The Answer To Dark Matter Mystery Could Be A Sun From A Black Hole

It's been stated that anything can happen in an infinite cosmos. Although our world may not be limitless, there are undoubtedly strange things happening in the universe. It turns out that a black hole located directly in the center of a star doesn't even rank very highly in terms of unbelievable.

Indeed, according to Earl Bellinger, an assistant professor at Yale University who oversaw a recent investigation into the possibility of the scenario, "stars harboring a black hole at their center can live surprisingly long." "We might not even be aware that our sun contains a black hole at its center that is as massive as the planet Mercury."

Hold on, what?

We are aware that it sounds improbable, as black holes are essentially defined by their capacity to eat everything that approaches them too closely. We are all familiar with the outcome of inserting a black hole into an astronomical body from 2009's Star Trek; spoiler alert: the body doesn't fare well.

However, Bellinger and his associates claim that it wouldn't simply work—it may also solve one of the cosmos's most vexing mysteries: where in the universe has all the dark matter been hiding?

Bellinger and colleagues state in their report that "the dark matter problem has now become serious." "The majority of the matter in the universe is invisible, according to numerous lines of evidence. However, after almost a century of study, the cause of this issue is still unknown, and strong evidence for a remedy has not surfaced.

However, one theory has emerged time and time again since the 1970s: primordial black holes. These babies, which were first theorized back in 1966, have never been shown to exist, yet if they did, the theory suggests that they did so in the first few microseconds following the Big Bang, when the universe was still merely a dense, thick mash of particle

Why does it matter if there are still these ancient cosmic quicksands? It is suggested that they may serve as the universe's dark matter if there were a sufficient number of them, produced at the appropriate time and circling the appropriate sizes.

Of course, there is a problem with this theory: compared to dark matter, there is now much less evidence of the existence of primordial black holes. The implications of this undoubtedly alluring concept would remain unclear absent some sort of hitherto undisclosed breakthrough.

Fortunately, Bellinger and his associates had just that epiphany. What if we just went ahead and did it in all that, they suggested?

The mental exercise

Selma de Mink, one of the co-authors of the research and director of the stellar department at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, stated that "scientist[s] sometimes ask crazy questions to learn more." "Even though the existence of such primordial black holes is unknown, we can still conduct an intriguing thought experiment."

What would happen, then, if we were to suppose that these microscopic primordial black holes make up dark matter? The initial realization made by the scientists was that there would be significantly more of them than previously believed. According to the report, they "would be far more numerous and far more densely spaced than stars," boosting the prospect that stars or star-forming clouds would grab them.

The next course of events would depend on the size of the primordial black hole; a black hole that was only a few atoms in size, for example, would not have any effect at all, even if it were situated exactly in the center of a star. If so, "it might take longer than the universe's lifetime to but, a black hole the size of an asteroid or a small moon would grow rapidly; but, since we're discussing astronomical timescales, "rapidly" still refers to "hundreds of millions of years."

The end product would be virtually identical to a typical star, but with three key differences: According to Illinois State University theoretical physicist and research co-author Matt Caplan, "it will become a black hole-powered object rather than a fusion-powered object," Science reported.

Naturally, this raises another concern right away: how would we ever be able to tell the difference if these "Hawking stars," as the team has named them, are so much like the usual kind?

The sound of nothingness

According to a Max Planck Society statement on the work, "the main difference between such a Hawking star and a normal star would be near the core, which would become convective due to the accretion onto the black hole."

Nonetheless, it can be discovered through the relatively recent discipline of asteroseismology, in which scientists examine a star's innards through acoustic vibrations.

If that doesn't work, the scientists may explore the sky for odd red giants—those that are cooler than they should be. The fascinating thing is that this low temperature could indicate that there is a concealed black hole rather than a typical stellar core at the center of the star.

Bellinger's next task is to secure funds search those so-called "red stragglers" and see if any of them indeed exhibit characteristics of a black hole core. The team states, "We aim to perform an in-depth asteroseismic characterization of stars powered by [primordial black holes]." These objects might be found through the CoRoT, Kepler, and TESS mission data archives if they have a distinctive signature.

According to Caplan, "There are good reasons to think that ultra-faint dwarf galaxies and globular clusters would have a high density of Hawking stars."

Thus, Hawking stars may be used to evaluate the existence of primordial black holes as well as their potential function as dark matter.