Science moves closer to an answer on the mystery of dark matter

Dark matter is an unseen force that holds the universe together
Scientists have been searching for dark matter for decades
A new paper suggests an answer involving primordial black holes

Updated: Jun 17, 2024 / 04:06 PM CDT

This illustration provided by the European Southern Observatory in February 2024, depicts the record-breaking quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. The supermassive black hole, seen here pulling in surrounding matter, has a mass 17 billion times that of the Sun and is growing in mass by the equivalent of another Sun per day, making it the fastest-growing black hole ever known. (M. Kornmesser/ESO via AP)

(NewsNation) — For years, scientists have attempted to determine the mystery of missing matter in the universe and a new paper offers a possible link to exotic black holes.

Dark matter is an issue that has confounded science since the term was coined in the 1930s, a reference to unseen matter that holds the universe together and causes it to behave the way it does.

Astronomers confirmed the existence of dark matter in the 1970s, when they observed stars orbiting at the edges of spiral galaxies. The stars were moving too fast to be explained by the visible matter in those galaxies, suggesting unseen matter was responsible for holding the galaxy together.

Scientists have tried and failed to observe dark matter directly and have even built devices to find it. Multiple theories have been offered to explain it, including Stephen Hawking’s theory that black holes could be hiding dark matter from detection.

A new paper suggests that the theory could be correct. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology examined primordial black holes and, in the process, may have discovered a new type of black hole as well.

Nearly every galaxy has a black hole in the center, and the new research shows that primordial black holes emerged within the first quintillionth of a second of the Big Bang much earlier than particles like protons and neutrons.

While generally thought of as fundamental particles, because we can’t break them apart, protons and neutrons are actually made up of even smaller particles called quarks and gluons. That means primordial black holes could have absorbed those smaller particles. But there aren’t enough of those black holes to account for the dark matter needed to hold the universe together.

The study suggests that during the formation of primordial black holes, another, minuscule type of black hole also formed. Those black holes would pack the mass of a rhino into a volume less than that of a proton. But those tiny black holes would have evaporated by now but may have left observable signatures behind.

For scientists searching for dark matter, the hypothesis could help try to identify it, even if primordial black holes make up only a fraction of dark matter in the universe, taking one more step toward understanding the unknown.