Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
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Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#2> He also says the numbers don’t seem to add up: Dark energy is known to make up 70% of the mass-energy of the universe, whereas black holes are a mere fraction of the ordinary matter, which constitutes less than 5% of the universe
So it seems both the missing dark energy and the missing dark matter could both be explained for, if there were far more black holes in our universe than we're currently aware of?
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#3> He also says the numbers don’t seem to add up: Dark energy is known to make up 70% of the mass-energy of the universe, whereas black holes are a mere fraction of the ordinary matter, which constitutes less than 5% of the universe So it seems both the missing dark energy and the missing dark matter could both be explained for, if there were far more black holes in our universe than we're currently aware of?
Black holes are a known explanation for dark matter (until recently not for dark energy, as black holes were in the end still thought of as a bunch of dense matter).
There are bounds on the size and quantity of such black holes, which get increasingly tight as more data on dark matter becomes available.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#4> He also says the numbers don’t seem to add up: Dark energy is known to make up 70% of the mass-energy of the universe, whereas black holes are a mere fraction of the ordinary matter, which constitutes less than 5% of the universe So it seems both the missing dark energy and the missing dark matter could both be explained for, if there were far more black holes in our universe than we're currently aware of?
Primordial black holes used to be a dark matter candidate but have been largely ruled out. This has been extensively studied already. They'd be anything but supermassive, though. The exact opposite, to be precise.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#5Interesting, but quite wild hypothesis. No mechanism was proposed on how black holes store dark energy.
In the end it may turn out that black holes are the source of both dark energy and dark matter.
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#6[deleted]
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#7Fraser Cain interviewed co-author Chris Pearson regarding the topic
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#8[flagged]
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#9>Dark energy is known to make up 70% of the mass-energy of the universe, whereas black holes are a mere fraction of the ordinary matter, which constitutes less than 5% of the universe.
Is there some cosmological constraint that says dark energy compressed into a small volume would exhibit gravitational pull and therefore contribute to our measurements of black hole masses? If not then it feels like this is a weak counterargument that makes a pretty big assumption that dark energy must have the same mass-energy equivalence behaviour as regular energy from a general relativity perspective. If black holes somehow are the origin of dark energy, then surely this is driven by physics at energies far beyond our understanding from either particle physics or cosmology. In that case aren't basically all bets off in terms of what you'd expect to observe in terms of apparent black hole masses?
Re: Dark energy from supermassive black holes? Physicists spar over radical idea
#10Correct me if I'm wrong (please), but don't we still lack any kind of fundamental definition of what dark energy/matter is other than..."the cause of the difference between what is calculated, and what is observed"? To the point that we aren't even really sure that there is such a "thing" as dark matter (in that it exists in any conventional sense)?
From Wikipedia: "Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe...The primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would behave quite differently if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Some galaxies would not have formed at all and others would not move as they currently do."
85% is kind of a lot of "stuff" to be missing...
I find it kind of funny that humans are so confident that our models of reality are correct that we truly think it's more likely there's just hidden "stuff" than there's just something hugely wrong with our idea of what the universe really is, and how it works. Our physics works great in a lot of circumstances, but to be missing 85% of the damn universe might imply we are wildly off base when it comes down to the true nature of things.
Obviously, I don't have an explanation myself, and I understand that we can only work with the evidence we have, but I think it's a sign we need to radically rework our basic assumptions about reality, and not just look for our missing keys...
Perhaps black holes are the right place to look, but not as a cubby hole for our missing stuff - rather, as a path to transforming our assumptions about reality.