Extra: Did black holes create dark matter?

We recently got an email in from a listener to the show about a topic they thought we should cover, and we’d encourage you to get in touch too if there is something you’d like to learn more about – science@newstalk.com. The email was from Dr John Regan, the Royal Society - SFI University Research Fellow in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Maynooth University.

He said: “One of the postdocs in my group recently published a paper on Primordial Black Holes left over from the Big Bang being possible ‘seeds’ for super massive black holes. The JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) has, over the last two-three years, been discovering way more and way more massive black holes than was expected.

In short, the results from the very early Universe being returned from JWST are both puzzling and electrifying. Primordial black holes may explain some of these results (as well as possibly being a candidate for dark matter)! I think this would be a very cool topic for Futureproof. I would be delighted to discuss these results and perhaps also provide some context to what JWST is seeing and why it is so exciting.”

Dr John joins us on the show.