Dark Matter – astroengine.com

Primordial Black Holes Probably Don’t Pack a Dark Matter Punch

Waiting for the Andromeda galaxy’s stars to twinkle may have extinguished hope for tiny black holes being a significant dark matter candidate

Should a black hole drift in front of a star, it could trigger a microlensing event, so astronomers set out to estimate the number of primordial black holes in Andromeda [Kavli IPMU]

Using the Andromeda galaxy as a huge detector, astronomers have taken a stab at seeing the unseeable — possibly disproving a hypothesis first put forward by the late Stephen Hawking 45 years ago.

According to Hawking’s work, the universe should be filled with black holes that were formed at the beginning of time, when the universe was a chaotic soup of energy just after the Big Bang. Known as “primordial” black holes, these ancient objects are hypothesized to invisibly occupy modern galaxies, including our own, boosting their dark matter mass.

These black holes aren’t the supermassive monsters that lurk in the centers of most galaxies; they’re not even stellar-mass black holes, formed after massive stars go supernova. Primordial black holes are much smaller than that, having leaked most of their mass via Hawking radiation since their formation 13.8 billion years ago. They should, however, still have powerful gravitational effects on the space surrounding them and, in new research published last week in the journal Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers have leveraged these hypothetical black holes’ space-time-warping powers to reveal their presence.

Or not, as it turns out.

Central to this study is the effect of microlensing. This astronomical method relies on an object passing between us and a distant star. It has been used to great effect when detecting distant exoplanets, or rogue brown dwarfs wandering through interstellar space. Should one of these objects drift directly in front of a star, its gravitational field can create a magnification effect that briefly brightens the star’s light. The gravitational field creates a natural “lens” out of space-time itself, a prediction that arises from Einstein’s general relativity.

The effect of gravitational microlensing on a star in the Andromeda galaxy should a primordial black hole drift in front [Kavli IPMU]

It stands to reason that even though primordial black holes don’t generate any light themselves, if you stare at at entire galaxy for long enough, you should see a lot of twinkling stars, or microlensing events caused by the hypothetical swarm of primordial black holes the galaxy should contain. Count the number of events, and you can take a statistical stab the total number of primordial black holes in a galaxy like Andromeda, thereby providing an estimate as to how much of the universe’s missing dark matter mass is made up from these objects.

Using the power of the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, the researchers put this to the test, capturing 190 consecutive images of Andromeda over seven hours during one night with the observatory’s Hyper Suprime-Cam digital camera. If Hawking’s theory held, the telescope should have recorded approximately 1,000 microlensing events caused by primordial black holes with a mass of less than our moon drifting in front of Andromeda’s stars. Alas, only one microlensing event was detected that night. From this observation campaign alone, the researchers estimate that primordial black holes make up no more than 0.1 percent of the total dark matter mass in our universe.

Although this elegant study doesn’t necessarily disprove the existence of primordial black holes — one single event is interesting, but not compelling — it does put a wrench in the idea that they dominate the mass holed up in dark matter. So, the quest to understand the nature of dark matter grinds on and, with the help of this study, astronomers have now narrowed down the search by removing primordial black holes from the dark matter equation.

Gravitational Waves Might Reveal Primordial Black Hole Mergers Just After the Big Bang

Web_C0288811-Black_hole_merger_and_gravitational_waves-SPL — RUSSELL KIGHTLEY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Imagine the early universe: The first massive stars sparked to life and rapidly consumed their supply of hydrogen. These “metal poor” stars lived hard and died fast, burning quickly and then exploding as powerful supernovas. This first population of stars seeded the universe with heavier elements (i.e. elements heavier than helium, elements known as “metals” by astronomers) and their deaths created the first stellar-mass black holes.

But say if there were black holes bumbling around the universe before the first supernovae? Where the heck did they come from?

Quantum Fluctuations

Some models of universal evolution suggests that immediately after the Big Bang, some 13.82 billion years ago, quantum fluctuations created pockets of dense matter as the universe started to expand. As inflation occurred and the universe cooled, these density fluctuations formed the vast large-scale structure of the universe that we observe today. These cosmological models suggest the early quantum density fluctuations may have been dramatic enough to create black holes — known as primordial black holes — and these ancient Big Bang remnants may still exist to this day.

