In addition, quarks will be more dilute at the LHC than at RHIC, making it more difficult to assemble strange matter. It is difficult for strange matter to stick together in the high temperatures produced by such colliders, rather as ice does not form in hot water. The LHC’s beams will have more energy than RHIC, but this makes it even less likely that strangelets could form. At times, the LHC will run with beams of heavy nuclei, just as RHIC does. A study at the time showed that there was no cause for concern, and RHIC has now run for eight years, searching for strangelets without detecting any. But could strangelets coalesce with ordinary matter and change it to strange matter? This question was first raised before the start up of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, RHIC, in 2000 in the United States. According to most theoretical work, strangelets should change to ordinary matter within a thousand-millionth of a second. Strangelet is the term given to a hypothetical microscopic lump of ‘strange matter’ containing almost equal numbers of particles called up, down and strange quarks. The continued existence of such dense bodies, as well as the Earth, rules out the possibility of the LHC producing any dangerous black holes. Black holes produced in cosmic-ray collisions with bodies such as neutron stars and white dwarf stars would be brought to rest. However, there are much larger and denser astronomical bodies than the Earth in the Universe. Those produced by cosmic rays would pass harmlessly through the Earth into space, whereas those produced by the LHC could remain on Earth. If stable microscopic black holes had no electric charge, their interactions with the Earth would be very weak. The fact that the Earth and Sun are still here rules out the possibility that cosmic rays or the LHC could produce dangerous charged microscopic black holes. In this case they would interact with ordinary matter and be stopped while traversing the Earth or Sun, whether produced by cosmic rays or the LHC. Many stable black holes would be expected to be electrically charged, since they are created by charged particles. The specific reasons for this depend whether the black holes are electrically charged, or neutral. Whilst collisions at the LHC differ from cosmic-ray collisions with astronomical bodies like the Earth in that new particles produced in LHC collisions tend to move more slowly than those produced by cosmic rays, one can still demonstrate their safety. Black holes, therefore, would have no time to start accreting matter and to cause macroscopic effects.Īlthough theory predicts that microscopic black holes decay rapidly, even hypothetical stable black holes can be shown to be harmless by studying the consequences of their production by cosmic rays. All these theories predict that these particles would disintegrate immediately. There are, however, some speculative theories that predict the production of such particles at the LHC. Astronomical black holes are much heavier than anything that could be produced at the LHC.Īccording to the well-established properties of gravity, described by Einstein’s relativity, it is impossible for microscopic black holes to be produced at the LHC. Speculations about microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight. They concentrate a very large amount of matter in a very small space. Nature forms black holes when certain stars, much larger than our Sun, collapse on themselves at the end of their lives. Anyone interested in more details is encouraged to consult it directly, and the technical scientific papers to which it refers. The following summarises the main arguments given in the LSAG report. The LSAG report has been reviewed and endorsed by CERN’s Scientific Policy Committee, a group of external scientists that advises CERN’s governing body, its Council. Whatever the LHC will do, Nature has already done many times over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies. LSAG reaffirms and extends the conclusions of the 2003 report that LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern. In the light of new experimental data and theoretical understanding, the LHC Safety Assessment Group (LSAG) has updated a review of the analysis made in 2003 by the LHC Safety Study Group, a group of independent scientists. Concerns about the safety of whatever may be created in such high-energy particle collisions have been addressed for many years. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |