Скачать или смотреть The Snack That Fights Back: How Tiny Black Holes Can Create ‘Impossible’ Black Holes

Can stars really snack on tiny black holes and create the ‘impossible’ black holes that live in the mass gaps?
In this video, we break down new research by Thomas W. Baumgarte and Stuart L. Shapiro, published in Physical Review Letters, that proposes a wild idea: premature collapse triggered when a star captures a tiny black hole at its core.
You’ll learn:
What the upper and lower black hole mass gaps are, and why theory says they should be empty.
How gravitational-wave events like GW231123 and GW230529 revealed black holes right inside these forbidden mass ranges.
How a low-mass black hole can be gravitationally captured by a star instead of tearing it apart, spiral inward, and trigger a rapid ‘premature’ collapse.
Why this process can naturally produce rapidly spinning black holes.
What primordial black holes are, how they might make up a fraction of dark matter, and why their masses matter for stellar capture.
How often stars in the Milky Way might collide with primordial black holes, and why this mechanism is promising for filling the lower mass gap but not the upper one.
The key assumptions, uncertainties, and what future gravitational-wave observations could prove or rule out.
This video is perfect for fans of black holes, gravitational waves, dark matter, and anyone curious about how ‘snacks’ for stars might rewrite what we know about stellar evolution.
Chapters:
0:00 – Hook: Impossible black holes
1:00 – What are mass gaps?
3:00 – Gravitational waves and forbidden black holes
5:00 – Premature collapse: stars that eat black holes
9:00 – Primordial black holes and dark matter
13:00 – Can this really explain mass-gap black holes?
16:00 – Open questions and future discoveries
Keywords: black hole mass gap, premature collapse, primordial black holes, gravitational waves, GW231123, GW230529, dark matter, stellar evolution, neutron stars, pair-instability supernovae.