A different reason for the apparent weakness of the gravitational interaction is advanced, and its consequences for Hawking evaporation of a Schwarzschild black hole are investigated. Proceeding from some fundamental thermodynamic observations, a sim
ple analytical formulation predicts that evaporating black holes will undergo a type of phase transition resulting in variously long-lived quantized objects of reasonable sizes, with normal thermodynamic properties and inherent duality characteristics. Speculations on the implications for particle physics are explored, and predictions for possible experimental confirmation of the scenario at LHC are made.
