For decades, physicists believed black hole explosions were rare cosmic events, happening maybe once every 100,000 years. But a groundbreaking study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst flips that assumption on its head, with a bold prediction: there’s a more than 90% chance we’ll witness one within the next ten years.
And not just any black hole. This would be the first-ever observed explosion of a primordial black hole (PBH), a theoretical type born less than a second after the Big Bang. If spotted, it could unlock the deepest secrets of the universe.
“We believe that there is up to a 90% chance of witnessing an exploding PBH in the next 10 years,” says Aidan Symons, co-author and graduate student in physics at UMass Amherst.
Unlike the black holes formed from dying stars, PBHs are thought to have emerged from the chaotic energy of the early universe. They’re incredibly dense, yet much lighter than their stellar cousins. And thanks to Stephen Hawking’s 1970 prediction, we know they can emit particles through Hawking radiation, a slow leak that gets faster as the black hole gets hotter, until it explodes.
“The 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 hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until they explode. It’s that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect,” says Andrea Thamm, assistant professor of physics at UMass Amherst.