Tiny black holes from cosmic collisions express

Original: "New Tests of Low-Scale Quantum Gravity with Cosmic-Ray Collisions"
arXiv:2510.11879 · 2025-10-13 · CC BY 4.0 · 1 min
Collisions of ultra-high-energy particles in space can give birth to tiny black holes, paving the way to understanding gravity at the atomic scale.

Cosmic rays, particles with monstrous energy, race through the darkness of intergalactic space. In a head-on collision, their force can crush into a black hole the size of an atom. It’s not dangerous: like a drop on a hot skillet, such a hole instantly evaporates, flying apart into a stream of neutrinos — ghostly particles that even lead cannot stop. This process was described by Stephen Hawking.

Astronomers have already analyzed neutrinos from the galaxy TXS 0506+056. It turned out: if black holes are born, it’s only at energies where the very fabric of spacetime behaves strangely. Future telescopes will go further. The intrigue in this detective story: when evaporating, such holes emit an equal number of neutrinos of all flavors — an anomaly that can be recognized amid the noise. And if extra dimensions exist, some neutrinos might dive in and return, producing mysterious flashes in the void. That would be a hint at hidden realities where gravitational waves wander.

A micro black hole with the mass of a mosquito would vanish in $10^{-27}$ seconds, releasing the energy of a ton of TNT, but safely: almost all of it would go into neutrinos, which would fly right through you unnoticed.

The idea of particles leaking into other dimensions is reminiscent of the series 'Fringe,' where parallel universes exchanged inexplicable signals.

Scientists
Stephen HawkingJacob BekensteinFritz ZwickyKarl SchwarzschildSubrahmanyan ChandrasekharRainer Weiss
Concepts
nuclear collision ultra high energy cosmic ray source collision energy cosmic rays quantum gravity graviton alternative gravity tests nuclear reaction mass gap kaon black hole particle acceleration black hole neutrino source hard x ray electron neutrino axion detection neutron stars gw190814 active galactic nucleus red dots gravitational superposition experiments neutron star mass limit central engine particle creation changing agn activity