2024-05-20
- NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch in late 2026, will search for tiny primordial black holes dating back to the Big Bang.
- These hypothetical black holes, with masses similar to Earth or even large asteroids, could revolutionize theoretical physics if detected
- Detection of these small black holes, which would be impossible to form by any known process, would utilize gravitational lensing, where the black holes bend light from distant sources.
- This technique, currently used to find rogue planets, will help differentiate between these black holes and other objects statistically.
- Confirming their existence would have profound implications for understanding galaxy formation, dark matter, and cosmic history, challenging Stephen Hawking’s theory that smaller black holes should have evaporated through Hawking radiation over 13.8 billion years.
