Since the earliest times, human beings have wanted to explain the most unpredictable and disturbing phenomena in the universe. Although the study of astronomy has been a constant in all civilisations, astronomical events of a more “unpredictable” nature, such as comets or eclipses, were considered an “omen of misfortune” and/or “actions of the gods”.
The fall of the Saxon king Harold II in 1066, during the Norman invasion of William the Conqueror, was attributed to the bad omen from the passage of a comet (later baptised as “Halley”). And during the battle of Simancas (Valladolid, Spain) between the troops of León Ramiro II and the Caliph Ad al-Rahman in 939, a total solar eclipse caused panic among the troops on both sides, delaying the battle for several days.
How would our ancestors have reacted, then, to the existence in the universe of objects – so-called black holes – capable of swallowing everything that fell into them, including light?
While the biggest black holes have been already detected and even photographed, there is now also feasible evidence – as I show in my recent study – for tiny black holes the size of potassium atoms (with a radius of about 0.23 nanometres, equivalent to 0.23 billionth of a metre). These atomic-sized black holes were formed in the first moments of the Big Bang and may even comprise the totality of the dark matter of the universe.
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