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by chmod775 1946 days ago
So here's just my understanding using basic physics: That kind of gravitational pull can't come from nowhere.

If you start from the smallest theoretically possible black hole of about 22 micrograms, it should have the gravitational pull of just that - 22 micrograms. Suppose it doesn't just immediately disappear, it won't even have gravitational pull to move a feather next to it.

You could probably even start wadding the feather at it and it wouldn't do much to it, because I don't think that's enough force to even break it apart. If you put a grain of sand on a table you don't expect the gravitation of that grain of sand to break the table apart either.

Maybe it'll manage to take in some surrounding air? But in that case you'd have all the time in the world to build a vacuum chamber around it - if you're worried. Likely the black hole would need to be extremely lucky for any (air) molecule to come close enough that it can pull it in, since it'll be a tiny thing in a sea of mostly nothing.

In any case, I suppose that in reality the black hole would just dissipate quicker than it could take in mass - because black holes need a lot of new mass to keep going considering the amount of energy/mass they spit out. And only black holes made from a lot of matter (i.e. stars) appear to have the gravitational pull to feed themselves and stay alive, since that's all we can observe in nature.

Anyways, that's just using a lot of basic physics that maybe don't even apply to black holes in that way.

2 comments

I should add that that the mass/energy leaving black holes is way smaller than I assumed (just Hawking Radiation?). Maybe someone with an actual understanding of the topic could chime in.

About the only information about theoretical small black holes was this quote: "But if you happened to turn the Eiffel Tower into a black hole, it would evaporate in only about a day. I don't know why you would, but there you go."[1]

[1]: https://public.nrao.edu/ask/the-life-cycle-of-a-black-hole/

The problem is that you can't really push a black hole. As long as there is a faint gravitational pull, it will keep coming closer to the mass, until it's able to touch and consume it.

The only hope that it would evaporate sooner.

What about electrically charged black holes?
Isn't the lifespan of microscopic black holes also... Microscopic?
Yes, and then they go out in a flash.