Zi-Yan Yuwen

A lighthouse spins in dense fog. Its beam cuts through the gloom, but the fog itself remains invisible. That's roughly how astronomers search for dark matter: it doesn't emit light, yet it can affect the signals that reach us.

In the search for the nature of dark matter, one of the most intriguing hypotheses traces back to the first moments after the Big Bang. Back then, quantum fluctuations of the inflation field gave rise to clumps of matter that could collapse into primordial black holes.