Structure and Mass Absorption of Hypothetical Terrestrial Black Holes

The prospect of mini black holes, either primordial or in planned experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, interacting with the earth motivate us to examine how they may be detected and the scope of their impact on the earth. We propose that the more massive of these objects may gravitationally bind matter without significant absorption. Since the wave functions of gravitationally bound atoms orbiting a black hole are analogous to those of electrons around a nucleus, we call such an object the Gravitationally Equivalent of an Atom (GEA). Mini black holes are expected to lose mass through quantum evaporation, which has become well accepted on purely theoretical grounds. Since all attempts to directly observe x-rays from an evaporating black hole have failed, we examine the possibility of the inverse test: search for extant mini black holes by looking for emissions from matter bound in a GEA. If quantum evaporation does not occur, then miniature black holes left over from the early universe may be stable, contribute to dark matter, and in principle be detectable through emissions associated with the bound matter. We show that small black holes-with masses below \sim10^12 kg-can bind matter without readily absorbing it into the black hole but the emissions are too weak to be detected from earth.