Strange 'spacetime crystals' could give birth to tiny black holes

When we think about a black hole, we probably picture some vast cosmic titan, greedily consuming any matter unfortunate enough to fall within its gravitational influence. Thinking deeper, we probably imagine this ravenous cosmic beast forming from the explosive collapse of the core of a massive star. Maybe we even picture a supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy, formed from a multitude of mergers between smaller black holes and reaching masses millions or even billions of times that …