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An artist\u2019s impression of space-time around a black hole. New theoretical research hints that three hidden dimensions of the cosmos could prevent black holes from ever truly disappearing. | Credit: MARK GARLICK\/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images<\/p>\n
A new theoretical study suggests that black holes<\/a> may never fully evaporate, which contradicts an infamous Stephen Hawking theory that seems to violate fundamental laws of quantum mechanics<\/a>. Instead, black holes could leave behind tiny, stable remnants that store all the information they once consumed, the study suggests.<\/p>\n But there’s a twist \u2014 literally. For the theory to work, the universe must have three extra hidden dimensions that humans cannot perceive, making space-time seven-dimensional. As these hidden dimensions fold and twist, they create a repulsive force that prevents black holes from evaporating entirely.<\/p>\n The work, while hard to test directly, links black holes to the geometry of extra dimensions, offering a fresh approach to one of the deepest puzzles in physics.<\/p>\n A paradox that challenges the foundations of physics<\/p>\n Black holes<\/a> are often thought of as cosmic traps from which nothing escapes. Yet, since the 1970s, physicists have known that these cosmic behemoths are not entirely black. Famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes emit radiation<\/a> and slowly evaporate over time, which leads to a troubling contradiction known as the information loss paradox.<\/p>\n “Imagine you throw a book into a fire,” study co-author Richard Pin\u010d\u00e1k<\/a>, a senior researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Experimental Physics, told Live Science via email. “The book is destroyed, but in principle you could reconstruct every word from the smoke, ash, and heat \u2014 the information is scrambled, not lost.”<\/p>\n But when a black hole evaporates completely, the information about everything that fell into it appears to vanish, violating a core principle of quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n For decades, physicists have struggled to resolve this paradox. Now, the new study, published March 19 in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation<\/a>, suggests the answer may lie in the hidden structure of space-time itself.<\/p>\n Extra dimensions and the hidden structure of space-time An illustration of a 7-dimensional torsion knot, which is theorized to exert a repulsive force that could prevent black holes from evaporating. | Credit: Institute of Experimental Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences<\/p>\n The new research explores a universe with more dimensions than the familiar four. In this framework, the cosmos contains seven dimensions, three of which are compact and invisible at everyday scales.<\/p>\n “We experience three dimensions of space and one of time \u2014 four dimensions in total,” Pin\u010d\u00e1k said. “Our model proposes that the universe actually has seven dimensions: the four we know, plus three tiny extra dimensions curled up so tightly that we cannot directly perceive them.”<\/p>\n These extra dimensions are arranged in a highly symmetrical structure known as a G\u2082 geometry. This mathematical framework, often explored in advanced theories such as a version of string theory<\/a> known as M-theory, determines how the hidden dimensions are “folded.”<\/p>\n “Think of it like origami,” Pin\u010d\u00e1k said. “The way you fold the paper determines what the final shape can do.”<\/p>\n In the new model, this geometric structure produces a physical effect called torsion, which can be thought of as a twisting of space-time. This torsion field turns out to play a crucial role in black hole physics.<\/p>\n Torsion and the birth of stable black hole remnants<\/p>\n The study shows that torsion generates a repulsive force that becomes important at extremely small scales, near the end of a black hole’s life. As the black hole shrinks through Hawking radiation, this force eventually counteracts further collapse.<\/p>\n “This repulsive force acts as a brake, halting the evaporation before the black hole vanishes completely,” Pin\u010d\u00e1k said.<\/p>\n Instead of disappearing, the black hole stabilizes into a tiny remnant. According to the model, this leftover object has a mass of about 9 \u00d7 10\u207b\u2074\u00b9 kilograms \u202a\u2014\u202c some 10 billion times smaller than an electron.<\/p>\n Crucially, this remnant can store the information that fell into the black hole, avoiding any violation of quantum mechanics. The information is encoded in subtle oscillations known as quasinormal modes, which act as carriers of the lost data.<\/p>\n An illustration of a torsion-stabilized black hole remnant. Geometric torsion produces a repulsive force (colored arrows) at Planck densities, halting the final stage of Hawking evaporation and yielding a microscopic remnant. The upper-right inset shows the effective potential Veff(M) with a minimum at the remnant mass. The lower-right inset illustrates the underlying G2-manifold geometry. | Credit: Institute of Experimental Physics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences<\/p>\n The model also reveals an unexpected connection to particle physics<\/a>: The existence of three hidden dimensions, together with the presence of torsion, produces the pattern of particle interactions responsible for the Higgs mechanism, the phenomenon that gives mass to elementary particles like electrons and quarks.<\/p>\n “The same torsion field\u2026 generates a potential energy landscape that is identical in form to the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z bosons \u2014 the carriers of the weak nuclear force,” Pin\u010d\u00e1k said.<\/p>\n This link ties the behavior of black holes to the electroweak scale, a well-known energy scale in particle physics.<\/p>\n Where the new theory reaches its limits<\/p>\n Despite its appeal, the model faces important challenges. The standard description of black hole evaporation relies on a semiclassical approximation, which is expected to break down at extremely small scales near the Planck mass \u2014 approximately 10-5 grams. This is the mass scale at which quantum gravitational effects become strong and impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n “As the black hole shrinks toward the Planck scale, all existing models \u2014 ours included \u2014 must eventually confront the transition into the deep quantum-gravity regime,” Pin\u010d\u00e1k noted.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/d1b4fe7e0d828654d742f14792d680c9.jpeg\"\/)
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