The theoretical models surrounding the genesis of primordial black holes, however, are hard to test as observing the universe immediately after the Big Bang is, needless to say, very difficult. But now we know gravitational waves exist and physicists have detected the space-time ripples generated by the collision and merger of stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars, astronomers have an observational tool at their disposal.

Simple Idea, Not-So-Simple Implementation

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers have proposed that if we have the ability to detect gravitational waves produced before the first stars died, we may be able to carry out astronomical archaeological dig of sorts to possibly find evidence of these ancient black holes.

“The idea is very simple,” said physicist Savvas Koushiappas, of Brown University, in a statement. “With future gravitational wave experiments, we’ll be able to look back to a time before the formation of the first stars. So if we see black hole merger events before stars existed, then we’ll know that those black holes are not of stellar origin.”

Primordial black holes were first theorized by Stephen Hawking and others in the 1970’s, but it’s still unknown if they exist or whether we could even distinguish the primordial ones from the garden variety of stellar-mass black holes (it’s worth noting, however, that primordial black holes would have a range of masses and not restricted to stellar masses). Now we can detect gravitational waves, however, this could change as gravitational wave detector sensitivity increases, scientists will probe more distant (and therefore more ancient) black hole mergers. And, if we can detect gravitational waves originating from black hole mergers younger than 65 million years after the Big Bang, the researchers say, those black holes wouldn’t have a stellar origin as the first stars haven’t yet died — they could have only been born from the quantum mess immediately after the birth of our universe.

Gravity and the Dark Side of the Cosmos: LIVE Perimeter Institute Lecture

Streaming LIVE here, today, at 4 p.m. PDT/7 p.m. EDT/11 p.m. GMT

The Perimeter Institute’s public lecture series is back! At 7 p.m. EDT (4 p.m. PDT) today, Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam will ask: Are we standing on the brink of a new scientific revolution that will radically change our views on space, time, and gravity? Specifically, Verlinde will discuss the possibility that gravity may be an emergent phenomena and not a fundamental force of nature. Ohh, interesting.

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (in Ontario, Canada) always puts on a superb production and you can watch Dr Verlinde’s talk via the live feed above. You can also participate via social media using the hashtag #piLIVE and follow @perimeter and @erikverlinde on Twitter.

Watch the preview:

Primordial Black Holes Might be Cosmic Gold Diggers

black-hole-gold — Neutron stars might have black hole parasites in their cores (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center)

When the universe’s first black holes appeared is one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics. Were they born immediately after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago? Or did they pop into existence after the first population of massive stars exploded as supernovas millions of years later?

The origin of primordial black holes isn’t a trivial matter. In our modern universe, the majority of galaxies have supermassive black holes in their cores and we’re having a hard time explaining how they came to be the monsters they are today. For them to grow so big, there must have been a lot of primordial black holes formed early in the universe’s history clumping together to form progressively more massive black holes.

Now, in a new study published in Physical Review Letters, Alexander Kusenko and Eric Cotner, who both work at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), have arrived at an elegant theory as to how the early universe birthed black holes.

Primordial beginnings

Immediately after the Big Bang, the researchers suggest that a uniform energy field pervaded our baby universe. In all the superheated chaos, long before stars started to form, this energy field condensed as “Q balls” and clumped together. These clumps of quasi-matter collapsed under gravity and the first black holes came to be.

These primordial black holes have been singled out as possible dark matter candidates (classed as massive astrophysical compact halo objects, or “MACHOs”) and they may have coalesced to quickly seed the supermassive black holes. In short: if these things exist, they could explain a few universal mysteries.

But in a second Physical Review Letters study, Kusenko teamed up with Volodymyr Takhistov (also from UCLA) and George Fuller, at UC San Diego, to investigate how these primordial black holes may have triggered the formation of heavy elements such as gold, platinum and uranium — through a process known as r-process (a.k.a. rapid neutron capture process) nucleosynthesis.

It is thought that energetic events in the universe are responsible for the creation for approximately half of elements heavier than iron. Elements lighter than iron (except for hydrogen, helium and lithium) were formed by nuclear fusion inside the cores of stars. But the heavier elements formed via r-process nucleosynthesis are thought to have been sourced via supernova explosions and neutron star collisions. Basically, the neutron-rich debris left behind by these energetic events seeded regions where neutrons could readily fuse, creating heavy elements.

