Skip to main content

A single particle in the deep sea could prove Stephen Hawking right about the early universe




Five decades ago, famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking theorized that the Big Bang may have flooded the universe with tiny black holes. Now, researchers believe they may have seen one explode.

In Feb. 2025, the European collaboration KM3NeT  which consists of underwater detectors off the coasts of France, Italy and Greece announced the discovery of a stupendously powerful neutrino. This ghostly particle had an energy of around 100 PeV over 25 times more energetic than the particles accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful atom smasher.

Physicists have struggled to come up with an explanation for such an energetic neutrino. But now, a team of researchers who were not involved in the original detection have proposed a surprising hypothesis: The neutrino is the signature of an evaporating black hole. The team described their proposal in a paper that was uploaded to the arXiv database and has not been peer-reviewed yet.
Hawking's elephant-size black holes

In the 1970s, Hawking realized that black holes aren't entirely black. Instead, through complex interactions between the black hole event horizon and the quantum fields of space-time, they can emit a slow-but-steady stream of radiation, now known as Hawking radiation. This means black holes evaporate and eventually disappear. In fact, as the black hole gets smaller, it emits even more radiation, until it essentially explodes in a firestorm of high-energy particles and radiation  like the neutrino spotted by the KM3Net collaboration.

But all known black holes are very large  at least a few times the mass of the sun, and often significantly larger. It will take well over 10^100 years for even the smallest known black holes to die. If the KM3NeT neutrino is due to an exploding black hole, it has to be much smaller  somewhere around 22,000 pounds (10,000 kilograms). That's about as heavy as two fully grown African elephants, compressed into a black hole smaller than an atom.

The only known potential way to produce such tiny black holes is in the chaotic events of the early Big Bang, which may have flooded the cosmos with "primordial" black holes. The smallest primordial black holes produced in the Big Bang would have exploded long ago, while larger ones might persist to the present day.

Unfortunately, a 22,000-pound black hole should not survive all the way from the Big Bang to the present day. But the authors pointed out that there might be an additional quantum mechanism  known as "memory burden"  that allows black holes to resist decay. This would allow a 22,000-pound black hole to survive for billions of years before it finally exploded, sending a high-energy neutrino toward Earth in the process.

Primordial black holes might be an explanation for dark matter  the invisible substance that accounts for most of the matter in the universe  but so far, searches for them have turned up empty. This new insight may provide an intriguing clue. The researchers found that if primordial black holes of this mass range are abundant enough to account for all the dark matter, they should be exploding somewhat regularly. They estimated that if this hypothesis is correct, the KM3NeT collaboration should see another showstopping neutrino in the next few years.

If that detection happens, then we may just have to radically rethink the way we approach dark matter, high-energy neutrinos and even the physics of the early universe.

Website: International Research Awards on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.


#HighEnergyPhysics#ParticlePhysics#QuantumPhysics#AstroparticlePhysics#ColliderPhysics#HiggsBoson#LHC#QuantumFieldTheory#NeutrinoPhysics#PhysicsResearch#ComputationalScience#DataScience#ScientificComputing#NumericalMethods#HighPerformanceComputing#MachineLearningInScience#BigData#AlgorithmDevelopment#SimulationScience#ParallelComputing

Visit Our Website : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com
Nomination Link :hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rcategory=Awardee
Registration Link : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/award-registration/
Member Link : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/conference-membership/?ecategory=Membership&rcategory=Member
Awards-Winners : hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/awards-winners/
For Enquiries: physicsqueries@sciencefather.com

Get Connected Here:
==================
Social Media Link
Twitter : x.com/Psciencefather
Pinterest : in.pinterest.com/physicsresearchorganisation
Blog : physicscience23.blogspot.com
Instagram : www.instagram.com/victoriaanisa1
YouTube :www.youtube.com/channel/UCzqmZ9z40uRjiPSr9XdEwMA
Tumblr : www.tumblr.com/blog/victoriaanisa

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Physicists observe a new form of magnetism for the first time

MIT physicists have demonstrated a new form of magnetism that could one day be harnessed to build faster, denser, and less power-hungry " spintronic " memory chips. The new magnetic state is a mash-up of two main forms of magnetism: the ferromagnetism of everyday fridge magnets and compass needles, and antiferromagnetism, in which materials have magnetic properties at the microscale yet are not macroscopically magnetized. Now, the MIT team has demonstrated a new form of magnetism , termed "p-wave magnetism." Physicists have long observed that electrons of atoms in regular ferromagnets share the same orientation of "spin," like so many tiny compasses pointing in the same direction. This spin alignment generates a magnetic field, which gives a ferromagnet its inherent magnetism. Electrons belonging to magnetic atoms in an antiferromagnet also have spin, although these spins alternate, with electrons orbiting neighboring atoms aligning their spins antiparalle...

new research in qauntum physics

         VISIT:https: //hep-conferences.sciencefather.com/          N ew research in  qauntum physics.                                                    Alphabet Has a Second, Secretive Quantum Computing Team Recent research in quantum physics includes the development of quantum computers, which are expected to be much more powerful than conventional computers and could revolutionize many aspects of technology, such as artificial intelligence and cryptography. Other research includes the development of quantum sensors for a variety of applications, including medical diagnostics, and the study of quantum entanglement and its potential to enable quantum computing and secure communication. Additionally, research is being conducted into the applications of quantum mechanics in materials science, such as unde...

Freezing light? Italian scientists froze fastest thing in universe, here’s how

In a rare occurrence, physics made it possible to control the fastest travelling element - light. Italian scientists have managed to freeze the light, as per reports. A recent study published in a British weekly journal reportedly revealed that light can exhibit ‘ supersolid behavior ’ a unique state of matter that flows without friction while retaining a solid-like structure. The research, led by Antonio Gianfate from CNR Nanotec and Davide Nigro from the University of Pavia, marks a significant step in understanding supersolidity in light. The scientists described their findings as “just the beginning” of this exploration, as per reports. In what can be termed as ‘manipulating photons under controlled quantum conditions ’, the scientists demonstrated that light, too, can exhibit this behaviour. (A photon is a bundle of electromagnetic energy which is massless, and travel at the speed of light) How did scientists freeze light? As we know, freezing involves lowering a liquid’s tempera...