Seething supergiant Betelgeuse –a star so huge it could someday collapse into a black hole or neutron star, which would make it the closest black hole to Earth some 725 light-years distant– has displayed unprecedentedly large drop in its brightness in early 2020, prompting speculation that the pulsing may be a dire prelude. A new study by an international team of scientists concluded that the star is in the early core helium-burning phase (more than 100,000 years before a supernova event) and has smaller mass and radius–and is closer to Earth–than previously thought. If the bright-red object replaced the Sun at the center of our solar system, its outer surface would extend past the orbit of Jupiter.
Ideas, Inventions And Innovations
Primordial Black Holes from the Multiverse The Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) is home to many interdisciplinary projects which benefit from the synergy of a wide range of expertise available at the institute. One such project is the study of black holes that could have formed in the early universe, before stars and galaxies were born.
Fig1. Baby universes branching off of our universe shortly after the Big Bang appear to us as black holes.
Credit：Kavli IPMU
Such primordial black holes (PBHs) could account for all or part of dark matter, be responsible for some of the observed gravitational waves signals, and seed supermassive black holes found in the center of our Galaxy and other galaxies. They could also play a role in the synthesis of heavy elements when they collide with neutron stars and destroy them, releasing neutron-rich material. In particular, there is an exciting possibility tha
One early result of the ongoing Dark Energy Survey is the previously untold story revealed by old, giant RR Lyrae pulsating stars, which tell scientists about the region of space beyond the edge of our Milky Way. In this area nearly devoid of stars–the motion of the RR Lyrae stars hints at the presence of an enormous halo of invisible dark matter, which may provide clues to how our galaxy evolved over the last 12 billion years.
One of the Biggest Mysteries in Science
Dark matter, one of the enduring mysteries in science, is “dark” in the sense that it doesn’t emit radiation or hardly interact with anything except via its gravitational attraction. Dark matter may be responsible for some of the observed gravitational waves signals, and seeded supermassive black holes found in the center of the Milky Way and other galaxies, according to a recent study by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe.
Physicists Are Looking for Dark Matter in Tiny, Ancient Black Holes
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On the night of November 23, 2014, a powerful telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii was trying to pick out the enigmatic movements of a black hole travelling through space. In the seven hours the telescope peered at the cosmos, it may have caught one, as a structure about the size of Earth eclipsed a star in our nearest galactic neighbour, Andromeda, about 2.5 million light-years away. Amid the 188 relatively bland images taken of the galaxy that night, the candidate black hole event was a moment of literal illumination.
Primordial black holes could hide a multiverse of possibilities
The discovery of primordial black holes could answer a multitude of lingering questions such as the nature of dark matter, and how heavy elements are synthesised in addition to hiding entire bubble universes.
Before the stars and galaxies even began to form in the early Universe, some researchers believe that the cosmos could have been occupied by a multitude of tiny primordial black holes. These purely hypothetical black holes would have formed in a radically different way than larger and more familiar black holes which physicists, cosmologists, and astronomers have confirmed to exist.