Guy Wheatley
The Texarkana Gazette
We're still here. By we, I mean the entire Earth. People, plants, bacteria,
viruses, and cockroaches. Sky, dirt, rocks and water. It's all still here,
for a while at least.
In most doomsday scenarios, humanity starts some cascade of events
that eventually leads to the collapse or extreme alteration of the biosphere.
I've always made the fine point that these events don't really destroy
the Earth. In the aftermath of a nuclear war, or some runaway toxic reaction,
the Earth will still be here. Devoid of human civilization, it will happily
orbit the sun just as Mercury, Venus, and Mars do. Most of the disasters
that humanity is capable of sparking off won't have much of an effect on
the planet as a cosmic body, and most won't destroy all life. Chances are,
life forms from insects on down will do just fine. Some of them may actually
do better with the larger life forms out of the way.
Even nature doesn't have a lot in her arsenal that can remove our planet
as a part of the solar system. There is the danger of a stray asteroid
or comet plowing into good old Terra making it not so firma, but once again
the Earth as a planet will continue to exist. The greatest natural danger
to the Earth as a body is the expansion of the sun. But that isn't expected
for a few hundred million years. The Earth has been pretty safe for a long
time, but that may have changed.
In July of 2000, gold ions began counter rotating around 2 21/2-mile-long
rings at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton N.Y. Collisions began
in November. The collider smashes gold ions moving at 99.995% the speed
of light into each other in head-on collisions producing temperatures and
energy densities that have not existed since the Big bang.
As this $600 million device 8 years in the making came on line, a safety
concern unique in human history was raised. Will it destroy the Earth?
The question is neither science fiction nor hyperbole.
Steven Hawking holds the title of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge
University. It is the position held by Sir Isaac Newton in 1669. In his
work on unified theory of quantum mechanics and general relativity, Hawking
showed that one of the strange creatures of the primordial bestiary are
objects called miniature black holes. These are black holes with small
masses. In some cases, these objects weighed a million times less than
the nucleus of an atom. The smallest ones are all gone now. They could
only be created in the intense energies found during the fist millionths
of a second after the Big bang. No black holes with masses smaller than
about twice the weight of our sun have been created since then.
Hawking also showed that black holes radiate energy and, without ingesting
new material, will eventually evaporate. Any black holes less massive than
mount Everest will have disappeared by now.
With the operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven
National Laboratory, the possibility of a miniature black hole again exists.
If RHIC fails to produce one, then CERN will do so in 2005 when the Large
Hardon Collider comes online. CERN predicts it will produce a black hole
every second. If Hawking is correct, the life span of these recreated relics
should be infinitesimal.
If Hawking is incorrect or if, during its brief existence, one of them
bumps into and swallows some other object it may last long enough to start
a feeding frenzy. In less than a second, it will swallow tons of material
and start falling toward the center of the planet. As it falls, it will
continue to suck in matter growing in strength, size, and stability in
a process that won't stop until there is only empty space surrounding it
for tens of thousands of miles. Humanity has finally created a device that
has the potential to destroy the Earth.
By any estimate, the odds of creating such a black hole are long. But
considering the consequences of drawing a black ball, what odds are acceptable?
Millions to one? Billions to one?
This is important science, and should be done, but not in my back yard.
My back yard, in this case, being the Earth.
There are many reasons why humanity should have established itself
off planet. Instead, we have kept out heads in the mud allowing politicians
to redefine shortsighted cupidity as fiscal responsibility. The energy
we've poured into to sports and wars would have made us an interstellar
civilization several time over. As a race we've displayed a juvenile self-absorption
that may well lead to our extinction.
Some space faring race may swing through our solar system some unknown
time in the future and notice the Moon orbiting a black hole of about one
terrestrial mass. They will realize that this is not a naturally occurring
phenomenon. Our epitaph may be the wry comment from one of them to another.
"You know," it will say, "as intelligent as they were, those guys weren't
too smart."
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