(Provided by Colin Warner)
High energy cosmic rays crashing into Earth's atmosphere
may be forming mini black holes, according to Greek and
Russian scientists. Ordinary black holes form when stars
explode at the end of their lives, New Scientist reported
Wednesday. The heavy stellar core can collapse into a
superdense "singularity" whose gravity is so strong that
nothing -- not even light -- can escape. Theodore Tomaras, a
physicist at the University of Crete in Heraklion, Greece,
and his Russian colleagues, Andrei Mironov and Alexei
Morozov, theorize that high-energy cosmic-ray particles
from space create black holes when they collide with
molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. These black holes would
be invisibly small, with a mass of only 10 micrograms or so,
Tomaras said. And these black holes would be so unstable
that they would explode in a burst of particles within
around a billion-billion-billionth of a second. Tomaras
suggested that such mini black holes might explain some
strange observations made by cosmic-ray detectors in the
Bolivian Andes and on a mountain in Tajikistan, central Asia.
The detectors record showers of particles that cascade through
the atmosphere when a high-energy cosmic-ray particle smashes
into molecules there.
that explains so much.
Spent biros.
My money.
Do you lose memories in a cosmic ray strike to the head, due to black holes forming? Now that would be a useful excuse.