Before Earth, Solar System and of everything that is in the observable universe, the Big Bang began an apparently continuous expansion, which has been occurring for approximately 13.8 billion years. According to a group of scientists, this expansion could be caused by effects of black holes.
In a study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, researchers from the University of Michigan and five other institutions suggest that dark energy it is, in a specific way, connected with black holes.
For now, the scientific community does not know what exactly dark energy is, a force so mysterious and powerful that it makes up more than half of everything in the universe. However, they believe it is directly linked to the expansion of the cosmos.
Currently, science understands that only 5% of the universe is made up of observable matter, while 27% and 68% correspond to and dark energy, respectively.
“If you ask yourself ‘where in the later universe do we see gravity as strong as it was in the early universe?’, the answerta is at the center of black holes,” said physics professor and study co-author Gregory Tarlé, in an official statement.
Black holes and expansion of the universe
Based on data collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (Desi), at the Mayall telescope in the United States, researchers claim to have foundo evidence that if they contain dark energy, they can grow as the universe expands.
Consequently, this would generate more dark energy, a reaction that would be responsible for the ever-expanding universe.
Evidence suggests that the density of dark energy is continually increasing. In the paper, scientists describe that this reaction may be connected to the way in which the number and mass of black holes has also increased over time.
With Desi, the team used information from tens of millions of black holes and made comparisons with data on how many black holes have formed throughout the history of the cosmos. The article points out that the increase in black holes may be linked to the expansion of the universe.
According to co-author and physics professor at the University of Hawaii, Duncan Farrah, the phenomenon of increasing the amount of dark energy was consistent in both data. In other words, a result that “makes it more plausible that black holes are the source of dark energy”.
This is not the first time that scholars on the subject have made these comparisons; There are other articles that investigate the link between dark energy and black holes.
The main difference in the new study is that research has established this connection since the time black holes formed. Another difference is that they studied younger black holes, compared to the oldest ones investigated in previous research.
Either way, the connection has not been confirmed.
Scientists still need many more observations and case studies to understand whether black holes really have a relationship with dark energy and, consequently, with the expansion of the universe.
