Large Hadron Collider search rules out quantum black holes with certain properties

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have extended the search for microscopic black holes created within the Large Hadron Collider, demonstrating a novel method for detecting new particles beyond simply finding the target itself. While evidence of these fleeting objects remains elusive, researchers emphasize that even a negative result yields valuable scientific knowledge. “It’s not a dead-end,” said Danyi Zhang, a graduate student researcher at the Incandela Lab. This work addresses a long-standing discrepancy between the observed energy scale of the universe and the fundamental Planck scale, guiding future theoretical development and experimental searches at CERN. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider has broadened the scope of searches for microscopic black holes, establishing a new methodology applicable to identifying any novel particle, not solely black holes. This expanded search, detailed in Progress in High Energy Physics, has ruled out the existence of quantum black holes with specific characteristics, signifying valuable scientific knowledge even in the absence of detection. The team’s work establishes concrete limits on theoretical possibilities, shifting the focus of future investigations. This investigation stems from a decades-old hypothesis suggesting that, given sufficient energy and…