Page 23 - BusinessWest November 24, 2025

Challenging the Assumptions
Exploding Black Hole Could Reveal Foundations of Universe
Physicists have long believed that black holes explode at the end
of their lives, and that such explosions happen — at most — only
once every 100,000 years. But new research published in Physical
Review Letters by physicists at UMass Amherst has found a more than
90% probability that one of these black hole explosions might be seen
within the decade, and that, if we are prepared, our current fleet
of space and earthbound telescopes could witness the event.
Such an explosion would be strong evidence of a theorized
but never observed kind of black hole, called a ‘primordial black
hole,’ that could have formed less than a second after the Big
Bang occurred, 13.8 billion years ago. Furthermore, the explo-
sion would provide a definitive catalog of all the subatomic
particles in existence, including the ones science has observed,
such as electrons, quarks, and Higgs bosons; the ones so far
only hypothesized, like dark matter particles; as well as every-
thing else that is, so far, entirely unknown to science.
This catalog would finally answer one of humankind’s oldest
questions: from where did everything in existence come?
Science knows that black holes exist and has a good under-
standing of their life cycle: an old, large star runs out of fuel,
implodes in a massively powerful supernova, and leaves behind an area
of spacetime with such intense gravity that nothing, not even light, can
escape. These black holes are incredibly heavy and essentially stable.
But, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in 1970, another kind
of black hole — a primordial black hole (PBH), could be created not by
the collapse of a star, but from the universe’s primordial conditions short-
ly after the Big Bang.
PBHs, like the standard black holes, are so massively dense that
almost nothing can escape them — which is what makes them ‘black.’
However, despite their density, PBHs could be much lighter than the
black holes so far observed. Furthermore, Hawking also showed that
black holes have a temperature and could, in theory, slowly emit par-
ticles via what is now known as ‘Hawking radiation’ if they got hot
enough.
“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 so hotter, emitting even
more radiation in a runaway process until
explosion. It’s that Hawking radiation
that our telescopes can detect.”
ANDREA THAMM
“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
so hotter, emitting even more radiation in a runaway process until explo-
sion. It’s that Hawking radiation that our telescopes can detect,” said
Andrea Thamm, co-author and assistant professor of Physics at UMass
Amherst.
Yet, while we should be able to, no one has ever directly observed a
PBH.
“We know how to observe
this Hawking radiation,” said
Black Hole
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