{"id":15834,"date":"2025-09-11T11:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T11:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/15834\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T11:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T11:50:07","slug":"an-exploding-black-hole-could-reveal-the-foundations-of-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/15834\/","title":{"rendered":"An exploding black hole could reveal the foundations of the universe"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Primordial<\/p>\n

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image:\u00a0<\/p>\n

This artist’s concept takes a fanciful approach to imagining small primordial black holes. In reality, such tiny black holes would have a difficult time forming the accretion disks that make them visible here.<\/p>\n

view more\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center<\/p>\n

AMHERST, Mass. \u2014 Physicists have long believed that black holes explode at the end of their lives, and that such explosions happen\u2014at most\u2014only once every 100,000 years. But new research published in Physical Review<\/a> Letters by physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has found a more than 90% probability that one of these black-hole explosions might be seen within the decade, and that, if we are prepared, our current fleet of space and earthbound telescopes could witness the event.<\/p>\n

Such an explosion would be strong evidence of a theorized but never observed kind of black hole, called a \u201cprimordial black hole,\u201d that could have formed less than a second after the Big Bang occurred, 13.8 billion years ago. Furthermore, the explosion would give us a definitive catalog of all the subatomic particles in existence, including the ones we have observed, such as electrons, quarks and Higgs bosons, the ones that we have only hypothesized, like dark matter particles, as well as everything else that is, so far, entirely unknown to science. This catalog would finally answer one of humankind\u2019s oldest questions: from where did everything in existence come?<\/p>\n

We know that black holes exist, and we have a good understanding of their life cycle: an old, large star runs out of fuel, implodes in a massively powerful supernova and leaves behind an area of spacetime with such intense gravity that nothing, not even light, can escape. These black holes are incredibly heavy and are essentially stable.<\/p>\n

But, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in 1970<\/a>, another kind of black hole\u2014a primordial black hole (PBH), could be created not by the collapse of a star but from the universe\u2019s primordial conditions shortly after the Big Bang. PBHs, like the standard black holes, are so massively dense that almost nothing can escape them\u2014which is what makes them \u201cblack.\u201d However, despite their density, PBHs could be much lighter than the black holes we have so far observed. Furthermore, Hawking also showed that black holes have a temperature and could, in theory, slowly emit particles via what is now known as \u201cHawking radiation\u201d if they got hot enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lighter a black hole is, the hotter it should be and the more particles it will emit. As PBHs evaporate, they become ever lighter, and so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explosion. It\u2019s that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect,\u201d says Andrea Thamm<\/a>, co-author and assistant professor of physics at UMass Amherst.<\/p>\n

Yet, while we should be able to, no one has ever directly observed a PBH.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know how to observe this Hawking radiation,\u201d says Joaquim Iguaz Juan<\/a>, a postdoctoral researcher in physics at UMass Amherst. \u201cWe can see it with our current crop of telescopes, and because the only black holes that can explode today or in the near future are these PBHs, we know that if we see Hawking radiation, we are seeing an exploding PBH.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though physicists since Hawking\u2019s time have thought that the chances of seeing an exploding PBH are infinitesimally slight, Iguaz Juan notes that \u201cour job as physicists is to question the received assumptions, to ask better questions and come up with more precise hypotheses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s new hypothesis? Get ready now to see the explosion. \u201cWe believe that there is up to a 90% chance of witnessing an exploding PBH in the next 10 years,\u201d says Aidan Symons<\/a>, one of the paper\u2019s co-authors and a graduate student in physics at UMass Amherst.<\/p>\n

In its work, the team explores a \u201cdark-QED toy model.\u201d This is essentially a copy of the usual electric force as we know it, but which includes a very heavy, hypothesized version of the electron, which the team calls a \u201cdark electron.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team then reconsidered long-held assumptions about the electrical charge of black holes. Standard black holes have no charge, and it was assumed that PBHs are likewise electrically neutral.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe make a different assumption,\u201d says Michael Baker<\/a>, co-author and an assistant professor of physics at UMass Amherst. \u201cWe show that if a primordial black hole is formed with a small dark electric charge, then the toy model predicts that it should be temporarily stabilized before finally exploding.\u201d Taking all known experimental data into account, they find that we could then potentially observe a PBH explosion not once every 100,000 years as previously thought, but once every 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not claiming that it\u2019s absolutely going to happen this decade,\u201d says Baker, \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

Iguaz Juan adds, \u201cthis would be the first-ever direct observation of both Hawking radiation and a PBH. We would also get a definitive record of every particle that makes up everything in the universe.\u00a0 It would completely revolutionize physics and help us rewrite the history of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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About the University of Massachusetts Amherst\u00a0<\/p>\n

The flagship of the commonwealth, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public land-grant research university that seeks to expand educational access, fuel innovation and creativity and share and use its knowledge for the common good. Founded in 1863, UMass Amherst sits on nearly 1,450-acres in scenic Western Massachusetts and boasts state-of-the-art facilities for teaching, research, scholarship and creative activity. The institution advances a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where everyone feels connected and valued\u2014and thrives, and offers a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees across 10 schools and colleges and 100 undergraduate majors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Contacts: Michael Baker, mjbaker@umass.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Daegan Miller, drmiller@umass.edu<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

Journal<\/p>\n

Physical Review Letters<\/p>\n

Article Title<\/p>\n

Could We Observe an Exploding Black Hole in the Near Future?<\/p>\n

Article Publication Date<\/p>\n

10-Sep-2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"image:\u00a0 This artist’s concept takes a fanciful approach to imagining small primordial black holes. In reality, such tiny…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[111,139,69,393,147],"class_list":["post-15834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}