Slow Cooling Gives Birth to Black Holes ✦
Scientists have found a way for black holes to form in the early universe, even though this path was thought to be shut. It all comes down to a very slow reheating after a cosmic 'freeze': imagine a snowball on a slope, lingering in the cold, eventually transforming into an avalanche. Could this mechanism explain the mysterious dark matter?
The infant Universe was like hot gelatin—smooth and fluid. Then a transformation occurred, like setting, and if the cooling was slow, lumps denser than their surroundings grew in the cosmic jelly. They collapsed into tiny black holes with the mass of an asteroid. The idea of such primordial holes was proposed by Stephen Hawking. Previously, it was thought that the necessary clumps didn't have time to form, but computer simulations accounting for slow cooling showed the opposite: weak inhomogeneities grow and collapse into holes. These invisible objects could be the dark matter that Vera Rubin sought. They don't shine and barely interact with ordinary matter. When these holes collide, they generate gravitational waves—ripples in space, picked up by instruments that Kip Thorne worked on. Perhaps a dark photon is involved, governing the cooling rate. Thus, one scenario ties together the mysteries of dark matter and the trembling of the cosmos.
🎯 By some estimates, millions of these mini-holes zip through our planet every second, leaving only a barely noticeable trace of heat.