Back to Article Index
Back to Writing Index
Back to Home Page
 
 


Doomsday
Published 2002

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."

Back to Article Index
Back to Writing Index
Back to Home page