PUBLIC TALK: Black holes at the Large Hadron Collider

String theory suggests that our universe is but a slice of some higher-dimensional space-time. In this talk I will discuss why one consequence of these models is that copious numbers of mini black holes might be formed by collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. We will describe how these mini black holes are created, how we can find evidence for them, and what happens to them once they have been produced. In particular, we discuss why these black holes will not swallow up the entire Earth.

Biography

Professor Elizabeth Winstanley is Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research interests are general relativity, quantum gravity and quantum field theory. Her research focuses on the physics of black holes, particularly ‘hairy’, and more recently ‘furry', black holes as well as the Hawking radiation of black holes that might be produced at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.

She maintains a keen interest in developments in mathematics and science education, serving on a number of national mathematics education committees in the UK. She is a past-chair of the Gravitational Physics Group of the UK Institute of Physics and has recently been a member of the Council of the London Mathematical Society, the UK's learned society for mathematics. Apart from physics, she enjoys watching sport, particularly cricket and rugby league, and has a broad taste in music - everything from Rachmaninov to Radiohead.