What role do Black Holes play in the creation or recycling of the Universe?
As far as we know, black holes had nothing to do with the creation of the universe in the Big Bang. Some theorists suggest that the Big Bang resulted from an unstable singularity, such as might be found at the center of a black hole, but this is unverifiable. However, it does appear that black holes have had a critical role in the evolution of the universe, specifically in terms of galaxy formation. Their gravity attracts dust and gas, which becomes increasingly dense and more likely to collapse into stars and planets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_formation_and_evolution In terms of recycling of matter in the universe, black holes have the opposite effect. Infalling matter is sequestered in black holes for a very, very long time (about 2 x 10^70 years for a 10-solar-mass black hole) and is only emitted in the form of Hawking radiation, which consists of elementary particles as opposed to baryonic matter.
