Do Primordial Black Holes Resolve Dark Matter Mystery?

Dark matter is matter that doesn’t interact with light or interacts at an extremely weak level.

The quantity of dark matter that exists and its locations in the universe are not mysteries.

Dark matter’s composition is a mystery that has stymied astronomers and physicists for 50 years.

Leading candidates for dark matter’s composition are axions and sterile neutrinos, but neither of these particles has been detected.

Physicists Elba Alonso-Monsalve and David Kaiser propose that primordial black holes (PBHs) could make up all or a large fraction of dark matter if they formed prior to a tenth of a quadrillionth of a second after the cosmic creation event.

These PBHs would take two forms: (1) atom-sized bodies with masses equal to that of the Martian moons; (2) bodies one 10,000th the diameter of a proton with masses equal to one ton.

Observable tests for these PBHs include the degree to which they would (1) shift the balance between protons and neutrons, (2) cause ripples in the cosmic spacetime fabric, and (3) affect the amount of helium produced during the universe’s first 3 minutes.

Do Primordial Black Holes Resolve Dark Matter Mystery? | News of the Day