Build Your Own Universe

[Galphanore]

There are some scientists that are considering building their own universe by creating a big bang from about 10 pounds of matter, and only 10 ^-26 cm across. Assuming that he is correct, would it then expand into a different dimension or am I somewhat justified in my slight apprehension that they're planning to blow us all up?

[Galphanore]

But what if they drop it? It'll go right through the floor, the basement, and continue to the earth's core, absorbing matter as the matter encounters the (very small) event horizon. Then it will swing back out the other side of the earth, absorbing matter along the way. Then back and forth like a pendulum, each time slicing out a cylindrical core.

Eventually the whole earth will be consumed, expandng the event horizon to a whole 4.4 mm.

DanZ

I read a book about something like that happening and looked into it some, the general consensus seems to be that a micro black hole of that size would not be able to absorb matter fast enough to maintain it's self and would dissipate fairly rapidly. Something to do with evaporation due to Hawking Radiation or something like that.

[Goat]

But what if they drop it? It'll go right through the floor, the basement, and continue to the earth's core, absorbing matter as the matter encounters the (very small) event horizon. Then it will swing back out the other side of the earth, absorbing matter along the way. Then back and forth like a pendulum, each time slicing out a cylindrical core.

Eventually the whole earth will be consumed, expandng the event horizon to a whole 4.4 mm.

DanZ

Considering the size, that might take oh, anywhere from a year to a couple of billion years.

[juliod]

Considering the size, that might take oh, anywhere from a year to a couple of billion years.

Yeah. We could calculate it assuming the BH is like the standard undergraduate physics question of a marble dropping through a frictionless hole in the earth. And assuming it takes out a different slice each pass, and recalculating the diameter of the event horizon each time. How long would it take to consume 0.1% of the earth? We'd probably notice it by then.

OTOH, if the passage of the hole is not frictionless, it may settle into the core, and if the core is molten, the hole might start sucking in matter like a vacuum. Cohesive forces in the liquid core would pull additional matter towards the hole as it is absorbed. If the hole starts with a little radial inertia, it could enter into a spiral orbit inside the earth sucking in matter at a high rate. Weeks we might have before massive seismic disturbances wipe out life in the biosphere. Ouchies.

DanZ

[micatala]

Not to worry. I'm sure Captain Kirk will have figured out something before anything really bad happens.

[QED]

The sort of lab experiment being discussed is far less of a practical threat than a proportion of cosmic rays already impacting with sufficient energy to create an extremely short-lived black hole. The energy levels required to make a "monster" are so far beyond our means that it's rightly considered a non-issue.

[Galphanore]

The sort of lab experiment being discussed is far less of a practical threat than a proportion of cosmic rays already impacting with sufficient energy to create an extremely short-lived black hole. The energy levels required to make a "monster" are so far beyond our means that it's rightly considered a non-issue.

He claims we will be able to do it within a decade or so.

[QED]

I think this topic titled "Build your Own Universe" ought to be a major subject for debate. Not so much for arguing the possibility of anyone actually doing it in the near future, but more for the implications on theism.

The softest implication I can imagine is in highlighting the essential difference between what is dubiously termed "free thinking" and the rigid assertion of the theologian. The latter has one principal axiom to work from and it is essentially the argument for Intelligent Design -- the same argument that Paley presented and that was surpassed when principles for natural self-organization were subsequently identified.

The ID "solution" to the question of why our universe seems so wonderfully tailored to meet our needs is to see human beings as some sort of Final Cause and hence to infer a designer with this particular objective in mind. The ID argument can always retreat a level (i.e. switch from the suggestion that God created Adam and Eve directly to the suggestion that he created single-celled organisms and set evolution by natural selection to work on them) but at each step back we can argue strongly that degrees of freedom are lost along with the certainties that humans are indeed the Final Cause.

Keeping this diminution in perspective is difficult, but let's consider it along with the central premise of the "ensemble of universes" situation presented by this topic. If we wish to understand why our universe is so well suited to our existence we can postulate that the universe could indeed have been very different. If such different universes are existing elsewhere (for the want of a better term) then it would be no surprise whatsoever to find ourselves in one that can support us (Weak Anthropic Principle, Barrow and Tipler 1986 ).

There are countless ways in which ensembles of universes could be structured. We have here the suggestion that they might be created in laboratories dotted about universes like ours. They might also be created from black holes or other exotic astronomical objects in natural analogs of the human technologies discussed above. There is also an extension in the direction from which our universe came to be. Ultimately we can imagine this structure as some sort of "hyper-dimensional foam" in which each bubble universe has the ability to spawn its own "fractal copy" of the structure above it.

I think this represents the hardest implications for theism as although we could still ask who designed such a thing, if a proper perspective is maintained it would seem to erase all certainties about Final Causes and the intentions of the creator. Clearly it is all very hypothetical at the moment but it seems to me that the theologian is forced to reject this possibility outright while the free-thinker™ is able to keep an open mind on something that has (what I would characterize as) a certain resonance within the world that we are already familiar with.

[Geolamas]

It Has already done Nagazaki and Hirochima are you best example.

[Greatest I Am]

No other dimension has ever been proven, therefore if we were to create another big bang then it would expand in our present dimension and universe and of course kill us all.
We should take comfort in the fact that we cannot create a big bang.

Regards
DL

[QED]

No other dimension has ever been proven, therefore if we were to create another big bang then it would expand in our present dimension and universe and of course kill us all.

Your use of the word "therefore" would only seem to be appropriate if you had said

Other dimensions have been proven to be false, therefore...