Exploding black holes rain down on Earth

Are mini black holes raining down through the Earth's atmosphere? It is
possible, says a team of physicists. They think this could explain
mysterious observations from mountain-top experiments over the past 30
years.

Ordinary black holes form when stars explode at the end of their lives.
The heavy stellar core can collapse into a superdense "singularity"
whose gravity is so strong that nothing - not even light - can escape.

If some of physicists' favourite theories about extra dimensions are
correct, it would also be possible for high-energy cosmic-ray particles
from space to create black holes when they collide with molecules in the
Earth's atmosphere (New Scientist print edition, 29 September 2001).

These black holes would be invisibly small, with a mass of only 10
micrograms or so. And they would be so unstable that they would explode
in a burst of particles within around a billion-billion-billionth of a
second.

Particle shower

Theodore Tomaras, a physicist at the University of Crete in Heraklion,
Greece, and his Russian colleagues Andrei Mironov and Alexei Morozov
wondered if these 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.

In 1972, the Andean detector registered a mysterious signal. In contrast
to a normal cosmic-ray collision, the cascade was unusually rich in
charged, quark-based particles and far more particles turned up in the
bottom part of the detector than in the top part. It was dubbed a
"Centauro" event, because it looked like a little head on a surprisingly
big body, like the half-man half-horse centaurs of mythology.

Since then, the detectors in Bolivia and Tajikistan have clocked up more
than 40 Centauro-like events. Several explanations have been suggested:
they might arise when hypothetical nuggets of strange-type quarks hit
the detectors, or if the strong force between particles behaves
unexpectedly when they have enormously high energies.

Read the rest at New Scientist.com
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994446

Largest prime number ever is found

A 26-year-old graduate student in the US has made mathematical history
by discovering the largest known prime number.

The new number is 6,320,430 digits long. It took just over two years to
find using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers.

Michael Shafer a chemical engineering student at Michigan State
University used his office computer to contribute spare processing power
to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The project has
more than 60,000 volunteers from all over the world taking part.

"I had just finished a meeting with my advisor when I saw the computer
had found the new prime," Shafer says. "After a short victory dance, I
called up my wife and friends involved with GIMPS to share the great
news."

Prime numbers are positive integers that can only be divided by
themselves and one. Mersenne primes are an especially rare type of prime
that take the form 2 p-1, where p is also a prime number. The new number
can be represented as 220,996,011-1. It is only the 40th Mersenne prime
to have ever been found.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994438

--
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek.

Robert Karl Stonjek wrote:

Exploding black holes rain down on Earth

But not on the moon? Dead On Arrival.

[snip]


--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!

Robert Karl Stonjek wrote:

Exploding black holes rain down on Earth

Are mini black holes raining down through the Earth's atmosphere? It is
possible, says a team of physicists. They think this could explain
mysterious observations from mountain-top experiments over the past 30
years.

Ordinary black holes form when stars explode at the end of their lives.
The heavy stellar core can collapse into a superdense "singularity"
whose gravity is so strong that nothing - not even light - can escape.

If some of physicists' favourite theories about extra dimensions are
correct, it would also be possible for high-energy cosmic-ray particles
from space to create black holes when they collide with molecules in the
Earth's atmosphere (New Scientist print edition, 29 September 2001).

These black holes would be invisibly small, with a mass of only 10
micrograms or so. And they would be so unstable that they would explode
in a burst of particles within around a billion-billion-billionth of a
second.

Particle shower

Theodore Tomaras, a physicist at the University of Crete in Heraklion,
Greece, and his Russian colleagues Andrei Mironov and Alexei Morozov
wondered if these 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.

In 1972, the Andean detector registered a mysterious signal. In contrast
to a normal cosmic-ray collision, the cascade was unusually rich in
charged, quark-based particles and far more particles turned up in the
bottom part of the detector than in the top part. It was dubbed a
"Centauro" event, because it looked like a little head on a surprisingly
big body, like the half-man half-horse centaurs of mythology.

Since then, the detectors in Bolivia and Tajikistan have clocked up more
than 40 Centauro-like events. Several explanations have been suggested:
they might arise when hypothetical nuggets of strange-type quarks hit
the detectors, or if the strong force between particles behaves
unexpectedly when they have enormously high energies.

Read the rest at New Scientist.com
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994446

Largest prime number ever is found

A 26-year-old graduate student in the US has made mathematical history
by discovering the largest known prime number.

The new number is 6,320,430 digits long. It took just over two years to
find using a distributed network of more than 200,000 computers.

Michael Shafer a chemical engineering student at Michigan State
University used his office computer to contribute spare processing power
to the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS). The project has
more than 60,000 volunteers from all over the world taking part.

"I had just finished a meeting with my advisor when I saw the computer
had found the new prime," Shafer says. "After a short victory dance, I
called up my wife and friends involved with GIMPS to share the great
news."

Prime numbers are positive integers that can only be divided by
themselves and one. Mersenne primes are an especially rare type of prime
that take the form 2 p-1, where p is also a prime number. The new number
can be represented as 220,996,011-1. It is only the 40th Mersenne prime
to have ever been found.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994438

--
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MersennePrime.html