Tiny Black Holes May Be Exploding Stars Across the Milky Way

jjandrewrogers about 23 hours ago 16 commentsRead Article on sciencedaily.com

DE version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

71% Positive

Analyzed from 637 words in the discussion.

Discussion (16 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

sgt101•about 1 hour ago

Could this kind of trigger effect the standard candle application of Type 1a's? For example, if a black hole triggers a type 1a and that perturbs the type 1a light curve in some way (possibly because less mass could be consumed in the explosion than you would get if one was triggered by mass accretion) and the rate of triggering of this kind changed over time as the universe aged and somehow the population of primordial black holes changed, or the distributions of white dwarf candidates and pbhs changed...

Schlagbohrer•38 minutes ago

3-Body-Problem once again vindicated as the scariest possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox

9dev•25 minutes ago

Many physicists have pointed out several flaws in the dark forest theory, which makes for a great read but doesn’t really carry over to the real universe 1:1.

Schlagbohrer•14 minutes ago

Can you point me to more info on that or just tell me? I am curious about reasons to be more optimistic than that book lays out. I would much prefer the Carl Sagan view of the Cosmos as one where it simply makes no physical nor cultural sense at all to be aggressive toward other stellar civilizations.

bpodgursky•2 minutes ago

Why would physicists have anything useful to say about this theory?

graemep•8 minutes ago

What flaws? Do they apply to variants such as Greg Bear's and related ideas such as berserkers?

criddell•28 minutes ago

Did you intend to say dark forest hypothesis?

Schlagbohrer•15 minutes ago

Yes!

echelon•14 minutes ago

I think a fragile world hypothesis is more interesting and scary.

Instead of a superintelligence killing any emerging intelligence, superintelligence is so smart that it can perturb spacetime in ways that easily kill itself.

Kind of like the idea that LLMs will give anyone with a garage the ability to create killer viruses (wild claim), a superintelligence might trivially create black holes that engulf it. If the intelligence is distributed across many agents (or nations), someone will try something stupid that kills the entire population.

It'd be even scarier if they could accidentally collapse the supposed vacuum state. Universal annihilation at the speed of light just because you got too smart.

Fragile world / fragile universe meets "too smart for your own good".

alansaber•8 minutes ago

Sounds logical to me. It's already remarkable that we haven't done this with fission weapons. It's not unreasonable to assume that within a century we'll have antimatter weapons. Destructive potential only goes up.

cousinbryce•about 1 hour ago

Anyone have guesses about how a transiting primordial black hole would effect a Sun like star? Paper is about tidal forces inducing supernova in white dwarfs. For that matter how might it effect sea tides?

pavel_lishin•30 minutes ago

For the latter, you mught enjoy Greg Egan's "Perihelion Summer".

ButlerianJihad•26 minutes ago

fnord

Quinner•19 minutes ago

Perhaps you meant to read the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html about comments being kind, not snarky, and substantive.

boesboes•about 1 hour ago

Wouldn't Type Ia supernovas caused by blackholes have a different brightness? That could mean the entire cosmic ladder needs to be revised, maybe this could resolve the crisis in cosmology..

thisisauserid•about 1 hour ago

The "Great Filter" answer to the Fermi Paradox.

stronglikedan•39 minutes ago

It seems like it would be the most efficient implementation of the Great Filter, since it would just look like a natural occurrence to any observers.

empath75•about 1 hour ago

This is one of those headlines where I simultaneously think "cool" and now have a new source of low-grade background anxiety about. It can have a seat next to false vacuum collapse.

Zigurd•about 1 hour ago

Take comfort in the fact that compared to the size of the universe, the speed of light is like molasses in January. Cosmological eschatology is a very slow game, and the odds of you being alive and in the right place to be a spectator are literally astronomically small.

alansaber•5 minutes ago

Concern for celestial events is a bit like one of your gut bacterium being concerned with your work schedule

OneDeuxTriSeiGo•27 minutes ago

In that case you may enjoy “The Blue Afternoon that Lasted Forever” by Daniel Wilson.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260310115201/https://www.willi...

trollbridge•about 1 hour ago

The good news about black holes is that even if one transited the solar system, it would be extremely unlikely to come anywhere near earth.

ben_w•34 minutes ago

The bad news is that if a black hole is not primordial, the minimum mass is high enough (2-4 M_sol) that it doesn't so much "pass through our system" as "we pass through its".

I'm not 100% confident, but rough approximation suggests that a close approach of even 5 AU even at typical interstellar velocities might have an unplesant climate impact by increasing the eccentricity of our orbit.

14u2c•1 minute ago

5AU seems incredibly close. That's inside the orbit of jupiter. How would it not destabilize the entire system?

trollbridge•8 minutes ago

Déstabilise orbits - definitely, but the same would be true of a star or other celestial body.

But our risk of getting sucked into a black hole is really tiny. (Although personally if I had a chance to enter a black hope, I would. I’m just naturally curious.)

mynegation•26 minutes ago

Did you mean 5 AU or 5 ly? 5 AU at 2-4 M sol intuitively seems like a complete and utter havoc.