New research suggests that there is a 90% chance that within the next decade, humanity could use a space or Earth-based telescope to spot an exploding black hole. Such a detection would change our perspective of the universe by proving the existence of "primordial black holes" born 13.8 billion years ago, a second after the Big Bang.
Scientists have long suspected that black holes can explode, but that the length of time this takes increases in step with the mass of any black hole. Previous estimates have suggested that the largest possible black holes would take longer than the hypothesized lifetime of the universe to explode. Such an explosion would happen to the smallest possible black holes, at most, once every 100,000 years, according to previous theories.
