  The prospect of mini black holes, either primordial or in planned experiments
at the Large Hadron Collider, interacting with the earth motivate us to examine
how they may be detected and the scope of their impact on the earth. We propose
that the more massive of these objects may gravitationally bind matter without
significant absorption. Since the wave functions of gravitationally bound atoms
orbiting a black hole are analogous to those of electrons around a nucleus, we
call such an object the Gravitationally Equivalent of an Atom (GEA). Mini black
holes are expected to lose mass through quantum evaporation, which has become
well accepted on purely theoretical grounds. Since all attempts to directly
observe x-rays from an evaporating black hole have failed, we examine the
possibility of the inverse test: search for extant mini black holes by looking
for emissions from matter bound in a GEA. If quantum evaporation does not
occur, then miniature black holes left over from the early universe may be
stable, contribute to dark matter, and in principle be detectable through
emissions associated with the bound matter. We show that small black holes-with
masses below \sim10^12 kg-can bind matter without readily absorbing it into the
black hole but the emissions are too weak to be detected from earth.
