Tiny Black Holes May Exist in 5D World

A team of researchers, led by Luis Anchordoqui of Lehman College, has proposed that primordial black holes could have formed in a universe with a hidden extra spatial dimension. This dimension, known as a dark dimension, is believed to be roughly a micron wide and is hidden from view.

The researchers applied proposed rules of quantum gravity to see how black holes would behave under the dark dimension theory. They found that some primordial black holes would start out behaving like standard four-dimensional objects, but would then become unstable and transform into five-dimensional ones.

Others, formed from cosmic strings, would be five-dimensional from the start. Dieter Lüst of the Max Planck Institute for Physics, a co-author on the paper, says this scenario could explain why a high-energy neutrino detected in 2023 was not accompanied by any photons.

The neutrino, detected by the KM3NeT neutrino telescope, was 35 times more powerful than any similar particle previously observed. The researchers suggest that it could have originated from a black hole explosion within the fifth dimension.

The idea of a fifth dimension is not new, but the application of this concept to primordial black holes is a recent development. The researchers' theory could provide an explanation for the mysterious neutrino detection, but it is still highly speculative and requires further investigation.

The existence of primordial black holes is still purely theoretical, and the idea of a fifth dimension is also not proven. However, the researchers' theory provides a fascinating insight into the possibilities of the universe's structure and the behavior of black holes.

The study was published in the journal Physical Review D, and the researchers hope that their theory will stimulate further research into the nature of primordial black holes and the universe's dimensions.