I am uncomfortable with the plans to attempt to create black holes in particle accelerators. It is believed, that if created, they will be safe because they will rapidly evaporate via Hawking radiation.

The idea behind Hawking radiation is basically this, at the event horizon pairs of virtual particles will pop into existence such that one goes inside the event horizon while the other goes out. Because the two can not re-unite within the time limit imposed by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the virtual particles become real, the one outside the horizon escapes and the theory has it that the black hole decreases in mass by a corresponding amount.

Now I do understand the argument, that the black hole has to decrease in mass in order for the conservation of mass to hold true, but I don’t understand how a virtual particle outside the event horizon becomes real with mass, and the one inside subtracts from the mass of the black hole.

Given that this theory has never been tested and it seems somewhat dicey at best, it seems less than wise to gamble the entire existence of our planet and everybody on it, on this not happening.

If Hawking radiation does not manifest, but black holes do, then instead of evaporating, the black hole will suck up any particle within it’s gravitational grasp, which for the first few nanoseconds might be few, but with every particle it sucks up it’s mass, and thus it’s gravitational pull, will increase, and very shortly thereafter we’ll have a tiny black hole orbiting the Sun where the Earth and every living thing upon it a few seconds earlier, previously was.

Sometimes I wonder if alien versions of this experiment aren’t the reason the SETI radio dial is so dark. Actually though, I know it’s not. The SETI protocol is designed in such a way that it is absolutely impossible to detect and confirm the presence of an alien radio signal unless that signal is intentionally beamed at the earth for several days continuously.

This is so because SETI protocol requires the signal being received repeatedly, but the distances involved are such that even with enormous power, a signal transmitted by a distant civilization will only be received here on earth if by chance a large directional antenna on their planet is aimed directly at a large directional antenna on our planet which is aimed directly at them.

Because of the mutual spin of both planets, the mutual orbits of both planets around their parent star, the motion of the stars within the galaxy relative to each other, there is zero chance of this happening accidentally. So the fact that we have no confirmed radio signals from extraterrestrial signals is no real surprise and doesn’t rule out the existence of those civilizations.

So maybe other civilizations have survived the black hole experiment, or maybe their civilizations wisely told their scientists, if you want to try this go try it on an uninhabited planet in the outer reaches of the solar system, not on our home planet.