Don’t let these petite spheres of doom fool you.
A black hole half the size of a golf ball would have a mass equivalent to Earth’s.
Eventually, these mini black holes would’ve sailed away from each other.
Solving the puzzle requires, well, actually…findingdark matter.
We have enough trouble finding supermassive, visible ones with high-tech equipment tailored to the search.
That’s where the moon comes in.
Yes, you read that correctly: The moon might’ve been bombarded by atomic-sized black holes.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, Earth might’ve been hit by them, too.
But really, what is dark matter?
Dark energy, responsible for speeding up the universe’s expansion,accounts for68% of the cosmos.
Dark matter, which slows it down, holds 27%.
But even though we can’t see dark matter, it isn’t sly enough to disguise its effects.
That’s how scientists discovered the hidden material exists in the first place.
Shandera also emphasizes the overwhelming amount of further evidence to support the force’s omnipresence.
Its invisibility is the only issue.
“It doesn’t seem to fit easily in the framework that we’ve got,” she said.
“But maybe we’ve got the wrong framework.”
“At the time I didn’t have an answer,” Yalinewich said.
“Two years after that, it suddenly dawned on me.”
He realized that the variation lies in how matter splashes around as something falls into it.
Called the ejecta blanket, it would be steeper and taller.
They say black holes a bit smaller would emit detectable X-ray waves – or they’d vanish altogether.
“This is why our paper is significant,” Yalinewich said.
“We prove a range that can’t be proven by other methods.”
But it’s not just the moon that could’ve been hit.
“Some of the moons of Neptune and Jupiter, or Mercury, could be good candidates.”
Erosion on Earth’s surface would’ve likely erased any data from a possible collision, according to Caplan.
Nuclear bombs behave similarly.
The first onenotoriously turnedall the sand near its detonation site into glass.
“Rock smashing into rock doesn’t get that hot.”
Even so, Yalinewich stresses that he aims to invite a refreshing angle to the scientific community.
“It’s very rare that people venture to think outside the box.”
Existing dark matter theories and beyond
Welcome to the dark matter party.
One can only imagine what novel ideas are yet to amend and footnote the epic chronicle.
Shandera has also been working on novel candidates for dark matter.
Black holes that arise from dark matter would be smaller than the lower limit scientists place on their size.
It’s called theChandrashekar limit.
That could be the consequences of dark cooling processes.
Essentially, it’s a process of elimination.
Until then, the cosmos will continue to tick along its linear timeline.
And those ticks will become just as invisible as the elusive material itself.
CNET’s Robert Rodriguez created the illustration at the top of this story.
