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Q & A: Can you make a black hole out of nucleons?

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Most recent answer: 11/07/2016
Gravity is the weakest force, and yet it creates (gravitational) black holes. Are there strong-force black holes, created by the pull of strong force? Why / why not. Are there week-force or EM black hoes?
- Anonymous

No.   Gravitational forces fall off as 1/r2 but go on forever.  The total force from a large collection is the sum of all the particles appropriately weighted by 1/r2.  Eventually a large enough collection can form a black hole.

Nuclear forces, on the other hand, are much stronger but are very short range.  The black hole radius of an object with nuclear density would be about 5000 meters.  The nuclear force rapidly goes to zero as a function of separation. You just can't make a big enough nucleus.   It would fall apart.  


Also, not everything feels the strong force. Neutrinos, for example, wouldn't notice it. Gravity changes the form of spacetime for everybody.  Mike W.

(published on 11/07/2016)

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