slightly worrying?
Out of context: Reply #33
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- Nairn0
The 'strength' of a black hole is directly proportional to the amount of matter/energy it consumes. As kelpie pointed out in a previous LHC thread, any created black hole will be subject to 'Hawking radiation' (negating the common misconception that 'nothing' escape a black hole). At the scales we're talking about here - a 'smattering' of proton-level mass, any black hole existing would quickly extinguish itself by radiating away its energy. Because it's an infintesimally small point, even if it were to accrete matter, it wouldn't accrete much - instead slipping in between the massive gaps we have in matter, to dissipate before it did any harm.
Black-hole formation in these terms has the chance to happen every day in the atmosphere above our heads, when cosmic radiation hits our upper atmosphere. The LHC is doing nothing that nature doesn't already do many billions of times a day right here on Earth. All we're doing is controlling the process enough to observe it.