Scientists Could Spot Explosions from the Universe’s Earliest Black Holes in Just 10 YearsElizabeth Rayne
Popular MechanicsWed, September 10, 2025 at 8:00 AM EDT
4 min read
Scientists Could Soon Spot Black Hole Explosions ALFRED PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY - Getty ImagesHere’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
*Primordial black holes are hypothetical black holes thought to have formed moments after the Big Bang.
*Because they supposedly formed about 14 billion years ago, and black holes are thought to evaporate over time until they explode, some primordial black holes are thought to be on the verge of explosion.
*It is possible that we could observe the aftermath of a primordial black hole explosion for the first time ever as early as this decade.
Despite being detected through gravitational waves, much is still unknown about the cosmic garbage disposals known as black holes. But even less is known about the black holes that scientists believe emerged when the universe began.
While most black holes are the corpses of dead stars, the hypothetical primordial black holes (PBHs) are thought to have formed only seconds after the Big Bang. It is believed that they were born from intense compression that caused tiny fragments of the universe to collapse in on themselves (much like dying stars). Some primordial black holes, if they do exist, might have even been seeds for the supermassive black holes lurking in the cores of most galaxies. Others might have finally reached the end of their freakishly long lifespans, with some of their bodies having evaporated over aeons, and might now be on the verge of explosion.
In 1970, Stephen Hawking proposed the existence of primordial black holes, and that they would be just as dense as stellar-mass and supermassive black holes. Like other black holes, they are assumed to slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation, emitting particles that will forever traverse the void. Primordial black holes are supposed to be much smaller and lighter than their monstrous relatives, which causes them to evaporate faster and triggers a runaway pattern of becoming ever lighter and hotter. That, in turn, causes even faster evaporation until the primordial black holes finally explode. Now, a team of physicists from UMass Amherst are exploring how we could potentially observe the gamma rays and other leftovers of such an explosion.
“Observation of gamma rays from an exploding black hole would provide strong evidence for primordial black holes, the first direct evidence of Hawking radiation, and definitive information on the particles present in nature,” the team wrote in a study recently
published in Physical Review Letters.
Primordial black holes continue to elude observation. Whether any (again, if they exist) have died an explosive death is unknown, because no one has really been looking for evidence left behind in the wake of an explosion. The aftermath of of a primordial black hole, however, could reveal secrets of the universe (like the composition of dark matter particles) and teach us more about what we have already observed (like subatomic particles that have only been seen in particle accelerators). There may even be more exotic particles hiding in the innards of primordial black holes.
The UMass Amherst team are convinced that we have up to a 90% chance of observing gamma rays released from an exploded primordial black hole within the next decade. These rays—once inside one of these black holes that has long since burst into a cosmic firework—could be traversing space right now. The team created a model of a primordial black hole explosion that includes dark electrons, which are the heavier dark matter mirror versions of electrons.
Primordial black holes are thought to be electrically neutral. However, the team’s model showed they could have a low charge from dark electrons, which could stabilize them temporarily before the inevitable boom. Observing a black hole explosion every ten instead of every hundred thousand years seems unrealistic, but in the 14 billion years since the Big Bang, it has probably happened over and over with us completely unaware. We already know how to observe Hawking radiation—we’ve just never actually observed it. The same thing could be true of the hypothetical explosions of PBHs.
“We have shown that PBHs may undergo a period of […] suppressing their Hawking radiation and allowing lighter PBHs to survive until today,” the researchers concluded. “This heavily weakens the indirect [restrictions] on the burst rate and boosts the possible observation probabilities.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/scientists-could-spot-explosions-universe-120000295.html
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