Most Physicists like to tell us that black holes are bald or that they have no hair. Upon translation what they mean is, if we were able to observe black holes each one would look exactly the same: pitch black as can be, and in the shape of flawless spheres. We know this due to the fact that Stephen Hawkings and his colleagues proved it mathematically in the early 1970s. In fact they called it their " no-hair theorem" .
Yet recent light has been shed onto the topic by CERN's Roberto Emparan and Harvey Reall, who presume the black holes might turn out to be a little furrier that previously thought. These men hypothesize that in a few years time it could be possible to create miniscule donut-shaped black holes. The clear implication of such a hypothesis is that we live in a universe composed of more than four dimensions. .
Yet in all actuality the course of creating such a hole would be no small task. Unlike the colossal black holes that already exist, the donut-holes made by humans would not be much bigger than the nucleus of a single atom. They would have to be generated inside huge particle accelerators. The most powerful particle accelerator in the world currently is CERN, located in Geneva, Switzerland. As we speak CERN is undergoing an upgrade, which is scheduled to be finished in 2006. Physicists theorize that after the upgrade the accelerator might have enough power to create one of the donut-holes.
Therein lies the problem: Without at least one dimension beyond the four which currently are know to exist, physicists have mathematically proven that it is impossible to create black hole donuts. There are four know dimensions: three of space v/s left-and-right, up-and-down, front-and-back, -- and one of time. A fifth dimension would be another direction in space, thought it is currently unclear at what that direction could be. All that is know is that this "other" direction would have to be incredibly small otherwise we would have found it by this point.
