of these crying baby thumbnails.
some people sleep, I image source.
So for some reason I didn't know anything about the LHC until Svetlana mentioned it to me yesterday. Off course I do some research and panic. So yeah, I was up until the wee hours determining the time difference between here and Switzerland, and getting upset that you go into black holes head first.
Absolutely nuts. Thanks Cale for making it simple enough for me to regurgitate this to other people without sounding like I don't even really get it myself.
Blinded by Science with Cale. Good article
Great article!
I heard from a friend who heard from a physicist that LHC will create mini black holes (the size of an atom). Apparently they're so small that they could be sitting on your hand and you wouldn't even notice.
Then again, if the black hole that LHC created were the size of a star, we wouldn't have time to notice... right?
so, if i had a tiny black hole in my had, would it really take that much longer to eat me?
this probably sounds stupid, but wouldn't all the holes somehow be attracted to each other creating a bigger one?
i love what-ifs.
Amanda - your question is not stupid! In fact, that has been a question we have asked about the universe for a long time! Our galaxy, right now, is on a collision course with another galaxy. Galaxies crash into each all the time due to gravity, and black holes can merge. In a few million years our night sky will look totally different cause of this collision. So... with all that stuff out there, isn't everything going to eventually collapse on itself? No, because on a universal scale, everything is expanding. Sure there are local traffic accidents, but in the end everything is moving away from each other. It was actually Einstein's biggest mistake, he thought the universe was constant, he imagined that there was some sort of cosmological constant force that kept everything in balance instead of realizing that the opposite is the only possible solution - the universe is expanding. Well it turns out that Einstein was actually sort of right all along, there is a force, and I'm not making this up, called dark energy. It's what is driving the universe to expand while gravity is fighting to collapse it. And dark energy won. But we can't see it. Or directly detect it. We just know it's there. I know, it sounds like sci-fi but whatever.
As for the mini black holes? my guess is they'll be too far away from each other. Gravity loses its pull the farther you get away from it so on a microscopic level these guys are probably waaaaay to far away to have a tangible gravitational effect on each other, even if it's like a meter. Just a guess tho.
Cale Sagan! Yes!
dark energy is thought to be solid mass, is that not true?
alas, i am no buff on this as you seem to be, but i once heard the gravitational pull of a black hole was so strong, that one the size of a fraction of a needle point could collapse an object the size of the earth on itself in less than a millisecond. no?
i could be wrong on both counts, but my last name isn't sagan like yours definitely is now and from now on thank you.
billy-uns and billy-uns of comments ago...
To quote the great astrophysicist Eric Idle:
"The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
"In all of the directions it can whiz
"As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
"Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
"So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
"How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
"And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
"'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth."
Cale! You're the Mr. Wizard for the new Millennium!!! Like this:
