Scientists Discover the “Dark Legacy” of the Big Bang: A Horde of Monsters Weighing Billions of Times More Than the Sun.
According to SciTech Daily, an international research team led by Stockholm University (Sweden) has found an astonishing number of “monster black holes of all monsters” from the early universe. These represent the “zombie” state of the first objects that emerged after the Big Bang event.
These black holes appear to be permanent traps in spacetime, eternally devouring anything that comes too close.
They are the largest type of black holes, weighing millions to billions of times that of the Sun, and like dormant dragons, they will awaken and consume any unfortunate object that crosses their path, subsequently erupting like brilliant beacons.
Hubble image showing clues about some primordial black holes existing in the first billion years after the Big Bang – (Image: NASA/ESA).
Previously, scientists had discussed this type of black hole, which existed during the “Cosmic Dawn,” referring to the first billion years after the Big Bang.
They typically exist as active black holes at the center of large, peculiar galaxies.
“Many of these objects seem to exceed the initial mass we thought they could have at this time, either they formed very large, or they grew extremely rapidly,” said astronomer Alice Young, a co-author of the study.
According to a publication in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the authors used years of data from the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the brightness variations of ancient galaxies, a clear indicator of black holes.
They not only discovered more black holes than expected but also clues about their origins.
Some of these ancient black holes may have formed from the collapse of massive, primordial stars in the first billion years after the Big Bang.
The offspring of the Big Bang—an extremely extreme type of star made entirely of matter from the early universe—could only exist in the very early stages of the universe, as later generations of stars became “contaminated” by the remnants of previous generations of stars.
These supermassive and extreme stars have very short lifespans; they quickly fuse, explode, and turn into massive primordial black holes within the first few seconds after the Big Bang event.
With this new information, more accurate models of galaxy formation can be developed, helping humanity gain further insights into the violent past of the “infant” universe.
