Looking for Black Holes in the Atmosphere

Looking for black holes in the atmosphere is one of the prominent missions for the newly built Pierre Auger Observatory. Black holes can arise from the collapse of heavy stars but might also, according to theoretical particle physics, be produced when cosmic ray particles (especially neutrinos) with multi-TeV energies pass very close to a particle within our atmosphere. The ensuing air shower of secondary particles would be sensed on the ground in Auger's huge array of detectors, which began their work in 2003 (see figure at Physics News Graphics).

A new analysis of this hypothetical black hole production process, however, questions whether many such mini-black-hole events would occur. According to Dejan Stojkovic (Case Western Reserve University) and his colleagues, the same process that encourages black hole creation in cosmic-ray neutrino scattering events at the TeV energy level (rather than at the impossibly inaccessible 10¹⁹-GeV level, referred to as the Planck energy) also should hasten the decay of protons to an extent not seen in experiments designed to look for them.

Therefore, Stojkovic (dejan@balin.phys.cwru.edu) argues, the robust stability of the proton militates against an expected mini-black-hole production of several hundred events over the Auger Observatory's active period from 2003 to 2008. This doesn't necessarily mean that no black hole events would seen, but probably not as many as were once anticipated.

Stojkovic et al., Physical Review Letters, 3 February 2006
Contact Dejan Stojkovic, dejan@balin.phys.cwru.edu