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Back in the last century, Vera Rubin discovered that stars on the outskirts of galaxies rotate too fast, as if held by some invisible substance. Since then, dark matter has remained a puzzle. Usually, its origin is linked to new particles or forces. But a new study points to a simpler source — the geometry of space itself.

Right after the Big Bang, the universe underwent inflation — a sudden expansion that physicist Alan Guth described theoretically. When inflation ended, the curvature of space changed abruptly. This shift acted on the dark matter field like a sudden dip in the road that shifts the load in a truck bed. The field briefly lost stability and ejected a flood of particles from the vacuum. Although called tachyonic instability, it doesn't mean faster-than-light motion — it's a sign of losing equilibrium, followed by the birth of matter.

Modeling confirms that this purely gravitational mechanism yields exactly the amount of dark matter that astronomers observe. Moreover, scientists derived a simple formula to calculate its density without supercomputers. Perhaps the key to the mystery lies not in the depths of the microworld, but in the grand bends of the cosmos.