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yesterday

UMass Study Predicts Strong Odds of Witnessing a Primordial Black Hole Explosion Within a Decade

The peer-reviewed model introduces a hypothetical dark charge that could delay evaporation, making such events detectable with existing instruments.

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3d rendering of space planets illustration
Scientists were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397, but instead they found evidence of a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there. New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have led to the first measurement of the extent of a collection of black holes in a core-collapsed globular cluster. This is an artist’s impression created to visualize the concentration of black holes at the center of NGC 6397. In reality, the small black holes here are far too small for the direct observing capacities of any existing or planned future telescope, including Hubble. It is predicted that this core-collapsed globular cluster could be host to more than 20 black holes.

Overview

  • UMass Amherst researchers report in Physical Review Letters an estimated chance of up to about 90% of observing an exploding primordial black hole within ten years.
  • The analysis uses a dark-QED toy model featuring a heavy “dark electron” that can endow primordial black holes with a small dark electric charge and temporarily stabilize them before their final burst.
  • Under these assumptions, the expected observable rate increases to roughly one event per decade, versus earlier estimates of around once every 100,000 years.
  • Capturing such an explosion would provide the first direct evidence of Hawking radiation and yield a broad spectrum of emitted particles, including possible dark‑matter candidates.
  • No event has been seen so far, and the authors urge targeted searches using existing gamma‑ray observatories and particle‑shower detector networks.