Black Hole is Near Us

Scientists started `Black Hole hunting, ` as there came a theory that black hole, which has been thought to be far in the space, may exist anywhere near us.

Prof. Jonathan Feng team from U.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced his thesis on the `Physical Review Letters, ` an authoritative magazine of physics, that a miniature black hole could be generated by the collision of a particle coming from the space at the speed of rays with the particles in the atmosphere.

Like a huge black hole, small black hole also has so high a density that even rays cannot escape from it. But the black hole is 1000 protons big that one can see it just through microscope. In addition, it will evaporate as soon as it is created at the speed of one 27th power of 10 second. Hence, the observation of it is almost impossible, even though it exists.

However, Scientists plan to find out black holes generated in the atmosphere using 1,600 particle detectors in the Pierre Auger Observatory, which is under construction in the desert area of Argentina prospecting the completion of the construction in 2004.

Prof. Jonathan Feng said, “miniature black holes are utilized for proofing physical theories rather than doing harm to people. ”

Meanwhile, Prof. Savas Dimopoulos from Stanford Univ. and Prof. Greg L. Landsberg from Brown Univ. forecasted in the thesis announced on the `Physical Review Letters` last year that the black holes could be generated by the collision of patrons, when the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator 27 km around is completed in 2007.

Prof. Dimopoulos hypothesized 4 years ago that the existence of small black holes could explain the reason that gravity is less than electromagnetic force. When the hypothesis is turned out to be true, it will prove both the theory of super-string that several dimensions are rolled up in the time space of 4th dimension, and the theory of Dr. Hawking that black holes evaporate emitting lights.

dongho@donga.com