A mini black hole traveling near light speed hits the earth and pass right through. Because of its speed, the only matter it eats is matter directly in front of its path. Assuming it converts 50% of the matter it consumes directly into energy. And it has a frontal area of 10 cm^2. How big of a blast will it create just going through the atmosphere before it hits the earth?
[I recently messed up on a similar question ;-)]
2007-12-20 12:02:42 · 4 answers · asked by Frst Grade Rocks! Ω 7 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
This, of course, is just a hypothetical. The blackhole, at minimum would eat anything that came within its photon sphere ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_sphere ).
Also, a black hole can produce a lot of energy as it eats. E.g., http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200712215
2007-12-21 09:40:34 · update #1
Well let's see. The atmosphere has a mass per unit area equal to that of about 1,000 cm of water, so half of that is 500 g/cm^2. So, 10 cm^2 would convert 5 kg of matter to energy. An H-bomb converts about 5 g, so that would make about a1000 MT blast, give or take a factor of a few - enough to flatten a midwestern state. Extrapolating to the travel though the earth, it sounds like an major extinction level event would take place.
2007-12-20 13:03:02 · answer #1 · answered by Dr. R 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Not much. Being a "black hole" it wouldn't dare to let any of the energy escape. The "blast" effects would be confined below the black hole's event horizon.
The “black hole” would drill through about 10.337 Kg of air mass, of which (you say) half is converted to energy. So, using E = MC^2, we get about 4.645 x 10^17 joules of energy released very quickly. Since 4.18 x 10^15 joules is equal to a one megaton nuclear weapon blast, the energy released and adsorbed by the “black hole” is 4.645 x 10^17 divided by 4.18 x 10^15 or about 111 megatons. Hardly anything to write home about. The Ru-skies and us have each set off bigger firecrackers than that.
On the other hand, if this antisocial behavior continues as the "mini black hole" passes through the center of the Earth, the mass converted to energy is probably enough to split the Earth in half. Good thing it all stays inside the "black hole!"
Getting hit by a rock the size of Texas later in this century will be bad enough without invoking any black holes.
2007-12-20 20:55:10 · answer #2 · answered by hevans1944 5 · 1⤊ 3⤋
If you are being asked that sort of question then you should find something else to do, like surveying Croation Newt numbers or something, follow a life that is tangable and researching events that stand a possible if not more probable chance of occuring, by the way I can save you the reasearch on the newt numbers, Croatia has no indiginous speicies of newt as they have been wiped out over time by overnewting - a delicacy there I believe
2007-12-20 20:09:37 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 5⤋
The blast will be similar in magnitude to the fart that just exploded out of my butt.
2007-12-20 20:05:31 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 8⤋