A Scenario for Strong Gravity without Extra Dimensions

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. A simple analytical formulation predicts that evaporating black holes will undergo a type of phase transition resulting in variously long-lived objects of reasonable sizes, with normal thermodynamic properties and inherent duality characteristics. Speculations on the implications for particle physics and for some recently-advanced new paradigms are explored.