Dark matter finally explained by these super-charged black holes?

To unravel the enigma of dark matter, one must delve into the mysteries of the primordial Universe. What if minuscule, super-charged black holes formed just after the Big Bang were the key?


Fifty years ago, Stephen Hawking suggested that dark matter might consist of primordial black holes, small and formed very early after the Big Bang. Unlike the giant black holes we are familiar with, these black holes would be microscopic and extremely dense.

Today, researchers at MIT have discovered that these primordial black holes could have also given rise to even smaller black holes, possessing a unique property called "color charge". These minuscule black holes, formed within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, might have influenced the formation of the first atomic nuclei.

These "super-charged" black holes would have quickly evaporated, but not before disrupting the balance necessary for the formation of the first atoms. This influence could be detected through future astronomical observations, offering a new avenue to understand the primordial black holes proposed by Stephen Hawking, and thus dark matter.

David Kaiser and Elba Alonso-Monsalve from MIT suggest that these small black holes, by interacting with the primordial soup of quarks and gluons, would have absorbed a significant amount of "color charges". These charges would then have affected the creation of the first chemical elements.

Their work, published in Physical Review Letters, boldly proposes that these tiny black holes could explain all current dark matter. This emphasizes the importance of the Universe's earliest moments in understanding its present composition.