We may finally be able to test one of Stephen Hawking's most far-out ideas

[Judi Lynn]

By Paul Sutter published about 16 hours ago

The James Webb Telescope should bring back much-needed data.



We may soon be able to test one of Stephen Hawking's most controversial theories, new research suggests.

In the 1970s, Hawking proposed that dark matter, the invisible substance that makes up most matter in the cosmos, may be made of black holes formed in the earliest moments of the Big Bang.

Now, three astronomers have developed a theory that explains not only the existence of dark matter, but also the appearance of the largest black holes in the universe.

"What I find personally super exciting about this idea is how it elegantly unifies the two really challenging problems that I work on — that of probing the nature of dark matter and the formation and growth of black holes — and resolves them in one fell swoop," study co-author Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale University, said in a statement. What's more, several new instruments — including the James Webb Space Telescope that just launched — could produce data needed to finally assess Hawking's famous notion.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/testable-primordial-black-holes-theory?utm_source=notification

[nycbos]

1. Cool

[Judi Lynn]

2. Hooray! Thank you, nycbos.

☀️ ⭐️ 🌏 💐