These mechanisms for heavy element production are far from being proven, however.

“Scientists know that these heavy elements exist, but they’re not sure where these elements are being formed,” Kusenko said in a statement. “This has been really embarrassing.”

A cosmic goldmine

So what have primordial black holes got to do with nucleosynthesis?

If we assume the universe is still populated with these ancient black holes, they may collide with spinning neutron stars. When this happens, the researchers suggest that the black holes will drop into the cores of the neutron stars.

Alexander+Kusenko+2017+image_thmb — Alexander Kusenko/UCLA

Like a parasite eating its host from the inside, material from the neutron star will be consumed by the black hole in its core, causing the neutron star to shrink. As it loses mass, the neutron star will spin faster, causing neutron-rich debris to fling off into space, facilitating (you guessed it) r-process nucleosynthesis, creating the heavy elements we know and love — like gold. The whole process is expected to take about 10,000 years before the neutron star is no more.

So, where are they?

There’s little evidence that primordial black holes exist, so the researchers suggest further astronomical work to study the light of distant stars that may flicker by the passage of invisible foreground black holes. The black holes’ gravitational fields will warp spacetime, causing the starlight to dim and brighten.

It’s certainly a neat theory to think that ancient black holes are diving inside neutron stars to spin them up and create gold in the process, but now astronomers need to prove that primordial black holes are out there, possibly contributing to the dark matter budget of our universe.

This Is Why NASA’s Space Station Bose-Einstein Experiment Will Be so Cool

An instrument capable of cooling matter to a smidgen above absolute zero is being readied for launch to the International Space Station, possibly uncovering new physics and answering some of our biggest cosmological questions.

This summer, a rather interesting experiment will arrive at the International Space Station. Called the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), this boxy instrument will be able to chill material down to unimaginably low temperatures — so low that it will become the coldest place in the known universe.*

At a temperature of a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, CAL will investigate a state of matter that cannot exist in nature. This strange state is known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (or BEC), which possesses qualities that, quite frankly, don’t make a lot of sense.

When a gas is sufficiently cooled and the subatomic particles (bosons) drop to their lowest energy state, “normal” physics start to break down and quantum mechanics — the physics that governs the smallest scales — starts to manifest itself throughout a material (on a macroscopic scale). When this occurs, a BEC is possible. And it’s weird.

BECs act as a “superfluid,” which means it has zero viscosity. Early experiments on supercooled helium-4 exhibited this trait, causing confusion at the time when this mysterious fluid was observed flowing up, against the force of gravity, and over the sides of its containing beaker. Now we are able to cool gases to sufficiently low temperatures, this superfluid trait dominates and gases move as one, apparently coherent, mass.

So far, BEC experiments have only been carried out in a gravitational environment and can only be observed for a very short period of time as gravity continually pulls the BEC particles to the bottom of its container, thereby limiting its stability. But remove gravity from the equation and we enter a brand new observational regime with the potential for brand new insights to fundamental physics, and this is why NASA built CAL — humanity’s first microgravity BEC laboratory that could unlock some of the universe’s biggest mysteries.

CAL works by trapping the BEC in magnetic containment and lasers will be used to cancel out energy in the gas, thereby cooling it (pictured top). The gas will then be further cooled through evaporative cooling (using a radio frequency “knife”) and adiabatic expansion. When sufficiently cooled, experiments can be carried out on the BEC — the first time a BEC has been tested in space. (The technical details behind CAL’s technology can be found on the experiment’s website.)

“Studying these hyper-cold atoms could reshape our understanding of matter and the fundamental nature of gravity,” said Robert Thompson, CAL Project Scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. “The experiments we’ll do with the Cold Atom Lab will give us insight into gravity and dark energy — some of the most pervasive forces in the universe.”

It is hoped that BECs will be observable inside CAL for five to twenty seconds and the ultra-low temperature technologies developed will allow for future experiments that could contain stable BECs for hundreds of times longer.

