Centauros and/or Chirons as evaporating mini black holes

Abstract

It is argued that the signals expected from the evaporation of mini black holes - predicted in TeV-scale gravity models with large extra dimensions and possibly produced in ultra high energy collisions in the atmosphere - have characteristics quite similar to the ones of the Centauro events, an old mystery of cosmic ray physics.

Comments: Contribution to the proceedings of the XIII ISVHECRI, Pylos, Greece, Sept. 2004. Four pages, LaTeX