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Astronomers with a couple of imaginations have great news for everyone. If a primordial black hole passes through your body, you probably won’t die.
This unexpected confirmation is part of their larger hypothesis about where scientists might find primordial black holes (PBHs): ancient, tiny, high-density theoretical black holes study published in the December issue Dark Universe Physics Astronomers speculate that evidence of PBHs may exist in hollow celestial bodies as well as objects right here on Earth, available online since September.
“We have to think outside the box because what has been done in the past to find primordial black holes has not worked,” said Dejan Stojkovic of the University at Buffalo, who co-authored the study. statement.
“Familiar” black holes, if you can call them that, are usually formed by dying stars collapsing in. On the other hand, primordial black holes may have formed shortly after the Big Bang, when regions of dense space also collapsed inward before the stars. existence therefore initial part
Scientists have theorized the existence of PBHs for decades, but have never actually observed one. According to the study, some scientists even speculate that PBHs may themselves be dark matter (a mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the universe’s mass). h): “Primordial small black holes (PBHs) are probably the most interesting and intriguing relics of the early universe,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Stojkovic and his colleague calculated that if a very fast PBH with a mass of 2.2 x 10^19 lb (ie 22 followed by 18 zeros) were fired through a solid object, it would leave a 0.1 µm-thick tunnel. : This is small but still visible with powerful microscopes, meaning we can probe the objects around us for evidence of their existence.
According to cosmologists, older objects have a higher chance of tunneling PBHs. they calculated the probability of a PBH shooting through a billion-year-old rock to be 0.000001 percent, but not zero.
“The probability of finding these signatures is small, but the search for them will not require a lot of resources, and the potential reward – the first evidence of a primordial black hole – will be huge,” Stojkovic explained in a statement.
This brings us back to the chances of a PBH digging into your body, which is even lower than zooming through a billion-year-old rock has low tension, which means the PBH will likely pass without rupturing.
“If a projectile travels faster than the speed of sound, the molecular structure of the medium doesn’t have time to react,” Stojkovic said. s speed will also prevent it from releasing most of its kinetic energy into your body.
Stojkovic and his colleague, Dae-Chang Dai of National Dong Hwa University and Case Western Reserve University, also suggest looking for evidence of PBH in surprisingly low-mass celestial bodies. the moon or a liquid-core asteroid, it can become trapped inside and pulverize its core, gouging it 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 are the solid bodies of the Earth.
As a result, the duo suggests that astronomers look for celestial bodies whose densities (calculated from their orbits) are significantly lower than expected. They should also be smaller than one-tenth the radius of Earth, since anything larger would collapse in on itself. :
Although these parameters, according to Stojkovic, are “out there,” 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.”
While the average person won’t participate in the new hunt for primordial black holes, this is your cue to alert the scientific community if something unexpected tunnels through your body.
