: I need to know the mass of a mini black hole that will detonate in a matter of a few days.

: Do Black Holes detonate, as in explosively? Mass loss through Hawking radiation implies they could loose enough mass to stop being a Hole but is this a sudden phase transition?

: Vague memory that Holes can go bang, maybe Zephram knows something about this.

: I believe it will be about one-hundred thousand metric tons. This will be incorporated into a SF novel.

It is a recent thought that a black hole decaying due to Hawking radiation will release a final explosion of energy when its mass reaches a critical value. 90 billion kg has been suggested, but the value itself is not yet well known. Prior to the explosion the black hole decays it mass away to hawking radiation according to the equation: M = (M03 - 3kt)1/3 The k is not accurately known either, but is very small (around 10-39 kg/day), and this(as well as energy time uncertainty) is the real problem that lies in showing that a black hole is about to explode in three days. The mass that the hole has at the end of the three days is extremely close to the mass it had at the beginning (around 90 billion kg or close to 100million tons though I disagree with the use of tons in this application) that its virtually indistinguishable. If you could measure the mass down to the order of 10-39 kg to make a prediction of three days the uncertainty in the prediction would still be large, in this case due to a quantum mechanical energy time uncertainty principle.

• Re: error - Zephram_Cochrane/">Zephram Cochrane - November 13, 1999 - 05:05 UTC