The Pros and Cons of Black Hole Explosion

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As long as vacuum decay is possible, we can't have had little black holes of a certain size produced during the Big Bang. Small ones that would have evaporated by now might have destroyed the universe. But what we can do with smashing particles together at the Large Hadron Collider is way less powerful than what cosmic rays do in space all the time. So there's no prospect of a Doctor Strange Love doomsday device using vacuum decay? No, it doesn't seem possible.

Cosmologists are always talking excitedly about the Big Bang and all the cool stuff that happened in the 14 billion years between then and now. But what about the future? We don't know for sure, but we know enough about the laws of physics to sketch out several plausible scenarios for what the future of our universe will hold. Katie Mack is a cosmologist who is writing a book about the end of the universe. We talk about the possibilities of a Big Crunch (and potential Big Bounce), a gentle cooling off where the universe gradually grows silent, and of course the prospect of a dramatic phase transition, otherwise known as the "bubble of quantum death." Which would make a great name for a band, I think we can all agree.

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Katherine (Katie) Mack received her Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, where her research centers on theoretical cosmology, including dark matter and black holes. She is also a member of NCSU’s Leadership in Public Science Cluster. Her upcoming book, The End of Everything, will be published in 2020.

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