Re: >H Black hole atoms

["Robert G. Shimmin" <shimmin@students.uiuc.edu>]

Transhuman Mailing List



> > First, they are the perfect catalyst for converting photons to matter.  A
> > sufficiently charged singularity will have bound states whose binding
> > energy is greater than twice the bound particle's mass energy.  If that
> > bound state is unoccupied, then a virtual pair near the singularity can
> > become real, its mass paid for by the appropriately charged member of the
> > pair falling into the bound state.  Hitting this bound particle with the
> > appropriate gamma photon will vacate the bound state, allowing another
> > particle pair to become real.

On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, Phil wrote:

> Pretending for a moment that I understand this...
> Would this require a "naked singularity", one not shielded from the
> rest of the universe by an event horizon?
> Which, according to Roger Penrose, shouldn't exist.

No.  The phenonmenon described above doesn't require a singularity at all,
only a "nucleus" with a very large charge.  (To make electron-positron
pairs this way requires a charge of at least 173.)  Basically, so much
energy is released when an electron falls from the free state to a bound
state near the nucleus that this energy is sufficient to bring into being
the mass (E=mc^2) of the electron and its antimatter counterpart.

In principle, you could do it with normal atoms, but atomic nuclei
containing 173 protons don't live long enough to do much of anything with
them.  Since the singularity (at least the variety proposed by the paper)
CAN'T decay, this problem doesn't exist for it.

The singularity would just be used as a way of getting enough electric
charge together in one place without tearing itself apart.

Robert Shimmin


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