#1256 - Christian Byrnes

Christian Byrnes a cosmologist and lecturer at the University of Sussex with a particular interest in Primordial Blackholes. Black holes are objects so strongly bound by gravity that not even light can escape from them. The most famous are black holes which form from a dying star: if the star has exhausted it's fuel, it can no longer produce enough pressure in its core to stop gravitational collapse. This episode is about another type of black hole, which may have formed long before any stars existed. In fact, these other black holes formed shortly after the big bang. Since they formed so early, they are known as primordial black holes. Unlike astrophysical black holes, they could exist with any mass. In contrast to their cousins that form by the death of a star, primordial black holes haven't been detected, but the search is on and there is a lot to learn from them, whether or not they exist.