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#11
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Could a small black hole surprise us on earth.
Buy, rent or find a way to watch "Hyperspace". It's on DVD if you
want to buy or rent it. I think it will answer all your questions, and a lot more, assuming the info is at all accurate. H.G. wrote in message .com... I have a question. We would probably get some warning about a comet or an asteroid - but what about a pea size black hole? If one hit the moon would it be like a match to paper and suck the entire moon into itself even if it took some time? Could an invisible small black hole just show up over the Sierra Nevada and no one would have foreseen it and it would destroy the earth? Would it destroy the earth instantly or would there be some fantastically horrible slow whirlpool of matter into a small black hole so that we would all have time to feel intense fear? I suspect these questions have been answered many times before but I have been looking for several months and I bet other's are wondering too. |
#12
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Could a small black hole surprise us on earth.
jerry warner wrote in message ...
Black holes or related high energy entities on the order of a molecule or an atom or smaller, must be exceedingly rare, as compared with say neutrons? Neutrons do pass through the Earth daily without any short term recognition. Do you mean "neutrons" or "neutrinos"? Neutrons can be stopped by a swimming pool. (Ask any nuclear power plant operator.) They certainly cannot pass through the Earth. Neutrinos, OTOH, are a vastly different story. Every night trillions of them zip through you harmlessly every second, after having breezed through thousands of km of rock. (I don't know the exact number, because of all the treatments and dissertations of the solar neutrino problem and the expected number of neutrinos, i have yet to find a single source that actually states what that number is. Sam? Whatever the number, it's unfathomably huge.) Not that neutrons are rare either. Something on the order of half your body mass is neutrons. Clear skies! -- ------------------- Richard Callwood III -------------------- ~ U.S. Virgin Islands ~ USDA zone 11 ~ 18.3N, 64.9W ~ ~ eastern Massachusetts ~ USDA zone 6 (1992-95) ~ --------------- http://cac.uvi.edu/staff/rc3/ --------------- |
#13
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Could a small black hole surprise us on earth.
neutrinos -
Cousin Ricky wrote: jerry warner wrote in message ... Black holes or related high energy entities on the order of a molecule or an atom or smaller, must be exceedingly rare, as compared with say neutrons? Neutrons do pass through the Earth daily without any short term recognition. Do you mean "neutrons" or "neutrinos"? Neutrons can be stopped by a swimming pool. (Ask any nuclear power plant operator.) They certainly cannot pass through the Earth. Neutrinos, OTOH, are a vastly different story. Every night trillions of them zip through you harmlessly every second, after having breezed through thousands of km of rock. (I don't know the exact number, because of all the treatments and dissertations of the solar neutrino problem and the expected number of neutrinos, i have yet to find a single source that actually states what that number is. Sam? Whatever the number, it's unfathomably huge.) Not that neutrons are rare either. Something on the order of half your body mass is neutrons. Clear skies! -- ------------------- Richard Callwood III -------------------- ~ U.S. Virgin Islands ~ USDA zone 11 ~ 18.3N, 64.9W ~ ~ eastern Massachusetts ~ USDA zone 6 (1992-95) ~ --------------- http://cac.uvi.edu/staff/rc3/ --------------- |
#14
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Could a small black hole surprise us on earth.
On Sun, 22 Feb 2004 22:58:21 GMT, wrote:
I have a question. We would probably get some warning about a comet or an asteroid - but what about a pea size black hole? If one hit the moon would it be like a match to paper and suck the entire moon into itself even if it took some time? Could an invisible small black hole just show up over the Sierra Nevada and no one would have foreseen it and it would destroy the earth? Would it destroy the earth instantly or would there be some fantastically horrible slow whirlpool of matter into a small black hole so that we would all have time to feel intense fear? I suspect these questions have been answered many times before but I have been looking for several months and I bet other's are wondering too. Based on my long reading of pseudo-technical sci-fi, I have to opine that none of this is likely to happen. The only way you'd get most of these effects is if the black hole arrived at very slow speeds. At even asteroid speeds of 30k km/hour, even if it hit head-on, it would pass through the Earth and out the other side in fifteen minutes, a few million tons heavier perhaps, but we'd never miss them. Relatively little transfer of momentum. At the higher speeds that galactic arrival suggests, even less effect. It'd be like shooting a bullet through a chocolate cake, the bullet wouldn't even "see" the target. Not that I've spent a lot of time shooting bullets through chocolate cakes. Try reading "The Forge of God" by Greg Bear for amusement and what I take to be reasonably accurate speculations. Also the short story "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven, in the collection "A Hole In Space." J. |
#15
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Could a small black hole surprise us on earth.
"JXStern" wrote in message ... On Sun, 22 Feb 2004 22:58:21 GMT, wrote: I have a question. We would probably get some warning about a comet or an asteroid - but what about a pea size black hole? If one hit the moon would it be like a match to paper and suck the entire moon into itself even if it took some time? Could an invisible small black hole just show up over the Sierra Nevada and no one would have foreseen it and it would destroy the earth? Would it destroy the earth instantly or would there be some fantastically horrible slow whirlpool of matter into a small black hole so that we would all have time to feel intense fear? I suspect these questions have been answered many times before but I have been looking for several months and I bet other's are wondering too. Based on my long reading of pseudo-technical sci-fi, I have to opine that none of this is likely to happen. The only way you'd get most of these effects is if the black hole arrived at very slow speeds. At even asteroid speeds of 30k km/hour, even if it hit head-on, it would pass through the Earth and out the other side in fifteen minutes, a few million tons heavier perhaps, but we'd never miss them. Relatively little transfer of momentum. At the higher speeds that galactic arrival suggests, even less effect. It'd be like shooting a bullet through a chocolate cake, the bullet wouldn't even "see" the target. Not that I've spent a lot of time shooting bullets through chocolate cakes. Try reading "The Forge of God" by Greg Bear for amusement and what I take to be reasonably accurate speculations. Also the short story "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven, in the collection "A Hole In Space." J. This are good leads. Thx |
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