Monday, January 26, 2009

Naked science revisited

Do Naked Singularities Break the Rules of Physics?: Scientific American

Interesting article here arguing that a growing body of physicists are now not so sure that black holes always have an event horizon hiding their core from view. Some may be genuine naked singularities, the exact behaviour of which remains very unclear.

In September 2007, I mentioned a paper on arXiv which said that the Large Hadron Collider may also produce tiny naked singularities. Although the author was not worried that they would be dangerous, the issue of how a stationary one on the earth could behave has not, as far as I know, ever been addressed in the LHC safety reviews. (The general argument that cosmic ray collisions of higher energies have been safe for the earth is the only argument I suppose you could use, given the lack of knowledge about their behaviour. It's not a bad argument, except that the issue of whether there is a difference between moving and stationary ones would have to be addressed, as it was for micro black holes.)

Call me overly cautious if you want, but I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of a European lab possibly creating something the behaviour of which can only be guessed.

3 comments:

TimT said...

Bugger the rules of physics, those naked singularities should have a simple sense of decency and cover themselves up. There'll be no nakedly singularitiness in MY perfect universe.

Steve said...

Tim, Tim, Tim. Do you must still find underpants inherently funny too? Here I am, issuing my apocalyptic warnings to the earth, and you keep giggling over the word "naked". (Rolls eyes)

TimT said...

I can't help myself... but don't tell me I'm the only one?