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No one knows exactly where it came from, and the numbers don\u2019t line up with anything we\u2019d expect from a distant galaxy or a supernova<\/a>. Now, a new study suggests this strange neutrino might be the last breath of a tiny black hole formed at the beginning of time.<\/p>\n Ghost particle mystery<\/p>\n Neutrinos are called ghost particles because they\u2019re almost invisible. Trillions pass through your body every second without leaving a mark. They rarely interact with anything. Most neutrinos come from the Sun or cosmic rays, and scientists are used to tracking those.<\/p>\n But this one was different. Its energy was so extreme that researchers couldn\u2019t explain it with the usual suspects. <\/p>\n The IceCube Observatory \u2013 another giant neutrino detector buried in the ice at the South Pole \u2013 has picked up a few similar high-energy neutrinos in the past. But nothing this strong.<\/p>\n The two detectors weren\u2019t telling the same story. IceCube\u2019s past findings suggested ultra-high-energy neutrinos should be rare. But if KM3NeT really caught one, then something strange had to be going on. That\u2019s where the idea of a primordial black hole<\/a> comes in.<\/p>\n Testing a black hole theory<\/p>\n We\u2019re used to thinking of black holes as massive \u2013 millions of times heavier than the Sun. But primordial black holes are different. They\u2019re tiny, and scientists think they may have formed right after the Big Bang<\/a>.<\/p>\n These small black holes don\u2019t suck in matter the way their larger cousins do. Instead, they slowly lose energy through something called Hawking radiation, named after physicist Stephen Hawking. As they shrink, they get hotter. And right before they disappear completely, they explode in a final burst of high-energy particles.<\/p>\n If primordial black holes really exist \u2013 and if they make up most of the dark matter in the universe \u2013 then some of them could be reaching the end of their lives today. A few could even be exploding near our part of the galaxy. That\u2019s exactly what physicists at MIT<\/a> wanted to test.<\/p>\n Black hole explosion with big impacts<\/p>\n The experts ran the numbers. They determined that if primordial black holes make up most of the dark matter, then about 1,000 of them should explode every-year in each cubic parsec of our galaxy. (One parsec is about 3 light years across.)<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of tiny black holes exploding. But space is huge, so even with all those explosions, only a few particles from any one event would reach Earth.<\/p>\n Still, if even one primordial black hole exploded within about 200 billion miles of our solar system \u2013 which is about 2,000 times the distance from Earth to the Sun \u2013 the particles it released could hit our detectors. One of them might have been the ultra-high-energy neutrino that KM3NeT saw.<\/p>\n Origins of a ghost particle<\/p>\n The researchers calculated the odds of this happening. There\u2019s about an eight percent chance that a primordial black hole explosion happens close enough to Earth to explain the neutrino signal \u2013 once every 14 years.<\/p>\n \u201cAn eight percent chance is not terribly high, but it\u2019s well within the range for which we should take such chances seriously,\u201d said David Kaiser, a physicist at MIT and co-author of the study. <\/p>\n \u201cSo far, no other explanation has been found that can account for both the unexplained very-high-energy neutrinos<\/a> and the even more surprising ultra-high-energy neutrino event.\u201d<\/p>\n Chasing Hawking radiation<\/p>\n If this theory is right, then scientists may have just seen the first sign of Hawking radiation. It\u2019s something that\u2019s been predicted for decades but never observed directly.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have any hope of detecting Hawking radiation from astrophysical black holes,\u201d said lead author Alexandra Klipfel. \u201cSo if we ever want to see it, the smallest primordial black holes are our best chance.\u201d<\/p>\n In the last fraction of a second before they vanish, these tiny black holes would blast out an enormous number of particles, including about 100 quintillion neutrinos. Some of them would be packed with the exact kind of energy KM3NeT detected.<\/p>\n \u201cIt turns out there\u2019s this scenario where everything seems to line up, and not only can we show that most of the dark matter [in this scenario] is made of primordial black holes, but we can also produce these high-energy neutrinos from a fluke nearby primordial black hole explosion,\u201d Klipfel said. \u201cIt\u2019s something we can now try to look for and confirm with various experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n Future of the theory<\/p>\n None of this proves the theory yet. Scientists will need more data \u2013 more high-energy neutrinos, more observations, and maybe one day, another explosion even closer to Earth.<\/p>\n But if this idea holds up, it could answer two of the biggest questions in physics: What is dark matter<\/a> made of? And does Hawking radiation really exist?<\/p>\n \u201cIn that case, we could use all of our combined experience and instrumentation to try to measure still-hypothetical Hawking radiation,\u201d Kaiser said. <\/p>\n \u201cThat would provide first-of-its-kind evidence for one of the pillars of our understanding of black holes \u2013 and could account for these otherwise anomalous high-energy neutrino events as well. That is a very exciting prospect.\u201d<\/p>\n The full study was published in the journal Physical Review Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n Image Credit: Toby Gleason-Kaiser<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time, scientists think they might have caught a sign of something that has only existed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[199,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-178790","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}