Paul M. Sutter
Paul Sutter is a research professor in astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University and a guest researcher at the Flatiron Institute in New York City. He is also the author of two books: Your Place in the Universe and How to Die in Space.
Dark matter – the mysterious, invisible substance that exerts gravity but doesn’t interact with light – might be made of tiny black holes permeating the universe. And according to a new theory, those black holes might have been made from Fermi balls, quantum ‘bags’ of subatomic particles known as fermions that got smooshed together in dense pockets during the universe’s infancy.
This theory could explain why dark matter came to dominate the universe. Scientists Ke-Pan Xie and collaborator Kiyoharu Kawana, from the Center for Theoretical Physics at Seoul National University in South Korea have devised a new scenario to explain how dark matter came to dominate the universe: in the midst of an incredible transformation when the cosmos was less than a second old, a new kind of particle got trapped, collapsing to such a small point that they transformed into black holes. Those black holes then flooded the universe, providing the heft required to explain dark matter.
This story is from the Issue 126 edition of All About Space.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the Issue 126 edition of All About Space.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
"We knew that this would be a historic comet"
Astronomer David Levy was immortalised for his co-discovery of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 – its impact with Jupiter 29 years ago held the world in awe
CELESTRON STARSENSE EXPLORER DX 102AZ
Innovative technology provides the simplest and quickest solution yet to finding objects to observe, and this instrument will be very popular with beginners
MOON TOUR - COPERNICUS
Get up close to the ‘Monarch of the Moon’
A HUNGRY BLACK HOLE 'SWITCHES ON' AS ASTRONOMERS WATCH IN SURPRISE
J221951 is one of the most extreme examples yet
MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE - WHY DOES JUPITER CHANGE COLOUR?
For years, scientists have tried to work out why Jupiter’s bands frequently move and change colour. Now they believe they’ve found the answer
MARS HELICOPTER PHONES HOME AFTER A 63-DAY SILENCE
Rugged terrain had kept Ingenuity from communicating with its robotic partner, the Perseverance rover
SIX OF THE BEST SPACE PRANKS
It turns out that the sky isn’t the limit when it comes to a good old-fashioned practical joke
CLIMATES CHANGE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Alongside Earth, our planetary neighbourhood is changing. But not for the better…
TIME APPEARED TO MOVE FIVE TIMES SLOWER IN THE FIRST BILLION YEARS AFTER THE BIG BANG
Time dilation, brought about by the relativistic expansion of space, has resulted in the observed slowing of ‘clocks’ in the early universe
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH A CAPTURED ASTEROID?
Asteroids could provide us with rare resources