Dark matter may result from eternal inflation: regions that never stopped inflating turned into primordial black holes. Imagine foam where some bubbles don’t pop but become invisible heavy clumps. Could the invisible stuff binding galaxies be a fossil of the endless beginning?
The universe began with the Big Bang and subsequent inflation—a rapid expansion. Alan Guth suggested that in some regions this growth never stopped. They remained ‘underbaked’ pockets of eternal expansion forever. In our space, such regions manifested as primordial black holes—clumps of unimaginable density. Their collective mass is dark matter—the invisible scaffolding holding galaxies together.
The process resembled dough rising: while most of it smoothed into a uniform loaf, separate bubbles stayed inside, never merging with the crumb. These inclusions are the black holes. Some are smaller than an atom yet weigh as much as a mountain. Their birth shook the very fabric of reality, generating a faint but pervasive hum—gravitational waves. This echo of the Big Bang can still be caught by sensitive detectors of the future.
🎯 A single primordial black hole can be smaller than an atom but weigh as much as a mountain.