Nayun Jia

Tiny black holes, born right after the birth of the universe, are supposed to evaporate — shedding mass as invisible particles. This was predicted by Stephen Hawking, and this 'Hawking evaporation' contributed to the expansion of the young cosmos.

An ordinary magnet always carries two poles — north and south. Split it in half, and each piece immediately grows its own pair. But deep in particle theory lives a strange notion: the monopole — a particle carrying just one magnetic charge, a lone pole without a partner.