Black holes make the earth expand faster, scientists say

Bisnis.com, JAKARTA – Astronomers may have found evidence black hole is one of the driving factors in the accelerated expansion of our universe.

Dark energy makes up about 70% of our universe, and is thought to have appeared after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, to drive the growth of the cosmos.

But it is still not clear where the secret power comes from. In recent years, some astronomers have put forward the radical theory that, instead of spreading throughout space, dark energy could emerge from the cores of supermassive black holes. However, others think this proposal is strange.

Now, a new study claims to have found the first clues about the link between two seemingly unrelated phenomena – the increasing density of dark energy and the increasing number of black holes will continue to grow as the universe ages. The researchers published their findings on October 28 in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

“If you ask yourself, ‘Where in the next universe do we see gravity as strong as it was at the beginning of the universe?’ the answer is in the center of the black hole,” said study co-author Gregory Tarlé, professor of physics at the University of Michigan, as reported by Livescience.

“What happens during inflation could be reversed, the material of the massive star becoming dark energy again during a massive collapse – like the Big Bang happening again.” he explained.

To find out that dark energy might have something to do with black holes, researchers used the Dark Energy Spectroscopy Instrument (DESI) mounted on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter telescope in Arizona, which identify the monthly positions of millions of galaxies to study how the universe works to date.

This allows astronomers to detect the global density of dark energy from the outer expansion phase of the cosmos.

By comparing dark energy proxy data with the growth of black holes at different stages of the universe’s life, the researchers made an interesting observation.

“The two phenomena are consistent with each other – when new black holes are created as a result of the death of massive stars, the amount of dark energy in the universe increases in the same way,” a joint study author Duncan Farrah, professor of physics at the University of Hawaii.

“This makes it more plausible that black holes are a source of dark energy,” he added.

If this hypothesis is confirmed, it could help solve a growing puzzle in cosmology. Over the years, astronomers have discovered that the universe appears to be expanding at different speeds depending on where you look at it, a problem they call the Hubble contraction.

Some measurements confirm our current best understanding of the universe, while others threaten to undermine that understanding.

However, despite the interesting relationship, astronomers say that more observations are needed, both through DESI and other experiments, before definitive conclusions are reached.