Physicists Discover Link Between Black Holes and Dark Energy

Scientists believe that black holes store a mysterious form of energy that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe, reports Phys.

Astrophysicists used the DESI instrument installed on the telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in the United States and found that black holes and the mysterious dark energy are inextricably linked.

Although this is only an assumption that still needs to be confirmed, it nevertheless brings scientists closer to uncovering the mystery of dark energy. The study was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

13.8 billion years ago, in the first moments after the Big Bang, a mysterious energy triggered the accelerated expansion of the universe. As a result, matter as we know it was created.

This energy is believed to have had the same characteristics as dark energy in the modern universe, which is responsible for the accelerated expansion of space. Although dark energy makes up about 70% of the universe, astrophysicists are not exactly sure what it is.

Scientists used DESI to look for evidence that dark energy could be stored inside black holes. To do this, they observed tens of millions of galaxies and how quickly they were moving away from each other. They also used this data to infer how the amount of dark energy changed over time.

Astrophysicists compared this data with how many black holes have formed after the death of massive stars throughout the history of the Universe.

It turned out that the amount of dark energy increased as new black holes appeared. Thus, scientists came to the conclusion that most likely black holes are the source of dark energy.

According to scientists, the same strong gravity in the modern Universe as in its beginning exists only in the center of black holes. Perhaps what happened in the first stage of the Universe’s expansion is happening in reverse. That is, during the death of massive stars, when they turn into black holes as a result of gravitational compression, the Big Bang occurs, but in reverse.

Astrophysicists say that if black holes store dark energy, they could merge and grow with the expanding universe, causing the cosmos to expand faster. It’s impossible to see this happening directly, but now there’s evidence that it’s happening, scientists say.

The new data supports the hypothesis about what dark energy is because its increase over time is consistent with how the number and mass of black holes have also increased.