Astrophysicists now have a new and quite a fascinating theory on the composition of the so-called dark matter, which is thought to be the main constituent of the entire universe, yet unseen to our eyes. The amount of dark matter greatly exceeds the regular matter by a ratio five to one, and still nobody has been able to create a solid explanation of what it is, or at least how it was formed.
Now, a team of Japanese scientists in their publication in Physical Review Letters have presented an entirely new concept which substantially differs from all existing ideas aimed at possible explanation of the physics behind dark matter.
The research team postulates that dark matter could be composed of a multitude of black holes weighing less than our Moon. For these astronomical objects, this magnitude in size is quite small, because typical black holes reach several solar masses.
Scientists also presented a possible explanation of how these black holes could have been formed in the first moments of the universe’s existence. Even though this particular thesis is not entirely new, the authors of this paper devised a radical hypothesis stating that primordial black holes (PBHs) are fragments a multiverse that was created through the same Big Bang, where one of the resulting fluctuations also let to formation of our universe.
And, probably the most interesting part says, that all those ‘small’ universes that form our multiverse could look as small black holes to the observer located outside, or, more specifically, to us. The research paper also presents mathematical model used to substantiate this idea and explaining that the number of created PBHs can be quite large, but realistic.
So, how do we spot these primordial black holes? Its the question for the future, because size of these objects is no larger than width of a human hair. Although, modern telescopes already could be able to detect black holes that small through gravitational lensing.
Source: IFLScience
