The Atlantic So Much Hinges on the Existence of Ancient Black Holes For 50 years, physicists have searched for signs of black holes that formed just after the Big Bang. If real, these massive, invisible objects could help unravel the mystery of dark matter. NASA One day a little more than five years ago, Ely Kovetz was having lunch with his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, discussing a tantalizing rumor. Like many in the physics community, Kovetz had heard the buzz about a possible signal from a U.S. physics observatory. The observatory was designed to pick up disturbances in the fabric of space-time, ripples created by, among other things, black holes crashing into each other. Most intriguing, the signal appeared to have been created by massive objects far heavier than anyone expected. That pointed at some eyebrow-raising possibilities.