Physicists are still hunting for primordial black holes to solve the dark matter problem

For a while now, physicists have been searching for the primitive black holesUFOs could have formed in the early universe and produced a whole host of cosmic tricks.

Using a giant telescope measuring 8.2 meters (27 feet) wide, physicists from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Kavli Institute for Physics and Mathematics of the Universe in Japan are looking for signs of these things. Their discovery may indicate that our universe was spawning tiny universes when it was young.

What they hope to see won’t be as egregious as peek at alternative facts. But if their new models are correct, and they are patient enough, they may find a primordial black hole (PBH) floating between us and a nearby galaxy.

The discovery of such a thing has the potential to fill many gaps in our knowledge of a whole host of phenomena, of nature Dark matter To distribute heavy items throughout the space.

Most impressive, it could also be a clue to whether our universe is just one of many in the branching family tree of the multiverse that once arose as its children during cosmic inflation – although much debate continues on the latter point.

Primordial black holes have a lot in common with traditional black holes that were formed as a result of the collapse of stars. Both are intense concentrations of matter that shorten the surrounding spacetime into a singularity, for example.

Singularities are themselves alien beings, and are made up of points where the physics of jagging space is General Relativity Meet the most accurate measures of quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, these two major theories do not agree on some crucial details of reality, so no one is quite sure what the uniqueness is.

Even the warp surrounding space and time wreaks havoc on our intuition, leaving room for speculation that every black hole is It is a bundle of a completely separate universe.

It is not as far fetched as it sounds. over there Lots of good reasons To think Once a declining observer crosses the event horizon – the line of no return – space and time become indistinguishable from a universe as expanding as ours.

This means that every time a star collapses to form a uniqueness, our being a parent becomes a parent. Still Tove!

The big structural binaries differ in that they would have appeared again when the universe was roughly two years old, which is when radiation (and not much) dominated.

Given enough thrust in any one area, a sea of ​​focused light can flip over the edge in a unique shape. And because the conditions were really harsh, the amount of mass required would be much less than required for even the smallest stellar black holes.

Primordial black holes are interesting ideas that are in desperate need of solid evidence. Unfortunately, the smaller holes had long since evaporated into a puff Hawking radiation. Anything big enough we definitely notice now.

But there are possibilities that researchers haven’t ruled out yet.

In this new paradigm, the team returned to a theory whereby quantum effects in empty space could create something out of a vacuum bubble, providing a seed for collapse.

Their mathematics shows that these conditions during a period of rapid inflation could reasonably create primitive black holes for a group of lumps. Interestingly, some of them matched what we’d been expecting from dark matter.

It’s an old idea that’s been thrown in for a while, to the point where it seems increasingly unlikely as a candidate. If a group of these tiny black holes behave like dark matter, they would likely be responsible only for a Proportion of it.

Just to add more to suspicion, the method that the team wants to use to research these things has been tried before.

Last year, researchers used the Hyper Suprime-Cam from the Subaru telescope to collect roughly 200 snapshots of our neighboring galaxy Andromeda over a seven-hour period, just to see if it could float near the mass of a small moon our own moon.

Aside from the single word “maybe”, the experience didn’t find anything very exciting.

But with this new model, researchers argue if we waited a little longer – like about 88 hours – we might be lucky this time. Or at least rule out their expectations.

Identifying a primitive black hole of this size would provide cosmologists with an object that could help explain a host of baffling problems. It may not only contribute to our understanding of dark matter, but it may contribute to collisions with neutron stars May explain Fast radio bursts.

We may have already seen shattering between these lightweight black holes in a sign of a gravitational wave event that contains all the hallmarks of neutron star fusion. Without the flash.

As to whether these ancient black holes really harbor the children of our universe, we need some revolutionary physics to confirm it. But the types of black holes resulting in this scenario will be exactly what we are looking for.

Fingers crossed via Hyper Suprime-Cam might be contributing a little something to the family album.

This research was published in Physical review letters.