Tiny black holes left over from the Big Bang might be blowing up right now, briefly glitching the laws of physics.
March 18, 2026
Original Paper
Shocks from Exploding Primordial Black Holes in the Early Universe
arXiv · 2603.15746
The Takeaway
If tiny black holes exist, their final 'death' is a runaway explosion that creates an expanding fireball in space. These bursts are so intense they could locally restore the high-energy symmetry of the universe that existed only a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.
From the abstract
We investigate how Hawking radiation from low-mass primordial black holes deposits energy into the early-universe plasma and show that the resulting phenomena are hydrodynamic rather than purely diffusive. Combining analytic arguments with relativistic hydrodynamic simulations, we find that the plasma first develops a quasi-steady outflow during the slow evaporation stage, while the final runaway phase of evaporation produces an expanding fireball that launches a shock wave into the surrounding