Hi, Chris, List,
Like all physicists, by minimum or nomimal,
I mean whatever size is needed to make things
turn out just the way I said they would. Same
applies to the encounter velocity and all the other
parameters. I would choose exactly the right size
and velocity, according to the time-honored
"Goldilocks" Principle !
Theoretically, there are still people arguing
that a singularity is only mathematically possible
but not possible in reality and while there are
hyperdense objects there are no black holes (and
using the same math to prove that as those who
think they DO exist in reality). And in practicality,
no pictures of a black hole I know of. (Just the
idea of a picture of a black hole makes me laugh.)
So, going with Hawking's Primordial Black Holes
(not created by some later event), The PBH would
have to be at least 10^12 kg in mass when it was
created to survive this long. 10^12 kg is actually
quite small - the Earth has a mass of 6x10^24 kg -
so we are talking about a mass about equal to a
small mountain, like the Chicxulub impactor,
oddly enough.
Of course, it's a black hole so it isn't the SIZE
of a small mountain; it's more like the size of a proton.
It will zip through the Earth without disturbing it.
But it will leave a microscopic "tube" of radiatively
disturbed matter along its path, almost impossible
(and highly unlikely) to be detected. We would never
know that the event had happened.
This has all been worked out in detail by I. B.
Khriplovich, A. A. Pomeransky, N. Produit and C. Yu.
Ruban, in their paper: "Can one detect passage of
a small black hole through the Earth?"
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0710/0710.3438v1.pdf
There is no reason to expect such a reasonable
result from a black hole with the mass of the Earth
itself. Such a monster would be HUGE, about as
big as a GOLF BALL! The gravitational consequences
would be catastrophic. Absurdly one tends to imagine
that if it were fast enough... (Equation 13; energy loss
is inversely proportional to velocity of the black hole
passing through the Earth, and who am I to doubt the
word of these fine gentlemen of Novosibirsk?.)
Just to show there are no new ideas, it has been
suggested that Tunguska was a black hole penetrator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event#Black_hole
as well as it has been suggested it was antimatter.
Take your pick.
And, mercifully, I did not discuss the next best
alternatives for Whole Earth Penetrators. First, the
small chunk of degenerate matter or neutronium,
and second, the Antimatter Bullet. I think that it
would be harder to shoot right through the Earth
with them (although possibly just as easy to totally
destroy it).
The question was: what would go right through
the Earth? I still think the Black Hole Bullet is the
best choice for the job of going right through the Earth.
Of course, if all you want to do is mine the Earth
after reducing it to small chunks, I suggest injecting
a Neutronium Bullet and a Positronium Bullet to
spiral around until they meet each other at the
center of the Earth's core, combine, and distrupt
the entire planet for the easiest collection of the
raw materials by the waiting Alien Fleet.
Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Peterson" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Chicxulub Asteroid
The tricky bit is how you define a "minimum size black hole". If you
mean minimum in terms of the fundamental physics, such a black hole
could have been orbiting inside the Earth since the Solar System
formed, and it still would not have consumed enough material to make
its presence known. If you mean minimum in terms of fundamental
physics, but make the thing big enough to be stable (to consume
material faster than it can evaporate)... I don't now how long that
would take to consume Earth. And if you mean minimum in terms of how
most theory (and all observation) mean it- on the order of a stellar
mass- well, clearly things will get real bad, real fast if one
intersects the Earth, no matter how fast or slow it's going.
Chris
*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <[email protected]>
To: "Carl 's" <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:52 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Chicxulub Asteroid
Hi, Carl, List,
Two impactors of identical mass (not size,
because density varies, but mass), hitting with
identical speeds and at identical angles produce
virtually identical craters.
All that matters (if the object is bigger than
20-50 meters is kinetic energy. It could be iron,
it could be rock, it could be ice, it could be highly
compressed chicken feathers or a ball of fossilized
fast food --- all would have the same result.
A porous carboneaous chondrite of 10 km diameter
and an iron ball of 5.85 km, weigh the same, and at
20 km/s and a 60-degree angle, both will produce a
65 mile crater 3/4 of a mile deep.
There are high-iridium iron meteorites as well as
stony ones, but an iron impact will leave other traces
not found around Chicxulub.
Now... the fun part! What WOULD go right through
the Earth?! It would have to be very dense so that its
area was very small for its huge mass. Number one
best candidate is a small fast black hole. I specify "fast"
because if it was slow-moving, it might slow enough to
stop inside the Earth or start orbiting around inside
the planet, madly eating up mantle and core material
as it went until...
Wow! makes me want to drag that heavy John
Wheeler book off the top shelf and start scribbling.
Given a black-hole of minimum mass and size
m-sub-bh <<<< m-sub-earth, how long would it take
to eat the entire Earth? Well, even without numbers,
one can see that initially the mass consumption of
the small black hole would be very modest, but as it
grew and grew, the rate would increase by a power
curve following the exponent of the ratio of black hole
surface to black hole mass until the black hole reached
a certain fraction of the Earth's mass and then a
destructive deformation would occur in a catastrophic
fashion... It could take thousands of years. There could
be one there now. (Not true; we would hear it.)
But if it was a FAST black hole, it would go straight
through the Earth with only the equivalent of a black
hole burp and perhaps produce a massive episode of
basalt flood vulcanism as it exited. Silly notion. We don't
have massive basalt flood vulcanism... What's that?
We do? Every how often? Hmm. You don't suppose...?
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