  We argue that the fireball observed at RHIC is (the analog of) a dual black
hole. In previous works, we have argued that the large $s$ behaviour of the
total QCD cross section is due to production of dual black holes, and that in
the QCD effective field theory it corresponds to a nonlinear soliton of the
pion field. Now we argue that the RHIC fireball is this soliton. We calculate
the soliton (black hole) temperature, and get $T=4a <m_{\pi}>/\pi$, with $a$ a
nonperturbative constant. For $a=1$, we get $175.76 MeV$, compared to the
experimental value of the fireball ``freeze-out'' of about $176 MeV$. The
observed $\eta/ s$ for the fireball is close to the dual value of $1/4\pi$. The
``Color Glass Condensate'' (CGC) state at the core of the fireball is the pion
field soliton, dual to the interior of the black hole. The main interaction
between particles in the CGC is a Coulomb potential, due to short range pion
exchange, dual to gravitational interaction inside the black hole, deconfining
quarks and gluons. Thus RHIC is in a certain sense a string theory testing
machine, analyzing the formation and decay of dual black holes, and giving
information about the black hole interior.
