What if a small black hole hit the Earth?

[glactus]

We can all guess what would happen should a massive black hole drift into our solar system… there wouldn't be much left once the intense gravitational pull consumes the planets and starts sucking away at our Sun.

But what if the black hole is small, perhaps a left over remnant from the Big Bang, passing unnoticed through our neighborhood, having no observable impact on local space? What if this small singularity falls in the path of Earths orbit and hits our planet?

This strange event has been pondered by theoretical physicists, understanding how a small black hole could be detected as it punches a neat hole though the Earth…

Theoretical physicists from the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Russia, and the INTEGRAL Science Data Center in Switzerland, have been pondering this same question, and in a new paper they calculate how we might observe the event should it happen (just in case we didn't know we had hit something!).

Any hopes of detecting such a small black hole impact are slim, as the seismic waves generated would be negligible. In fact, the only evidence of a small black hole passing through the planet will be the radiation damage along the microscopic tunnel passing from one side of the Earth to the other.

As this research focuses on a tiny, primordial black hole, it would be interesting to investigate the effects of a larger black hole would have on impact - perhaps one with the mass of the Earth and the radius of a golf ball…?





credits:
Original source: arXiv filed underBlack Holes, Earth
This is part text only. See image, full text and all scientists involved at universetoday.com
www.universetoday.com/2008/02/17/what-would-happen-if-a-small-black-hole-hit-the-earth/#more-12837
Article credit: Fraser Cain

[Andy Mac]

Henry, as some-one who suffers from depression, this thread was the last thing I needed!

Seriously though, you raise an interesting point and (hopefully) one we shall never find out for sure the answer to from a 'practical' point of view.

[carlos]

Another thought...

What if the closing speed between Earth and Primordial black hole is low enough?
Could it go into orbit?
Or even.....
Could it go into an orbit around the Earth's centre of mass - but BELOW the Earth's surface???


I once read something (possibly 'Brief History of Time') where Stephen Hawking speculates that the distribution of primordial black holes would be such that there should be at least one - if not WITHIN the solar system - certainly quite nearby

[glactus]

Good one Carlos, and yep, I've got the book, " A Brief history of time" which everyone should read.

Some interesting lines are in these chapters below:

Chapter 6: Black Holes.
page 103

Black Holes are not really black at all. They glow like a hot body, and the smaller they are the more they glow, so paradoxically, smaller Black Holes may be easier to detect than larger ones.

Chapter 7 - Black holes aint so black:
page 114.

A black Hole with a mass a few times greater than the sun would have a temperature of only one ten millionth of a degree above absolute zero. This is much less than the temperature of the microwave radiation that fills the Universe.

Page 117

Although the gamma ray background (of the Universe) tells us that there can be no more than 300 primordial Black Holes per cubic light year on average, it tells us nothing about how common they are in our own Galaxy.

If they were, say, a million times more common than this, then the nearest Black Hole to us would probaby be at a distance of a thousand million kilometers, or as far away as pluto, the fartherest known planet. ( now Minor Planet)

At this distance it would be very difficult to detect the steady emission of a black hole even if it were a thousand megawatts.

Strange things eh! Is this saying that even if one were near us, we couldn't detect it?

Hmmmm! Don't like the sound of that.

What you suggest is food for thought.

Glactus

[authorgonal]

On the other hand..

A black hole in a stable orbit would have no effect at all that should bother us. It would orbit. It would disturb us no more than it's mass would in any normal planet(oid). A black hole 'out there' somewhere is no problem EXCEPT that if evaporation is allowing its volume to expand toward its event horizon

It is simply something where its mass is compressed inside its event horizon. Provided you exist away from this everything is 'normal'.

A small black hole has to be something from 'the beginning' or formed by artificial intelligence!

It could even be beneficial. Mop up asteroids/comets.

Big Black holes producing gamma bursts though are a different matter Such an object would totally screw up the solar system and obviously is absent.