CAL isn’t a pure physics curiosity, even if it is pretty awesome just to observe quantum physics manifest itself across an entire mass of particles (in free-fall, no less). Producing stable BECs could have technical applications, such as in quantum computer development and improving the precision of quantum clocks. In addition, creating a stable BEC in a lab setting could, quite literally, give us new eyes on fundamental universal mysteries. Lower temperatures means more stability and more stability means boosted sensor precision. Astronomy is all about precision, so the spin-off technologies from the techniques developed in CAL could usher in a new generation of ultra-sensitive telescopes and detectors that could, ultimately, reveal the mechanisms behind dark energy and dark matter.

“Like a new lens in Galileo’s first telescope, the ultra-sensitive cold atoms in the Cold Atom Lab have the potential to unlock many mysteries beyond the frontiers of known physics,” said Kamal Oudrhiri, CAL deputy project manager also at JPL.

CAL is set for launch on a SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station in August and I can’t wait to see what new physics the instrument might uncover.

*Assuming there are no other intelligent lifeforms also playing with supercooled matter elsewhere in the universe, of course.

We Are The 4.9%

The AMS attached to the space station's exterior (NASA) — The AMS attached to the space station’s exterior (NASA)

This month is Global Astronomy Month (GAM2013) organized by my friends Astronomers Without Borders (AWB). There is a whole host of events going on right this moment to boost astronomy throughout the international community, and as a part of GAM2013, AWB are hosting daily blogs from guest astronomers, writers, physicists and others with a background in space. Today (April 11) was my turn, so I wrote a blog about the fascinating first results to be announced on the International Space Station instrument the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer — or AMS for short.

Although the AMS’ most recent findings suggest positrons with a signature energy indicative of the annihilation of dark matter — particularly hypothetical weakly interaction massive particles (WIMPS) — it isn’t final proof of dark matter (despite what the tabloid press might’ve told you). But still, it’s exciting and another component of our enduring search for 95.1% of the mass-energy of the universe that is locked in the mysterious and perplexing dark matter and dark energy.

You can read my blog on the AWB website: “Dark Matter: We Are The 4.9%“

Unexpectedly Large Black Holes and Dark Matter

The M87 black hole blasts relativistic plumes of gas 5000 ly from the centre of the galaxy (NASA)

I just spent 5 minutes trying to think up a title to this post. I knew what I wanted to say, but the subject is so “out there” I’m not sure if any title would be adequate. As it turns out, the title doesn’t really matter, so I opted for something more descriptive…

So what’s this about? Astronomers think they will be able to “see” a supermassive black hole in a galaxy 55 million light years away? Surely that isn’t possible. Actually, it might be.

When Very Long Baseline Interferometry is King

Back in June, I reported that radio astronomers may be able to use a future network of radio antennae as part of a very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) campaign. With enough observatories, we may be able to resolve the event horizon of the supermassive black hole lurking at the centre of the Milky Way, some 26,000 light years away from the Solar System.

The most exciting thing is that existing sub-millimeter observations of Sgr. A* (the radio source at the centre of our galaxy where the 4 million solar mass black hole lives) suggest there is some kind of active structure surrounding the black hole’s event horizon. If this is the case, a modest 7-antennae VLBI could observe dynamic flares as matter falls into the event horizon.

It would be a phenomenal scientific achievement to see a flare-up after a star is eaten by Sgr. A*, or to see the rotation of a possibly spinning black hole event horizon.

All of this may be a possibility, and through a combination of Sgr. A*’s mass and relatively close proximity to Earth, our galaxy’s supermassive black hole is predicted to have the largest apparent event horizon in the sky.

Or does it?

M87 Might be a Long Way Away, But…

As it turns out, there could be another challenger to Sgr. A*’s “largest apparent event horizon” crown. Sitting in the centre of the active galaxy called M87, 55 million light years away (that’s over 2,000 times further away than Sgr. A*), is a black hole behemoth.

M87’s supermassive black hole consumes vast amounts of matter, spewing jets of gas 5,000 light years from the core of the giant elliptical galaxy. And until now, astronomers have underestimated the size of this monster.

Karl Gebhardt (Univ. of Texas at Austin) and Thomas Jens (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany) took another look at M87 and weighed the galaxy by sifting through observational data with a supercomputer model. This new model accounted for the theorized halo of invisible dark matter surrounding M87. This analysis yielded a shocking result; the central supermassive black hole should have a mass of 6.4 billion Suns, double the mass of previous estimates.

