You probably know that a black hole is the most dangerous monster in the universe. Its gravitational pull is so strong that even light cannot escape from it. But imagine what if this monster suddenly changed its nature completely? I mean, instead of swallowing everything, it started throwing everything inside its stomach out?
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Yes, scientists are now thinking about this unrealistic idea! A recent study says that some primordial black holes born at the beginning of the universe may have turned into white holes at some point. Let’s take a look at the matter.
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When we hear the word black hole, we think of huge dead stars. When a huge star runs out of fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and turns into a black hole. These are called stellar-mass or stellar-mass black holes. But scientists imagine that there is another type of black hole beyond this. Just after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was extremely hot and dense.
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Scientists believe that in that extremely hot state, variations in the density of matter created several small black holes. These are called primordial black holes. However, their existence is still theoretical, and scientists have not yet been able to directly detect any such black holes. When a massive star runs out of fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and becomes a black hole. These are called stellar-mass black holes.
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The Death of Black Holes and Hawking Radiation
Many people may wonder, do black holes live forever? In the 1970s, legendary physicist Stephen Hawking proved that black holes are not eternal. They slowly lose mass by emitting a type of thermal radiation. This radiation is called Hawking radiation. Interestingly, the less mass a black hole has, the hotter it will be and the faster it will radiate and evaporate. Black holes formed from massive stars radiate so slowly that they can survive for many times longer than the current age of the universe.
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But those small, primordial black holes formed during the Big Bang are not that big. So what happens to them? Did they all evaporate and disappear in a huge explosion? Scientists used to think so. But Daniel Paraiso and his team, a researcher at the Eberly College of Science in the United States, have given a big blow to this idea.Black holes formed from massive stars radiate so slowly that they can survive for many times longer than the current age of the universe. Parajo’s research suggests that primordial black holes can survive much longer than we thought. When they become extremely small while they radiate, a strange and magical transformation occurs! How small exactly?
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Scientists say that the real event occurs when a black hole loses mass and reaches the Planck mass. In physics, the Planck mass is a fundamental unit of mass. It is just 0.00000022 kilograms, or about 20 micrograms. That’s about the weight of a tiny hair on your eyebrow or the weight of a fly’s egg! The Planck mass is a very exciting place for physics. Because when we get there, the laws of gravity and general relativity we know, and the laws of quantum physics for subatomic particles, come together. Scientists say the real event will happen when the black hole loses mass and reaches the Planck mass. In physics, the Planck mass is a fundamental unit of mass. It is just 20 micrograms.
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From black hole to white hole!
Daniel Paraiso and his team have calculated that a primordial black hole, the mass of a medium-sized asteroid, would reach a Planck mass of 20 micrograms after emitting Hawking radiation for about a billion years. Previous studies had said that after reaching this 20 microgram, the black hole would completely radiate and explode in just a fraction of a second. But Paraiso’s team’s new calculations say something completely different!
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According to them, this 20 microgram black hole does not explode and disappear, but rather stabilizes. It then loses the event horizon that holds radiation like a black hole and starts emitting a new type of radiation, which scientists call purifying radiation. From a distance, this object will behave exactly like a white hole! A white hole is a theoretical state that is the exact opposite of a black hole. You could call it a black hole that has moved backward in time. Just as a black hole swallows everything, a white hole constantly ejects matter and radiation from its interior. It is absolutely impossible for anything to enter it. Paraizo said, “We were able to predict the properties of this tiny white hole using the general physics of black holes, which is truly remarkable.”
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Where does the mystery end?
Scientists are extremely curious about whether these tiny 20-microgram white holes are the source of the mysterious dark matter in the universe. Paraizo said, “We have been able to estimate the properties of these tiny white holes using the general physics of black holes, which is truly remarkable.
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“However, to be completely sure whether these primordial black holes really survive as white holes, we will need a theory that can weave general relativity and quantum mechanics into one thread. In physics, this is called quantum gravity. Scientists have been trying to establish this theory since the beginning of the 20th century. The day that mystery is unraveled, maybe we will see the true form of these little monsters of the universe!
Source: Space.com
