NASA's legendary spacecraft, Voyager 1, may have just made one of the most significant
discoveries in astrophysics history.
For years, scientists have speculated about the elusive dark matter that makes up a whopping
85% of the universe's matter, and some have even suggested that it could consist of countless
black holes left over from the big bang.
But now, rumors are circulating that Voyager 1 has detected a black hole, which could single-handedly
dispel this long-standing theory.
Is this groundbreaking news true?
Or just an unfounded rumor?
Stick around as we explore the latest from the edge of our solar system and uncover the
truth about Voyager 1's latest discovery!
Black holes are a mysterious and fascinating phenomenon in the universe, where massive
amounts of mass are packed into small spaces, resulting in an incredibly powerful gravitational
pull that not even light can escape.
These enigmatic entities are formed through the collision of massive stars or by other
unknown means, and according to the theory of general relativity, they can deform space-time
to create black holes.
Once an object passes through the event horizon, there's no way out, and while it greatly affects
the object's fate and circumstances, general relativity states that there are no locally
detectable features.
Black holes behave similarly to an ideal black body, as they do not reflect light.
Jean-Michel and Pierre Simon Laplace first considered objects with gravitational fields
too strong for light to escape in the 18th century, while Karl Schwarzschild discovered
the first modern solution to general relativity that characterizes black holes in 1916.
Finally, David Finkelstein's 1958 publication was the first to define a black hole as a
region of space from which nothing can escape, solidifying our understanding of these mysterious
objects.
As massive stars reach the end of their lives, they go through a catastrophic collapse, resulting
in the formation of black holes.
These black holes can then grow by consuming other stars and merging with other black holes
in their surroundings.
In some cases, supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses can form, and most
galaxies are thought to have one in their centers.
A black hole's presence can be detected by observing its interactions with other matter
and electromagnetic radiation, such as visible light.
When matter falls into a black hole, it can form an external accretion disk that is heated
by friction, giving rise to some of the brightest objects in the universe known as quasars.
As stars come too close to a supermassive black hole, they get stretched into bright
streamers before being devoured by the black hole.
However, for decades, astrophysicists have thought some sort of unseen matter provides
the gravity needed to hold galaxies like our Milky Way together.
For nearly as long, some scientists have speculated that dark matter might consist of black holes,
knots of ultra intense gravitational fields typically created when massive stars collapse
under their own weight to infinitesimal points.
"I never thought we'd be able to contribute in any way to studying dark matter," says
Alan Cummings, a space scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who has
worked on Voyager 1 since 1973 and who was not involved in the analysis.
However, making black holes work as dark matter is tricky.
Dark matter outnumbers ordinary matter six to one in the universe, and there can't have
been enough collapsing stars to produce such a lopsided ratio.
As a result, black holes would have had to form in a different way, by collapsing tiny
fluctuations in the soup of fundamental particles that filled the newborn universe long before
stars formed.
Such primordial black holes could be of any mass, but they cannot be too numerous without
interfering with astronomical observations.
For example, swarms of black holes many times the mass of the sun would rip galaxies apart
like cannon balls crashing through chandeliers.
Through gravitational lensing, swarms of smaller black holes should distort images of more
distant stars and galaxies.
According to Bernard Carr, a cosmologist at Queen Mary University of London who has worked
on the idea for 40 years, such observations leave only three possible mass ranges for
primordial black holes.
They could have masses ranging from one to ten times that of the sun, a billionth of
the sun, or less than a quadrillionth of the sun—10 billion metric tons.
The smallest black holes would be no bigger than an atomic nucleus.
However, if they exist, the tiny black holes should emit radiation that Voyager 1 should
detect, argue Mathieu Boudaud and Marco Cirelli of Sorbonne University in Paris in a paper
published in Physical Review Letters.
Black holes get their name from the fact that anything that gets too close to them, even
light, cannot escape.
However, the late Stephen Hawking reasoned in 1973 that black holes should emit some
light and particles.
So, has the Voyager 1 really detected a blackhole?
According to two theoretical physicists, Voyager 1 has yet to detect any signs of such tiny
black holes.