Therefore, the M87 black hole is around 1,600 times more massive than our galaxy’s supermassive black hole.

A Measure for Dark Matter?

Now that the M87 black hole is much bigger than previously thought, there’s the tantalizing possibility of using the proposed VLBI to image M87’s black hole as well as Sgr. A*, as they should both have comparable event horizon dimensions when viewed from Earth.

Another possibility also comes to mind. Once an international VLBI is tested and proven to be an “event horizon telescope,” if we are able to measure the size of the M87 black hole, and its mass is confirmed to be in agreement with the Gebhardt-Jens model, perhaps we’ll have one of the first indirect methods to measure the mass of dark matter surrounding a galaxy…

Oh yes, this should be good.

UPDATE! How amiss of me, I forgot to include the best black hole tune ever:

Publication: The Black Hole Mass, Stellar Mass-to-Light Ratio, and Dark Matter Halo in M87, Karl Gebhardt et al 2009 ApJ 700 1690-1701, doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/700/2/1690.
Via: New Scientist

Did Dark Matter Reionize the Universe?

Did dark matter characterize our early Universe?

Immediately after the Big Bang, 13.72 billion (±120 million) years ago, the Universe was filled with energy. Nothing but energy. No protons, electrons, quarks or photons; just energy. Even the fundamental forces of nature (gravity, weak, strong, electromagnetic) were a confused mess and could not be distinguished, but that issue didn’t last for long. 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang the grand unification epoch began, when gravity is thought to have separated from the soup. Shortly after, the strong force separated from the electroweak force in a period called the electroweak epoch.
Continue reading “Did Dark Matter Reionize the Universe?”

New Exotic Particle May Explain Milky Way Gamma-Ray Phenomenon

Chandra observation of Cassiopeia A, a young supernova remnant in our galaxy - a prominent source of high-energy particles (NASA/CXC/MIT/UMass Amherst/M. D. Stage et al.) — Chandra observation of Cassiopeia A, a young supernova remnant in our galaxy - a prominant source of high-energy particles (NASA/CXC/MIT/UMass Amherst/M. D. Stage et al.)

There is something strange happening in the core of the Milky Way. A space observatory measuring the energy and distribution of gamma-rays in the cosmos has made an unexpected (and perplexing) discovery. It would seem there is a very high proportion of gamma-ray photons emanating from our galactic core with a very distinctive signature; they have a precise energy of 511 keV (8×10^-14 Joules), and there’s a lot of them. So what could possibly be producing these 511 keV gamma-rays? It turns out, 511 keV is a magic number; it is the exact rest mass energy of a positron (the antimatter particle of the electron). So this is fairly conclusive evidence that positrons are dying (i.e. annihilating) in vast numbers in our galactic nuclei. Still, this is of little help to astrophysicists as there is no known mechanism for producing such high numbers of annihilating positrons. Ideas have been put forward, but there’s a new possibility, involving some new particle physics and some lateral thinking…
Continue reading “New Exotic Particle May Explain Milky Way Gamma-Ray Phenomenon”

Is the Sun a Dark Matter Factory?

The hypothetical axion is a particle that might help scientists work out where the bulk of dark matter may be held in the Universe. So far, there has been much talk about the search for another type of hypothetical particle, the weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), and little attention has been paid to the lowly axion. WIMPs are very appealing to scientists as proving they exist will help patch some holes in quantum theory. What’s more, WIMP detectors need to be huge, large volumes of underground caverns filled with hi-tech sensors and cleaning fluid – this makes for a cool funding proposal; think up and grand idea, explain that it will prove our understanding of the Universe and then receive a multi-billion $/£/€ cheque (it’s not quite as easy as that, but there are socioeconomic and political reasons for building such an awesome structure).

So how do you go about finding an axion? Surely this exotic particle will need an even bigger detector, especially as it has zero charge, very low mass and cannot interact via the strong and weak nuclear forces? Actually, a large WIMP-type detector would be useless for axion detection. Fortunately axions have a neat interaction with magnetic fields that can be detected with existing instrumentation. What produces the strongest magnetic field in the Solar System? This is where the Sun can help out…
Continue reading “Is the Sun a Dark Matter Factory?”