Tiny black holes: Gravitational waves could let us find primordial black holes devouring stars

A primordial black hole falling into a neutron star would sink to its centre and devour it in seconds, and we might be able to detect this process using gravitational waves

By Leah Crane

Tiny, ancient black holes that may have formed in the early universe could help us uncover the internal structure of the densest stars. If they exist, these black holes could devour neutron stars from the inside, creating ripples in space-time called gravitational waves that we might be able to detect.

So-called primordial black holes are potentially important as an explanation for some of the effects of dark matter, but are predicted to be small, and so nearly impossible to directly detect. “An Earth-mass primordial …