<$BlogRSDURL$>

 

Preposterous Universe

Thursday, March 17, 2005
 
Ten-dimensional black holes created?

Black holes? On Long Island? The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory smashes together heavy ions (no surprise there) in an attempt to re-create the quark/gluon plasma state of the early universe. Horatiu Nastase, a bold theorist, has suggested that certain features of the resulting fireball can be understood in a "dual" description, in which the fireball becomes a ten-dimensional black hole! Duality in this sense means that there is a one-to-one map between the dynamics of the real-world fireball and the completely-imaginary black hole. This seems to be a long-shot suggestion, at best; but certainly an intriguing idea, and worth pursuing. But not in any sense an honest black hole here on Earth. (Not that we should be worried, as the little guys would presumably just evaporate away in a jiffy.)

Peter Steinberg at Quantum Diaries has a fuller explanation.

Update: in the comments, cvj (the nom de internet of Clifford Johnson) mentions that he and his collaborators have been pushing similar ideas for quite some time now. Clifford has set up a web page that talks about the phase diagrams of charged black holes in anti-de Sitter space, which could be dual to hot nuclear matter.

 
Ideas on culture, science, politics.
Sean Carroll


Preposterous Home
Atom Site Feed (xml)
RSS Feed
Technorati Profile
Bloglines Citations
Blogroll Me

Elsewhere
3quarksdaily
About Last Night
Alas, a Blog
The American Sector
apostropher
applecidercheesefudge
archy
Asymmetrical Information
Big Brass Blog
Bitch, Ph.D.
Blondesense
BlogBites
Body and Soul
Brad DeLong
Chris C Mooney
Collision Detection
Creek Running North
Crescat Sententia
Crooked Timber
Daily Kos
Daniel Drezner
Decembrist
Deepen the Mystery
Dispatches from the Culture Wars
Dynamics of Cats
Electron Blue
Eschaton
Explananda
Ezra Klein
Fafblog
Feministe
The Fulcrum
Girls Are Pretty
Grammar.police
Jacques Distler
James Wolcott
John and Belle
Julie Saltman
Lawyers, Guns and Money
Leiter Reports
locussolus
The Loom
Majikthise
Matt McIrvin
Matthew Yglesias
Michael Bérubé
Michael Nielsen
Mixing Memory
Mr. Sun
Not Even Wrong
Obsidian Wings
Orange Quark
Paige's Page
Pandagon
Panda's Thumb
Pharyngula
Playing School, Irreverently
Political Animal
The Poor Man
Quantum Diaries
Quark Soup
Real Climate
Rhosgobel
Roger Ailes
Rox Populi
Shakespeare's Sister
Simple Stories
Sisyphus Shrugged
Smijer & Buck
TPM Cafe
TigerHawk
uggabugga
Uncertain Principles
Unfogged
Volokh Conspiracy
Wonkette


Powered by Blogger
Comments by Haloscan
RSS Feed by 2RSS.com


Archives
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005