The RHIC Black Hole

1
The RHIC Black Hole

• Or
• How I Learned that Man-Made Black Holes Exist But
  They Are Too Small to Hurt Me, or Are They?

Erik Johnson 5 May 2005
2
Overview

• What is RHIC?
• Did they really make a black hole there?
• What are the implications of this black hole, if
  they actually made one?

3
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider(RHIC)

• Commissioned by Brookhaven National Lab
• First Successful Operation in Summer 2000
• Drives two intersecting beams of Gold ions head-on

4
Safety First

• If RHIC has the ability to create a black hole
  why does it exist?
• Isnt the prospect of a man made black hole
  dangerous to the world?

5
Disaster Scenarios at RHIC

• A Review of Speculative Disaster Scenarios at
  RHIC was released in 1999
• Concerns include
• Formation of a black hole or gravitational
  singularity
• Initiation of transition to lower vacuum state
• Formation of strangelet that accretes ordinary
  matter
• These types of concerns are not new

6
Black Holes and Gravitational Singularities

• Study concludes there is no danger of black holes
  at RHIC
• Two reasons why we dont have to worry
• Collisions at RHIC are small scale
• Cosmic ray collisions occur frequently with no
  ill effects

7
Conditions for Black Holes

• Smallest black hole possible is 10-35 meters in
  diameter with mass of 10 micrograms
• Energy required to create this black hole is many
  times larger than the most powerful accelerators
  can achieve
• This size black hole would evaporate in 10-42
  seconds due to Hawking Radiation

8
Cosmic Ray Collisions

• Collisions between heavy ions in cosmic rays are
  similar to those in RHIC
• The relatively frequent occurrence of these
  collisions with no ill effect suggests the
  collisions in RHIC should be safe

9
Now that we know they cant produce a black hole,
lets discuss the black hole recently created at
RHIC!
10
The RHIC Black Hole

• February 2005 A preprint of a paper compares a
  RHIC fireball to a dual black hole
• This fireball is the result of collisions at RHIC

11
Dual Black Hole?

• Dual in this context does NOT refer to the number
  two
• Instead, dual suggests that the collision can be
  modeled with a theoretical black hole
• 10 dimensional black hole calculation used to
  describe strong interaction in four dimensions

12
Implications

• If this collision can be modeled with a black
  hole, close range effects of black holes could
  still be studied
• The nature of RHIC collisions is conducive to
  researching Hawking Radiation

13
Questions?

• References
• H. Nastase. The RHIC fireball as a dual black
  hole. http//arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0501068
• Review of Speculative Disaster Scenarios at
  RHIC http//www.bnl.gov/rhic/docs/rhicreport.pdf.
  
• RHIC homepage http//www.bnl.gov/rhic/default.ht
  m
• http//www.kressworks.com/Science/A_black_hole_ate
  _my_planet.htm