{"id":138663,"date":"2025-09-12T13:21:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/138663\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T13:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:21:13","slug":"exploding-primordial-black-holes-could-rewrite-the-history-of-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/138663\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploding Primordial Black Holes Could ‘Rewrite the History of the Universe’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a fantastic week for Stephen Hawking\u2019s black hole theories. Yesterday, LIGO confirmed the famed physicist\u2019s prediction<\/a> about black hole mergers. Now, another team believes they\u2019ve found a way to observe primordial black holes\u2014cosmic behemoths that emerged not from the ashes of dying stars but from the chaos of the early universe.<\/p>\n

In a paper published September 9 in Physical Review Letters,<\/a> a team of physicists make the bold prediction that, within the next decade, we will be able to witness the explosive death of a black hole\u2014and specifically, a primordial black hole. Studying the radiation emitted from this event, they theorize, would offer an unprecedented look into the dynamics of the early universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not claiming that it\u2019s absolutely going to happen this decade,\u201d Michael Baker, one of the study\u2019s co-authors, said in a press release<\/a>. \u201cBut there could be a 90% chance that it does. Since we already have the technology to observe these explosions, we should be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happens when black holes die <\/p>\n

Black holes are among the most powerful entities in our universe, but as with all things, black holes eventually \u201cdie,\u201d explosively. Hawking predicted that in the lead up to this cataclysmic end, black holes emit a very slow stream of photons and subatomic particles\u2014a phenomenon later dubbed as Hawking radiation.<\/p>\n

In theory, current gamma-ray observatories should be able to spot Hawking radiation. The issue is that black holes live for a very long time, and scientists believe that such explosions occur and enter our detection range maybe once every 100,000 years.<\/p>\n

A dark version of events <\/p>\n

Baker and his colleagues think we may not have so long to wait. They reworked a long-held assumption that black holes are electrically neutral. Since primordial black holes and their (comparatively) younger peers have different origin stories, they wondered if primordial black holes could also have different electrical characteristics.<\/p>\n

After some theoretical exploration, the team settled on what they call the \u201cdark-QED toy model.\u201d In this scenario, primordial black holes have a small, \u201cdark\u201d charge powered by \u201cdark electrons,\u201d which are a very heavy, hypothetical version of the electron.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds quite esoteric, but within that field it\u2019s quite a common thing to do,\u201d Baker told The Boston Globe<\/a>. They found that a slightly charged primordial black hole would, theoretically, explode pretty early in the universe\u2019s history. The extra charge would suppress the Hawking radiation, which would extend the lifespan of those primordial black holes already thought to have exploded by now.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the only black holes that can explode today or in the near future are these [primordial black holes], we know that if we see Hawking radiation, we are seeing an exploding [primordial black hole],\u201d study co-author Joaquim Iguaz Juan said in a statement.<\/p>\n

If their predictions withstand further scrutiny and eventually prove correct, scientists could glean \u201ca definitive record of every particle that makes up everything in the universe,\u201d he said, adding that such a discovery would \u201ccompletely revolutionize physics and help us rewrite the history of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a fantastic week for Stephen Hawking\u2019s black hole theories. Yesterday, LIGO confirmed the famed physicist\u2019s prediction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2035,49,48,314,66,46454],"class_list":{"0":"post-138663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-black-holes","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-physics","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-stephen-hawking"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}