Micro black hole

A hypothetical black hole with microscopic size, proposed to form in the early universe or in sufficiently energetic particle collisions. Depending on its mass, it could evaporate rapidly through Hawking radiation.

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Hawking radiation: Quantum effects near a black hole’s event horizon predict thermal radiation and gradual mass loss. It would make a sufficiently small black hole evaporate rapidly.
Primordial black hole: A black hole hypothesized to have formed from density fluctuations in the early universe. A micro black hole could be a low-mass member of this proposed population.
Large Hadron Collider: A particle accelerator at CERN that collides protons at teraelectronvolt energies. Its collision data have been used to search for signatures of microscopic black holes.
Stellar black hole: A black hole formed through the gravitational collapse of a massive star. Stellar black holes are astrophysical objects, not microscopic products of particle-scale processes.
Schwarzschild radius: The radius of the event horizon of a nonrotating, uncharged black hole of a given mass. It sets the horizon’s scale and links a micro black hole’s mass to its size.
Cosmic inflation: A proposed period of extremely rapid expansion in the early universe. Inflationary density fluctuations could seed primordial black holes, including very small ones.
ATLAS experiment: A general-purpose particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider. ATLAS searches for energetic particle patterns predicted by black-hole production and decay.
Neutron star: A compact stellar remnant supported against collapse by neutron degeneracy pressure and nuclear forces. A neutron star can be tiny by astronomical standards without being a microscopic black hole.
Event horizon: A boundary beyond which events cannot send signals to distant observers. Even a microscopic black hole is defined by the horizon trapping outward signals.
Large extra dimensions: Hypothetical spatial dimensions beyond the three familiar dimensions, accessible to gravity at small scales. Some models use them to lower the effective gravity scale and permit collider formation.