Fall 08 Seminar Series

Dr. Piero Nicolini
University of Trieste
I.N.F.N.
CSU Fresno

Potential disasters from quantum black holes being produced at the LHC CERN labs

The LHC production of subnuclear black holes and the related catastrophic risk are matters of vital importance not only for the scientific community. In principle these black holes accrete ambient matter shortly after their production, thereby emitting Hawking radiation that would be harmful to Earth and/or CERN Labs and its surroundings. In this colloquium we will try to address these matters. We will review some basic properties of black holes, their quantum behavior and evaporation. Then we will discuss the need of additional spatial dimensions to obtain the production of micro black holes. Finally we will analyze the most recent results about black hole decay times and what we expect to find in particle detectors soon after their production.