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Re:Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak wi... by cubefox on Friday July 21, 2023 @07:39AM (#36812653)
Even if the tenth digit of pi can't be a six, it still might be a six, namely when you don't know it can't be a six because it is a three. Uncertainty is different from possibility.
Re:Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak wi... by 3cats-in-a-coat on Friday July 21, 2023 @08:49AM (#36813167)
This is just my personal opinion, but the mechanism that creates particles and black holes is the same. Meaning without throwing incredible mass at it, you won’t make a black hole. You can’t. You’ll make a particle or break apart one. Which is in fact what happens. There are also many natural events that resemble what the LHC does, at even greater energies and much greater mass, and yet no black holes. A black hole is dangerous because it’s a planet worth of mass in compact singularity. If it has no such mass it can’t do anything.
Re:Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak wi... by jfengel on Friday July 21, 2023 @09:50AM (#36813740)
Putting this on a slightly stronger footing:

Black holes don't have to be enormous. We focus on the enormous ones because we know how they form from stars, but there's nothing inherent in black hole math to prevent tiny ones.

You can, in theory, create ones from energy, because mass and energy are the same. It's not impossible to create a tiny black hole in a collider.

Just not the LHC. It doesn't have anywhere near enough energy, even for the tiniest black hole. And even if there were some unexpected physics that did let a microscopic black hole form, it would instantly vaporize in a burst of Hawking radiation. (The smaller a black hole is, the faster it evaporates.)

If somehow all of that were wrong, and the LHC did create a tiny black hole with a lifetime longer than a yoctosecond, it could grow and become a real problem very quickly. But if you're inventing that much physics, you might as well just worry about the appearance of a mega-space-goat that eats the Earth, because it's equivalent levels of guessing.

Re:Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak wi... by cubefox on Friday July 21, 2023 @12:53PM (#36816252)
I found a more detailed analysis here:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dp2C4J2yMe4

Apparently the probability is indeed very low.