A mathematical proof shows that black holes will not accidentally trigger a vacuum decay that would delete the entire universe.
Some theories suggested that black holes could act like sparks that ignite a bubble of true vacuum, which would expand at light speed and destroy everything. This study proves that the radiative losses from a black hole are high enough to prevent this runaway effect. Even if a black hole gets extremely hot through Hawking radiation, it cannot trigger the end of the world. This resolves a terrifying paradox that had left the stability of our universe in question. We can now be certain that these cosmic monsters are not accidental detonators for reality.
Dissipative Losses In Black Hole-Induced Vacuum Decay
arXiv · 2604.26009
We address the long-standing puzzle of false vacuum decay catalyzed by black holes. Naively, small black holes with large Hawking temperatures can generate highly-boosted true vacuum bubbles in the early universe and trigger vacuum decay without any exponential suppression. Working in the thin-wall regime of the $\phi^4$ and sine-Gordon models, we show that radiative losses play a crucial role in decelerating these bubbles and preventing runaway vacuum decay. We find that while the production ra