The early universe had far fewer miniatures. Black Hole New research suggests this phenomenon is more common than previously thought, making the origin of the universe’s missing matter an even bigger mystery.
Compact, or primordial, black holes (PBHs) are black holes that are thought to have formed in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Leading theories suggest that these dime-sized singularities suddenly emerged from a region of thick, hot gas that was rapidly collapsing.
Pockets of infinitely dense space-time are how many physicists explain the universe’s dark matter, a mysterious entity that is completely invisible yet makes the universe much heavier than visible matter can explain.
But despite the popularity of this hypothesis, there is one big problem: primordial black holes have never been directly observed. Now, a new study offers a possible explanation for why primordial black holes never formed, making cosmology’s dark matter problem the subject of even wider speculation.
The modern universe may have formed with far fewer primordial black holes than previous models predicted, according to a study published May 29 in the journal Nature. Physics Review Letter.
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“Many researchers [primordial black holes] “It’s a strong candidate for dark matter, but we need a sufficient number of them to satisfy the theory,” the lead author said. Jason ChristianoGraduate student in Theoretical Physics at the University of Tokyo, It said in a statement“They are interesting for other reasons too. Since the recent revolution in gravitational wave astronomy, binary black hole mergers have been discovered, which could explain the large numbers of PBHs. However, despite these strong reasons for predicting their abundance, we have never seen them directly, and now we have a model that explains why that is the case.”
There’s a hole in the photo
The universe began 13.8 billion years ago. big bangThe young universe explodes outward by an invisible force. Dark Energy.
As the universe grew, ordinary matter that interacts with light solidified around a chunk of invisible matter. Dark matter The first galaxies were formed and were connected to each other by a vast cosmic web.Currently, cosmologists believe that ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy make up about 5%, 25%, and 70% of the universe’s composition, respectively.
At first, the universe was an opaque mass of plasma through which light could not pass without being trapped by the electromagnetic fields generated by moving electric charges. But after 380,000 years of cooling and expanding, the plasma eventually recombined into neutral matter, emitting microwave static that became the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the universe’s first light.
Cosmologists have been searching for these early black holes by studying the first nascent pictures of the universe, but so far they have remained elusive.
Some physicists think that the vast numbers of primordial black holes needed to explain dark matter may not yet be discovered because we simply haven’t learned how to detect them yet.
But by applying a model to the problem built on an advanced form of quantum mechanics called quantum field theory, the researchers in the new study came to a different conclusion: primordial black holes are undetectable because most don’t exist.
Primordial black holes are thought to have arisen from the collapse of short but intense gravitational waves that extend throughout the universe. By applying their model to these gravitational waves, the researchers found that it takes a much smaller number of gravitational waves to couple together to form large structures throughout the universe than other theories predict. And the fewer gravitational waves needed to recreate this picture, the fewer primordial black holes there are.
“It is widely believed that primordial black holes form through the collapse of short but intense wavelengths in the early universe,” Cristiano says, “but our study suggests that if PBHs are good candidates for dark matter and gravitational wave events, there should be far fewer of them than necessary.”
To support their theory, the researchers say future ultra-sensitive gravitational wave detectors, e.g. Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) ProjectIt is scheduled to be launched into space on an Ariane 3 rocket in 2035.
