IN THE early days – and we’re speaking very early, not lengthy after the massive bang – the universe may need been suffering from unusual stellar monsters. Wide sufficient to engulf our complete photo voltaic system, these stars can be powered not by nuclear fusion, like a common star, however as an alternative by dark matter: particularly, particles of this mysterious stuff self-annihilating to gas so-called “dark stars”.
That is the thought, at the least. But when Katherine Freese, a theoretical astrophysicist on the University of Texas at Austin, first offered it at a convention in 2007, it didn’t go down significantly effectively. “I overheard some graduate students calling us crackpots,” she says.
Regardless, the idea of dark stars has caught with Freese. Over the previous 16 years, she and her colleagues have refined their understanding of those tantalising hypothetical objects. The drawback was, discovering proof for them all the time appeared out of attain.
Until not too long ago, that’s, as a result of Freese and her colleagues have reported a potential sighting: uncommon galaxies seen by a new telescope. “Maybe some of these objects aren’t really galaxies at all, but actually singular stars – dark stars,” says staff member Jillian Paulin, then at Colgate University in New York.
Echoes of doubt nonetheless sound amongst different astronomers. “It’s a very controversial idea,” says Cosmin Ilie, additionally at Colgate University, who led the staff. But in the event that they do exist, dark stars wouldn’t solely be proof for a particular type of dark matter. They could additionally assist crack one of many greatest issues in cosmology – the mysterious origins of the supermassive black holes that drive galactic evolution.
Our universe is awash with dark …