At the LHC, we will probe energies beyond those explored at any previous accelerator, and we hope to create particles that have never been observed. Look up the LHC on Wikipedia, however, and you will find considerable space devoted to safety concerns. Some candidate theories are simple quick fixes, but the most interesting ones involve new concepts of spacetime waiting to be discovered. Theory says that the holes in the model should be filled by new physics in the energy region that will be studied by the LHC. The reason is that the Standard Model of strong, weak, and electromagnetic interactions, despite its many successes, is clearly incomplete. Particle physicists are waiting expectantly. On 8 August, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN injected its first beams, beginning an experimental program that will produce proton-proton collisions at an energy of 14 TeV. The full analyses are subtle for the precise results and qualifications, see the original paper. These estimates account approximately for the sizes of the objects and also for astrophysical effects that limit or enhance the production and destructiveness of black holes. The red lines illustrate my estimates of the placement on this plot of the new constraints of Giddings and Mangano, specifically applicable to “slippery” black holes, defined in the text. Figure 1: The white lines illustrate the constraints from cosmic rays on the dangerous particles that stop in the earth or the sun, giving the number of proton-nucleon collisions at energies above the given center-of-mass energy already experienced by a single star or planet in one billion years of exposure to cosmic rays, compared to the number of events expected at the LHC in one year at the design luminosity. Illustration: Alan Stonebraker images of neutron star system and Earth: NASA. The white lines illustrate the constraints from cosmic rays on the dangerous particles that stop in the earth or the sun, giving the number of proton-nucleon collisions at energies above the given center-of-mass energy already experienced by a single.
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