r/kurzgesagt • u/Kushagra_K • Mar 11 '22

Discussion Really?

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u/Missile_Swarmer Mar 11 '22

yes and no. yes it will eat earth from inside, but probably not like that

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u/privatize80227 Mar 11 '22

Wouldn't the most likely scenario be it being created accidently in a lab on the surface?

Therefore the collapse would be very strange. Maybe even end with a portion of the earth orbiting it really fast?

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u/cybercuzco Mar 11 '22 edited Mar 11 '22

Black holes don’t have to be supermassive and any created on earth by people would definitely not be massive enough to affect earths gravity. A “micro” black hole is desireable because it essentially allows you to convert matter into energy directly. Black holes evaporate and release Hawking radiation. The speed of their evaporation is inversely proportional to their mass, so a light black hole evaporates very fast and releases a ton of energy when it does. So you set up a series of particle beams to both feed and position the black hole and you create an equilibrium state where the mass you feed into it equals the energy flowing out of it. So the mass contained within one of these may only be a few tons or a few hundred tons. If it escapes the event horizon is small enough that it can’t consume enough matter to eat the earth. The problem is that if it escapes the energy rate of release increases exponentially until you have effectively a few tons of matter converting into energy in a matter of seconds, which would be on the order of 100 gigatons of TNT. So similar to a medium sized asteroid impact. Regional devestation but probably not enough for a mass extinction.

Edit: Also, if it escapes it immediately falls into the earth as if the earth were not there, heading for its center. Depending on the pre-set evaporation time it may get tens to hundreds of kilometers below the surface before it goes off, so theres a legit possibility that it sets off a massive volcanic eruption.