The fate of black holes has been explored for the first time thanks to complex numerical simulations, which shed some light on one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of physics: what happens to these objects when they evaporate, a phenomenon predicted by the famous physicist Stephen Hawking but still never observed.
The simulation, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, was developed by the Sapienza University of Rome and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn), in collaboration with the Danish Niels Bohr Institute.
The results suggest that the evaporation of black holes born in the early universe could also explain the elusive nature of dark matter.
Among the results obtained by the researchers, led by Fabrizio Corelli of Sapienza and Infn, there is the possibility that the black hole, by shrinking, reveals the so-called '
gravitational singularity
' hidden inside.
Indeed, every black hole contains a singularity: that is, a point, foreseen by Albert Einstein's general relativity, in which the density of matter reaches such high values in such a small volume as to cause a gravitational collapse of space-time.
The Big Bang is also thought to have originated from one of these singularities.
This first scenario, however, would violate another theory, which states that the singularity can never go outside a black hole.
A second, equally fascinating alternative says that black holes could turn into the famous and suggestive wormholes, also predicted by Einstein's general relativity.
A wormhole is a tunnel that connects different points in space-time, and would be a perfect candidate to explain dark matter.
"It is inevitable that, during evaporation, the gravitational effects become more and more important, to the point of modifying the final result", observes Corelli.
"It is for this reason - he concludes - that it is particularly interesting to study these phenomena".