Small black holes may have left tunnels within Earth’s rocks

A pair of imaginative cosmologists have great news for everyone: If there was a primordial black hole passing through your body, you probably wouldn’t die.

This unexpected reassurance is part of their larger hypothesis about where scientists might find primordial black holes (PBH): ancient, small, high-density theoretical black holes. In a He studies Published in the December issue of Physics of the dark universe Available online since September, cosmologists suggest that evidence of PBHs may exist inside hollow celestial bodies, as well as in objects here on Earth.

“We have to think outside the box because what has been done to find primordial black holes before has not worked,” said Dejan Stojkovic of the University at Buffalo, who co-wrote the study. statement.

“Family” black holes, if we can call them that, typically form in the wake of dying stars collapsing inward. On the other hand, primordial black holes may have formed shortly after the Big Bang, when regions of dense space also collapsed inward, even before stars existed, hence the reason: primitive part.

Scientists have theorized about the existence of PBHs for decades, but have never actually observed them. According to the study, some scientists suggest that PBHs may themselves be dark matter (the mysterious matter that makes up 85% of the universe’s mass). “Little primordial black holes (PBHs) are perhaps the most interesting relics from the early universe,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Stojkovic and his colleague calculated that if an extremely fast PBH with a mass of 2.2 x 10^19 pounds (i.e. 22 followed by 18 zeros) shot through a solid body, it would leave behind a tunnel 0.1 microns thick. This is small, but it is still visible with powerful microscopes, which means we can check things around us for evidence of its existence.

Older objects have greater chances of experiencing PBH tunneling, according to cosmologists. The “higher odds” are still very small – they calculated that the probability of a PBH being released through a billion-year-old rock is 0.000001 percent – but not zero.

“The chances of finding these signatures are slim, but searching for them will not require a lot of resources and the potential payoff, which is the first evidence of the existence of a primordial black hole, will be enormous,” Stojkovic explained in the statement.

This brings us back to the odds of a PBH drilling into your body, which are even lower than those of a billion-year-old rock. However, even if this happened, the researchers are confident that you would not suffer major injury, because human tissue has low tension, which means that PBH would likely pass without rupture.

“If a projectile moves through a medium at a speed faster than the speed of sound, the molecular structure of the medium will not have enough time to respond,” Stojkovic said. “Throw a rock through a window, it will likely shatter. Shoot a window with a gun, it will likely leave a hole. The speed of the PBH will also prevent it from releasing much of its kinetic energy into your body.”

Stojkovic and his colleague De Zhang Dai of National Dong Hua University and Case Western Reserve University also suggest looking for evidence of PBH in celestial bodies with surprisingly low masses. They hypothesize that if a PBH shot past an object such as a planet, moon or asteroid with a liquid core, it might get trapped inside and have its center vacuumed out, hollowing it out until an external impact dislodges it.

“If the object has a liquid central core, the captured PBH can absorb the liquid core, whose density is higher than the density of the outer solid layer,” Stojkovic explained. On the other hand, celestial bodies that do not have a liquid core will harbor tiny tunnels similar to those found in solid bodies on Earth.

As a result, the duo suggests that astronomers should look for celestial objects with densities (which can be calculated from their orbits) much lower than expected. It must also be smaller than a tenth of the Earth’s radius, since anything larger would collapse in on itself.

Although these criteria are, in Stojkovic’s words, “out of the ordinary,” the researchers stress that such theoretical studies are necessary. “The smartest people on the planet have been working on these problems for 80 years and still haven’t solved them,” he said. “We don’t need a direct extension of existing models. We probably need a completely new framework.”

Although the average person won’t participate in new research on primordial black holes, this is your sign to alert the scientific community if something unexpected comes across your body.