![Illustration of [19459001] leaching out of a Black Hole](https://wepressrelease.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/7284-illustration-of-19459001-leaching-out-of-a-black-hole-400x400.jpeg)
. A new study into the origins and properties of a powerful particle found on Earth may prove some of Hawking’s black hole theories. Image credit: VICTOR DE SCHWANBERG/SCIENCE PHOTOLIBRARY via Getty Images.
Fifty years ago, Stephen Hawking, a renowned astrophysicist and cosmologist proposed that the Big Bang could have flooded our universe with black holes. Researchers believe that they have witnessed an explosion.
On February 2025, in the European collaboration KM3NeT, which consists underwater detectors near the coastlines of France and Italy, researchers announced that they had discovered a colossal neutrino. The ghostly particle was around 100 PeV in energy, which is over 25 times as powerful as the atom-shattering Large Hadron Collider.
Scientists are struggling to find an explanation for an energy-rich neutrino. Researchers who weren’t involved with the initial detection now propose a new hypothesis. The neutrino could be the sign of an evaporating dark hole. They described their idea in a document that hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, but was uploaded on the arXiv data base.
Hawking’s black holes of elephant size
Hawking discovered in the 1970s that blackholes are not entirely black. Through complex interactions between black holes and quantum fields in space-time they emit a steady but slow stream of radiation. This is now called Hawking radiation. Black holes will eventually evaporate. As the black hole shrinks, it releases more radiation until, like the neutrino spotted in the KM3Net collaboration, the firestorm of particles and radiation erupts. If black holes don’t exist, Stephen Hawking’s radiation paradox may finally be resolved. Even the smallest black hole will not die for 10100+ years. The KM3NeT is due to a black hole exploding, which must be smaller. It would have to weigh around 22,000 pounds (10 kilograms). It’s the same weight as two African elephants in full growth, but compressed into a tiny black hole.
Only the chaos of the Big Bang could have produced such small black holes. Small primordial black holes created in the Big Bang would likely have been blown up long ago. However, larger ones may still exist today. Receive the most exciting discoveries from around the globe in your email.
A 22,000-pound dark hole shouldn’t survive from the Big Bang until today. The authors have pointed out there may be a quantum mechanism (known as “memory burden” ) that helps black holes resist decay. It would be possible for a black hole weighing 22,000 pounds to last billions of year before it exploded and sent a neutrino with high energy toward Earth. Dark matter, the substance invisible that makes up most of the material in the universe, could be explained by primordial black holes. However so far searches have not been successful. The new information may offer an interesting clue. Researchers found that primordial black holes in this mass range should explode quite regularly if they are plentiful enough to explain all dark matter. If this hypothesis was correct, they estimated that the KM3NeT Collaboration should witness another show-stopping neutrino within the next couple of years. If this detection occurs, we might have to completely rethink our approach towards dark matter, neutrinos with high energy, and the physics behind the early universe. Paul M. Sutter, a professor of astrophysics and research at SUNY Stony Brook University in New York City’s Flatiron Institute is a researcher in astrophysics. He has appeared on television and in podcasts including “Ask a Spaceman.” as well as being the author of “Your Place in the Universe” “How to Die in Space,” and a contributor to Space.com Live Science and other publications. Paul earned his PhD in Physics in 2011 from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. He then spent three years at Paris Institute of Astrophysics and a further year in Trieste.
