Scott Thomas<br>

Department of Physics, Stanford University<br>

<i>High Energy Colliders as Black Hole Factories: 
      The End of Short Distance Physics</i><p> 

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Particle collisions at energies well above the Planck scale are believed 
to be dominated by the production of black holes.  If the fundamental 
Planck scale is of order a TeV, as suggested in certain theories with 
large extra dimensions, microscopic black holes may be produced at the 
Large Hadron Collider at a rate of up to 1 Hz.  Black hole production 
and decay leads to very dramatic events with a cross section which 
grows with a power of the energy.  Standard hard scattering processes 
such as Drell-Yan or QCD jet production are also exponentially
suppressed.  Observation of these signatures would provide an 
experimental confirmation of the infrared--ultraviolet nature of 
quantum gravity, and herald the end of experimental investigation 
of short distances by high energy scattering.  

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