Richard Lloyd Explains Black Holes

Some of you may have read in the past few days about the Large Hadron Collider that Swiss scientists have been experimenting with deep below the Earth's surface to try and help shed light on some of the universe's great mysteries. The largest machine ever built, which cost more than $8 billion to build, collides rapidly accelerated protons. It's too scientific and complicated for me to properly explain, but some people fear that it has the potential to create black holes that could swallow the Earth.

Richard Lloyd is probably best known for his guitar work in Television. But he's also released five solo albums and played with Rocket From The Tombs, Matthew Sweet and several others. There's no doubting his skills as a guitarist. But I've talked to him a couple of times and, while he seems like a very intelligent and well-read man, I think his years of drug use have had a lingering effect, even though he's now apparently clean.

What do you get when you combine a brilliantly eccentric guitarist with a scientific slant and theories about black holes? Check this message that Lloyd sent to people on his email list to find out:

"Dear friends,

"I have recently returned to writing for Solasishock.blogspot.com, and plan
on continuing as best I can. It is an immense project, basically my own
effort to recapitulate the entire Gurdjieff teaching, using both ancient and
modern sciences.

"By the way, WARNING! the Hadryron accelerator is now operable. Many people
fear that this will create a black hole that will eat up the earth. Since
that is statistically comparable to a large asteroid hitting the earth, it
is a possibility, so as a scientist I will begin warning people:

"A black hole has an event horizon of gravitational pull so strong that not
even light can escape, so if you see something you can't see you had better
start running. As you run away from the black hole the center of gravity
will shift from the center of the earth to behind you, so you will begin to
feel as if you are falling backwards. So you will have to lean forward to
run as if you were running into a hurricane force wind. Your best bet to
run at a 450 angle, which is about the limit of the human ankle. Because of
the Fitzgerald contraction your mass will increase as your length decreases
so you'll become shorter and fatter as time slows. But even though time
slows, it will not seem too slow for you, but only for someone on the other
side of the earth who's clock has not been affected by the black hole yet.
You had better run quickly because pretty soon as the event horizon pulls you
in, you will start to look like a pancake with little tiny legs. Having
little tiny legs and huge mass and looking like a pancake, it will be much
harder to run.

"Therefore if you see something that you can not see you'd better start
running, and since you can't see what you can't see and nobody can see a
black hole, everyone on earth better start running now, as fast as they can.
If the black hole sinks to the center of the earth, you'd better start
jumping as high as you can. The same general facts apply, so you'd better
jump higher than an Olympic jumper if you want to escape. In fact, sadly,
the human being cannot generate enough energy from its legs to achieve
escape velocity, but if you manage to do so, make sure you take a nice deep
breath before you reach the stratosphere, because the air will thin and
pretty soon you will be in outer space. Unfortunately, in outer space, with
no gravity or barometric pressure, the oxygen in your blood will begin to
boil and you will begin to expand until you explode. If you can match your
jumping exactly with the Fitzgerald contraction, you might last a few
centuries, relatively speaking; but according to your own wristwatch, you're
a goner in seconds.

"Just thought you might want to know."