Primordial Black Holes
According to the Big Bang Model (also called the Standard Model), during the first few moments after the Big Bang, pressure and temperature were extremely great. Under these conditions, simple fluctuations in the density of matter may have resulted in local regions dense enough to create black holes. Although most regions of high density would be quickly dispersed by the expansion of the universe, a primordial black hole would be stable, persisting to the present.
One goal of Astropulse is to detect postulated mini black holes that might be evaporating due to "Hawking radiation". Such mini black holes are postulated to have been created during the Big Bang, unlike currently known black holes. Martin Rees has theorized that a black hole, exploding via Hawking radiation, might produce a signal that's detectable in the radio. The Astropulse project hopes that this evaporation would produce radio waves that Astropulse can detect. The evaporation wouldn't create radio waves directly. Instead, it would create an expanding fireball of high-energy gamma rays and particles. This fireball would interact with the surrounding magnetic field, pushing it out and generating radio waves.
Read more about this topic: Astronomical Radio Source
Famous quotes containing the words primordial, black and/or holes:
“It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it—just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“But Father John went up,
And Father John went down;
And he wore small holes in his shoes,
And he wore large holes in his gown.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)