Black Hole Pinball: How Spin Creates Dark Matter ⚡ экспресс
Light passing by a black hole falls into a gravitational trap: its trajectory curves and the particle bounces along a nearly closed orbit, like a pinball. The longer this frantic dash, the more likely it is that jolts from magnetic fields transform the photon into an axion—an invisible particle that likely makes up dark matter. This possibility was predicted by Frank Wilczek.
If the high-energy light from active black holes dims more than expected, then some of it has converted into axions. Thus, cosmic pinball becomes a cheap laboratory for hunting dark matter, replacing ground-based experiments.
🎯 In a pinball machine, the ball can bounce around for several seconds; near the black hole M87*, light lingers for just a millisecond, but in that time it covers tens of thousands of kilometers—and that instant is enough to spawn an axion, which then passes unimpeded through an entire planet.