Knowledge. The reason why you have microwaves and computers on your home right now is because someone went out and sought knowledge without trying to find applications for it. It's just understanding. Light up the darkness.
Can't happen. And not because of hawking radiation. First, technically, the very EXISTENCE of black holes was never proven right or wrong either. I've seen papers argue that an event horizon couldn't be formed in a finite time. Second. Do you have any idea how small the cross section of any of those black holes would be? Let's make a quick calculation.
We collide two lead cores, which have an atomic number of 82. That means the mass of our black holes would be at most 164 atomic units. Then we can find out the radius of a blackhole like that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...q=2*+G+*+164+*+mass+of+proton/c^2&btnG=Search
That's about 10^(-52) meters. Which is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 meters. A single proton has a size of 10^-16 meters (0.0000000000000001). If the black hole were the size of a peanut, a single proton would be several orders of magnitude larger than the known universe. So I'm going to pretend it's the size of a baseball, that'll only make the odds of hitting something better anyway. Now suppose an atomic nucleus is the size of the earth. The distance that separates two nuclei in a typical metal would then be 100 000 000 kilometers. That's more or less the distance between the earth and mercury when they're closest. So if you want your black hole to hit ONE nucleus, ONE single tiny nucleus to increase its mass a tiny insignificant bit, it's roughly the same as standing in mercury, throwing a baseball at random and expecting it to hit the earth. I'll calculate that one for you:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...+of+earth^2+*+pi/(4*+1+au^2*++pi)&btnG=Search
about 1 in 10^10.
How about winning the lottery 16 times in a row?
And if you think that's enough, there's MORE. You'd have to hit a LOT of nuclei until the black hole could pose any danger. Let's say, until it could be the size of a proton? That means absorbing 10^12 kg. How many protons is that? Around 10^38. Multiply the above figure for that, you'll get odds of 1 in 10^48, which's winning the lottery...10^39 times. Or, if you prefer, throwing a baseball at a random direction and hitting another baseball...in the andromeda galaxy.
That EVEN IF they don't decay. Which pretty much EVERY current model predicts.
The earth will be fine.
