Black Holes: In the Office or Laboratory

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Cosmology, Astrophysics, Nature of Science, History of Science

Ed Hessler

You will recall concerns around 2008 when the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator was about to move from completed project to operation that it could create a black hole and just might destroy us in the process as it chomped willy-nilly on the planet. Obviously, this didn't happen. Furthermore, they don't create black holes.

Sabine Hossenfelder of BackReaction tells us what it takes to make one and reviews some of the physics of black holes. The video comes in at 12m 39s is on both the blog site and on YouTube but you must be weary of my reminder that her site includes the transcript and the talk while the YouTube video. I like both in front of me.

Here is the opening which serves as an abstract of what follows. "Wouldn’t it be cool to have a little black hole in your office? You know, maybe as a trash bin. Or to move around the furniture. Or just as a kind of nerdy gimmick. Why can we not make black holes? Or can we? If we could, what could we do with them? And what’s a black hole laser? That’s what we’ll talk about today."

Black holes are one of the fascinations of the cosmos and unless you are an expert, you may find a new insight. I admit without a shred of embarassment or apology that I'm one of her fans.