A Brief History of Black Holes by Dr Becky Smethurst

Author:Dr Becky Smethurst [Smethurst, Dr Becky]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Published: 2022-07-19T17:00:00+00:00

Now, as much as I desperately want this hypothesis to be true, the problem with Planet 9 turning out to be a primordial black hole would mean that it would be incredibly difficult to find evidence for it. Although, if it was a black hole that has existed since the very early days of the Universe, in the past 13 billion years or so, it will have collected a little halo of matter around it. Not in an accretion disk necessarily, just a clump of matter that is shepherded along by its movement through space, making the region around it much denser than normal. If that area is denser, it increases the chances that some of that matter will encounter some very rare anti-matter. Thankfully, we have a lot more matter in the Universe than anti-matter, otherwise nothing you have ever seen in your life, including the stars themselves, would ever have existed. Because when matter meets anti-matter it turns back into pure energy released as gamma rays; the most energetic type of light.

So, if the Solar System has its very own pet black hole, we should be able to detect that radiation with the gamma-ray telescopes that we currently have in orbit around Earth. The Planet 9 search isn’t just one that optical and infrared astronomers are involved with, the gamma ray astronomers have now been caught up in the furore as well. Because the idea that our nearest black hole could be light hours away rather than light years is enough to capture the heart of even the most hard-headed astrophysicist. To me, the theoretical evidence is very compelling, but perhaps I’m slightly biased as a black hole scientist; a black hole right on my doorstep would be the best present the Universe could ever get me.

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