An intriguing hypothesis is gaining ground among scientists: The universe may be full of black holes the size of an atom, but with the mass of an asteroid the size of a city.
Created just a second after the Big Bang, these hypothetical black holes could crash into the solar system every few years, traveling at more than a hundred times the speed of a bullet.
Some even argue that the massive eruption that flattened the Siberian forest in 1908 may have been the result of one of these black holes impacting Earth.
Now, researchers say they have found a way to test whether these cosmic bullets really exist.
In a study published Tuesday in the journal Physical Review D, MIT physicists say the existence of a supermassive black hole accelerating through the center of the planets can be detected by the gravitational pull it exerted on Earth and other planets, which could change their cycle. paths no more than a few feet.
The possibility of proving the existence of black holes is exciting among some astronomers because it could help them explain a mystery that has taunted them for almost a century: the nature and composition of dark matter.
In the 1930s, astronomers began to notice anomalies in the way galaxies move. Lurking in the dark and empty space of interstellar space, something was generating an enormous gravitational force pulling the galaxies together – yet it seemed to refuse to interact and any light or energy.
Scientists found this strange attraction of gravity everywhere. To account for it, they thought it was caused by invisible mass, or dark matter, which makes up about 85% of all matter in the universe.
Some physicists have suggested that dark matter may be composed of undiscovered rare particles. Others, like researchers at MIT, think that dark matter is ordinary matter that is too difficult to detect. And black holes, researchers say, are a prime example of the properties of dark matter.
“It’s interesting that the most obvious response is, ‘They’re tiny black holes that split up a second after the Big Bang,'” said David Kaiser, a physics professor at MIT and an author on the study.
“It is not inventing new types of things that have not been seen before. It is not changing the laws of gravity,” he said.
However, black holes are not the only culprits and there is still much controversy in the field.
Physicists, in their quest to find dark matter, have looked for new rare particles, as well as common objects that may have been overlooked—such as black holes of various sizes. So far, they have come up empty.
Until now, astronomers haven’t been sure how to look for supermassive black holes – too small for their gravity to bend starlight.
The MIT researchers concluded, for example, that these tiny black holes could have formed pockets of dense matter that collapsed immediately after the Big Bang.
The researchers simulated what would happen if one of these primordial black holes made a flyby in Jupiter’s orbit. They found that the orbits of Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury can deviate from their original path by about 3 meters in a decade.
The researchers said they can expect to see a black hole somewhere between once a year and every hundred – depending on the number and density of black holes.
To put their minds at ease, the researchers also calculated the probability that one of these black holes would hit the Earth and found that it would happen only once in a billion years.
However, a black hole would not lead to the apocalypse.
Instead, it would pass directly over Earth, leaving the planet empty.
Scientists in the 1970s even showed that the black hole’s effect would look remarkably similar to the glow and explosion in Russia 116 years ago that scientists believed to be caused by a small asteroid or comet. (However, a black hole would leave an “exit wound.”)
Determining the existence of supermassive black holes will require very precise measurements of where the planets are and models of where they should be. Fortunately, scientists have the tools to achieve this.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at La Cañada Flintridge, for example, made a detailed model of the solar system which uses Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity to calculate the expected orbits of the planets and records hundreds of asteroids in stunning detail. (They even calculated how Earth’s ocean currents affect the moon’s cycle.)
NASA scientists have also developed a very accurate method to determine the distance between Earth and Mars. By measuring the time it takes for radio signals to travel from Earth to a spacecraft orbiting Mars, or to land on it, scientists can measure the distance to the red planet. two meters from the Earth.
“It’s only been a few decades that we’ve had that kind of accuracy,” Kaiser said. “From a series of space programs, we can worry about whether Mars is about 50 centimeters away from where we expect it to be.”
To convince the skeptics, scientists would also have to show that the motion was not caused by a passing asteroid.
The researchers say that the speed of the black hole – which would be traveling at more than twice the speed of anything in our solar system – would cause a pulsation of distinctly distinct from the cycles of the planets.
And astronomers know how to see objects with the same mass as hypothetical black holes. In 2017, researchers discovered the first object from another star to enter our solar system, which had much less mass than a microscopic black hole.
Whether or not they see a passing black hole, scientists say it will advance people’s understanding of dark matter.
“Of course I would love to find dark matter in the planetary system,” said Benjamin Lehmann, an MIT postdoctoral fellow and study author. However, “if this kind of observation is what helps us to close this window and say that dark matter is not in the form of old black holes, that is important information.”
By proposing a method to test just this possibility, “they did … exactly what we should be doing in dark matter research,” said Vera Gluscevic, a professor of cosmology at USC who was not involved in the study. “We must not leave any stone unturned.”
Although scientists plan to keep updating the planetary models and analyzing historical observations from the past few decades for signs of black holes, the big test will be to watch and wait. only.
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