Cosmic sous-vide: How slow reheating resurrects primordial black holes ✦
Original: "Reviving primordial black hole formation in slow first-order phase transitions"
Gauge invariance and slow reheating during phase transitions in the early universe provide a new recipe for forming asteroid-mass primordial black holes, potentially accounting for all dark matter.
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The universe cooks black holes sous-vide: slowly, without fuss. After a phase transition, it doesn't explode but smolders, giving tiny inhomogeneities time to grow. What seemed a whisper becomes a roar of collapse. Thus asteroid-mass black holes are born—perhaps the very dark matter. The recipe is encoded in gravitational waves.
🎯 A primordial black hole of asteroid mass (~10²⁰ g) would be the size of an atomic nucleus but weigh as much as a mountain. Passing through Earth, it would leave only a microscopic tunnel and a barely noticeable thermal trace—a true ghost, almost impossible to catch.
M_{\text{min}} \sim 10^{20}\,\text{g} \left(\frac{10^6\,\text{GeV}}{T_V}\right)^2
M_min is proportional to the square of the inverse vacuum transition temperature TV.
Scientists
Alan GuthAndrei LindeGeorges LemaîtreJames PeeblesAdam RiessBrian Schmidtblack hole
gravitational waves
dark matter
big bang
dark photon
numerical simulation
expansion of the universe
Standard ModelLaws
Friedmann equationsHubble's lawHawking radiationgravitational lensingNoether's theoremBekenstein-Hawking entropy