by Lavinia Kumar
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| The early Universe was a strange place. Early in its history—in the first quintillionth of a second—the entire cosmos was nothing more than a stunningly hot plasma. And, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this soup of quarks and gluons was accompanied by the formation of weird little primordial black holes (PHBs). It’s entirely possible that these long-vanished PHBs could have been the root of dark matter. MIT’s David Kaiser and graduate student Elba Alonso-Monsalve suggest that such early super-charged black holes were very likely a new state of matter that we don’t see in the modern cosmos. “Even though these short-lived, exotic creatures are not around today, they could have affected cosmic history in ways that could show up in subtle signals today,” Kaiser said. “Within the idea that all dark matter could be accounted for by black holes, this gives us new things to look for.” That means a new way to search for the origins of dark matter. (Graphic: Depiction of a primordial black hole forming amid a sea of hot, color-charged quarks and gluons, a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang.) —Universe Today, June 17, 2024 |
The British gentry are old hands at dark matter,
invisible behind those large gates,
lengthy curved lanes lined by trees
that lead to rumors of manors,
over-trimmed gardens, and shootable
deer, duck, and pheasant.
A lesser Brit, Stephen Hawking, created
a jigsaw of calculations, found
what he thought must be the dark matter
in those hidden places—hiding thirty percent
of universe’s riches in those exotic
out-of-the-way spaces.
But now, two scientists agree with him,
have found the hidden more interesting
than plebian places, like village houses,
like quarks glued together by gluons.
And, as is proper for dukes, princes, and lords,
each dark piece is far away from another,
with much space between.
But, alas, other nosy scientists, stars
in our universe, are now spying on this matter,
to find why, how, such riches were achieved.
And who wouldn’t? Will it lead to equality?
Lavinia Kumar’s latest book is a reprinting of her short book Beauty. Salon. Art.
