[ExI] Did Scientists Just Detect an Exploding Black Hole?

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 4:12 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 11:16 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *> In similar neutrino detections of energetic events, such a supernova,
>> all the neutrino detectors on earth lit up at the same time. Would we not
>> expect something similar if a nearby black hole evaporated?*
>
>
> *The short answer is somebody got lucky. The slightly longer answer is
> that the neutrino the Mediterranean detector found had an energy of 2.2
> *10^17 electron volts, that's more than 30 times as powerful as any
> neutrino the south pole detector had ever found even after 14 years of
> operation, and the source of that neutrino was in the northern
> hemisphere; and normally the south pole detector is most sensitive to
> neutrinos that originate in the northern hemisphere because neutrinos are
> the only thing they can make it all the way through the Earth so the
> northern hemisphere signal is very low noise. However that's for normal
> neutrinos, but this one was far from normal. The more energetic a neutrino
> is the larger its cross-section is and thus the easier it is for matter to
> stop; the likelihood of a neutrino as colossally energetic as 2.2 *10^17
> electron volts making it all the way through the Earth without being
> absorbed is virtually zero.*
>
> *By a lucky chance the Mediterranean detector happens to be much more
> sensitive to neutrinos coming in in a horizontal direction then the south
> pole detector is, although when they were designing it I don't imagine the
> engineers thought that was an important feature. But it turned out to be
> very important because the record shattering neutrino came in at an angle
> only 0.6 degrees above the horizon, so the neutrino only needed to
> go through 91 miles of air and sea water, and not 8000 miles of rock.*
>

Thanks I wondered if that was a factor.

Also, I looked it up and apparently the Mediterranean detector is many
orders of magnitude larger than the other detectors I was aware of, so it
isn't surprising that it would detect it while the others missed it.

Jason


>
>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 29, 2026, 7:14 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for
>>> free without a subscription.
>>>
>>> Did Scientists Just Detect an Exploding Black Hole?
>>>
>>> An underwater observatory recently detected a startlingly energetic
>>> cosmic neutrino. One possible cause involves a phenomenon that so far
>>> exists only in theory.
>>>
>>>
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/science/astrophysics-neutrinos-black-holes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.W1A.qWMP.6I2De03QUY8j&smid=em-share
>>>
>>
>
>>
>>
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