The expanding universe can be imagined as a dance floor that relentlessly stretches. Monopoles and anti-monopoles are like dancers looking for a partner to vanish in an embrace. It was once thought that over time, all pairs find each other and the hall empties. But a new computer model showed that when the floor becomes too spacious, encounters become rarer, and new singles take the stage — the number of monopoles slowly crawls upward. These knot-like particles, predicted by Gerard ’t Hooft, were born right after the Big Bang, during the era of rapid inflation (an idea by Alan Guth).

This slow growth changes the scenario. If there are more monopoles, they could have become part of dark matter, the invisible substance that gathers galaxies, and link up with dark photons from the hidden sector. Their pull could have spawned primordial black holes, left ripples in gravitational waves, and a trace in the cosmic microwave background. The most unexpected twist: whereas it was once thought that only a handful would survive, now it turns out there could be thousands, and they are capable of bending starlight, betraying themselves to telescopes.