Astronomers have been debating a novel theory that suggests black holes may be the cause of our universe’s accelerated expansion. The first intriguing signs that it might be real could be found in a recent study.
Scientists may have discovered intriguing evidence linking black holes to dark energy, the enigmatic force propelling our universe’s rapid expansion.
About 70% of the universe is made up of dark energy, which is believed to have formed to propel the expansion of the universe 13.8 billion years ago following the Big Bang.
However, it’s still unclear exactly where the enigmatic power originated. Some astronomers have recently put out the controversial notion that dark energy may originate in the cores of massive black holes rather than being dispersed widely throughout space. However, others dismissed the idea as absurd.
According to a recent study, the first indications of a link between the two seemingly unconnected phenomena have been discovered: a match between the expanding mass of black holes and the rising density of dark energy as the universe became older. The findings were released by the researchers in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics on October 28.
“If you ever wonder, ‘Where in the later cosmos do we perceive gravity as powerful as it was at the beginning of the universe?’ Gregory Tarlé, a physics professor at the University of Michigan, and co-author of the paper, stated in a statement that the solution lies at the core of black holes. “It’s possible that what happened during inflation runs in reverse; the matter of a massive star becomes dark energy again during gravitational collapse — like a little Big Bang played in reverse.”
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) mounted on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter telescope in Arizona, which determines the monthly positions of millions of galaxies to study how the universe expanded up to the present day, was used by the researchers to look for hints that dark energy might be related to black holes. Because of this, astronomers can use the rate at which the universe expands to estimate the density of dark energy over the course of the universe’s existence.
The researchers came to an interesting conclusion by contrasting this proxy data for dark energy to black hole formation at various points in the universe’s history.
“The two phenomena were consistent with each other — as new black holes were made in the deaths of massive stars, the amount of dark energy in the universe increased in the right way,” said co-author Duncan Farrah, who is an associate professor of physics at the University of Hawaii. “This increases the likelihood that dark energy originates from black holes.
If the theory turns out to be correct, it might contribute to the resolution of an expanding cosmological puzzle. Astronomers have long noticed that, depending on one’s point of view, the cosmos seems to be expanding at varying rates. This phenomenon is known as the Hubble tension. While some measurements challenge our existing picture of the cosmos, others support it.
Even yet, the astronomers believe that a lot more observations—by DESI and other experiments—are required before any definitive conclusions can be drawn, despite the intriguing correlation.
“Fundamentally, whether black holes are dark energy, coupled to the universe they inhabit, has ceased to be just a theoretical question,” Tarlé stated. “This is an experimental question now.”