Black holes ‘contain dark energy that drives expansion of universe’



International experts suggest that the dark energy produced when stars collide comes from black holes.

Supermassive black holes are the worst thing ever, but some scientists think the giant objects discovered at the center of many galaxies may be what's causing the universe to expand.

An multinational team that examined the development rates of black holes in many galaxies made the startling claim. They come to the conclusion that black holes with "dark energy" cores, the unknown force driving the universe's accelerated expansion, might account for the observed distribution of masses.

Scientists propose that dark energy is formed and persists inside black holes, which arise as a result of the crushing pressures of collapsing stars, as opposed to being spread out over spacetime as many physicists have thought.

Duncan Farah, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, stated: "We argue that black holes are the source for dark energy." As ordinary matter is crushed during the demise and collapse of massive stars, dark energy is created.

Independent specialists questioned the assertion, with one stating that while the theory merited investigation, it was still too early to draw a connection between black holes and dark energy. If this assertion is to last more than a few months, a variety of counterarguments and facts must be understood, according to Vitor Cardoso, a professor of physics at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen.

As observations of far-off stars showed that the universe was expanding faster than previously thought, scientists initially put up the idea of dark energy in the late 1990s. Yet, the discovery presented a conundrum for astronomers: given that gravity ought to be slowing the expansion, what may be accelerating it?

Researchers proposed dark energy, an enigmatic force that opposes gravity, as a stand-in for a solution. Dark energy essentially fits the "cosmological constant" that Einstein proposed in 1917. In order to prevent the cosmos from collapsing, Einstein added it to general relativity as a repair, but later abandoned it, calling it his "biggest folly."

In the most recent study, researchers compared black hole masses in massive but inactive galaxies, where no new stars are created, with black hole masses in young galaxies, where stars are actively developing. Black holes can expand by ingesting neighboring stars and other matter in early galaxies, but in older galaxies, there isn't much left for them to suck in.

The researchers discovered that the black holes in sleeping galaxies were seven to twenty times more massive than anticipated, a discovery that suggests there is another mechanism at work when it comes to the black holes' growth.

The findings, according to the researchers, might be explained if black holes expand with the cosmos, they claim in two publications that were published in The Astrophysical Journal and The Astrophysical Journal Letters. According to the authors, black holes containing dark energy at their centers may exhibit this behavior.

According to Chris Pearson, co-author of the paper and Astronomy Group Leader at STFC RAL Space in Oxfordshire, "the significance of this work is that it has taken the hypotheses about black holes with dark energy cores and related them for the first time to concrete measurements of the cosmos." The mass of these black holes is anticipated to increase as the universe grows.

If the researchers are right, they will have unlocked the mystery surrounding one of the universe's most enigmatic forces' beginnings, if not its nature. But much more effort must be done before it can become popular. How black holes can draw everything surrounding them towards them while still tearing the cosmos apart is one of many unanswered issues.

In regard to the findings, Cardoso noted, "There are probably more commonplace reasons." "This paper analyzes a fairly simplistic relationship between black hole mass and universe expansion rate... and unsupported by core values.

The results of this study might potentially simply state, "Black holes evolve differently now than they did billions of years ago," the author continued. "It is far, far too early to suppose that black holes are connected to dark energy in any manner."

Farrah concurs that more has to be done. We haven't demonstrated anything here, for sure, he added. It will require a lot more study to validate or disprove this hypothesis, but the data warrants more examination and further testing.

"Given the mysterious nature of dark energy, which has been considered in various guises for over a century, it is healthy to consider new ideas like this, and to think how they can be refuted," said Ofer Lahav, professor of astronomy at University College London and participant in galaxy surveys of dark energy.