However, they say the possibility should not be ruled out because Voyager 1 is still sending
back data and will continue to do so until the year 2030.
Furthermore, Quantum mechanics suggests that empty space is not truly empty and is instead
filled with particle-antiparticle pairs that briefly pop in and out of existence.
Stephen Hawking postulated that when one of these pairs appears at the right distance
from a black hole, one particle could fall into the black hole while the other escapes
in what we now call Hawking radiation.
The amount of radiation emitted increases with the black hole's temperature, which is
higher for smaller black holes.
Tiny black holes weighing tens of billions of tons should be hot enough to emit electrons
and positrons.
Earth-based detectors would miss those low-energy particles because they would be deflected
by the sun's magnetic field.
However, from its position outside the sun's magnetic bubble, the heliosphere, Voyager
1 should be able to detect them.
In fact, Voyager 1 has measured a small, consistent flux of positrons and electrons since it exited
the heliosphere in 2012.
Even if they all come from tiny black holes, Boudaud and Cirelli calculate that there aren't
enough black holes to account for more than 1% of the Milky Way's dark matter.
According to Cummings, the energy spectrum of the particles indicates that they are all
from more mundane sources, such as supernova remnants.
Carr says the new work comes close to ruling out the lowest mass primordial black holes
as dark matter, but he has always preferred the scenario in which the black holes weigh
several solar masses.
"This [low] mass window has never been my favorite," he says.
"It doesn't personally bother me if the constraints now rule it out."
Voyager 1 is unable to search for higher mass primordial black holes.
They would be so heavy and cold that they would be incapable of emitting massive particles
like electrons and positrons.
Instead, they would only emit a weak and likely undetectable light.
So, for the moment, the idea of black hole dark matter lives on.
Stephen Hawking was a pioneer in this field, and his groundbreaking work on black holes,
including his popular science books like "A Brief History of Time," helped to make complex
scientific concepts more accessible to the masses.
Hawking's unwavering determination to push the boundaries of our understanding and his
remarkable contributions to science will undoubtedly inspire future generations of scientists.
One of Hawking's most significant contributions to our understanding of black holes was his
discovery of Hawking radiation, as mentioned above.
Contrary to the popular belief that black holes are entirely black, they emit radiation,
according to his theory.
The radiation occurs when pairs of particles form near the black hole's event horizon.
While one particle falls into the black hole, the other escapes into space, carrying energy
and causing the black hole to lose mass over time.
This revolutionary idea challenged the previously held notion that nothing, including radiation,
could escape a black hole.
Hawking's theory suggested that black holes aren't eternal and will eventually evaporate,
emitting a burst of radiation as they do so, known as Hawking radiation.
This discovery has had a profound impact on our understanding of the universe.
Another significant discovery made by Hawking was the black hole information paradox.
According to classical physics, information about an object should be conserved.
When an object falls into a black hole, it appears to vanish completely from the universe.
This raises the question of whether the object's information is forever lost, thus violating
the information conservation principle.
While Hawking proposed a solution to this paradox, he proposed that black holes do not
destroy information but rather store it as holograms on their surfaces.
Information about an object that falls into a black hole, according to this theory, is
preserved in a two-dimensional format, similar to a hologram.
This concept is still being researched and debated, but it has the potential to solve
the black hole information paradox.
This idea sparked further research into the event horizon, including the idea of a firewall,
which is a hypothetical layer of high-energy particles that could exist at the event horizon.
The presence of a firewall implies that anything falling into a black hole would be quickly
destroyed, which contradicts general relativity rules.
The Event Horizon is the point beyond which no light may escape from a black hole.
Hawking's study on the Event Horizon of a black hole gave rise to the concept of virtual
particles.
These are particle-antiparticle pairings that only exist for a short time before annihilating
each other.
If they are generated near the Event Horizon of a black hole, one particle may be sucked
into the black hole while the other escapes, resulting in the aforementioned Hawking radiation.
And it is for this reason that one of Hawking's final writings discloses something completely
unexpected in scientific circles: black holes do not exist, at least not in the way we know
them.
Although some theories on black holes have not been tested or confirmed due to a lack
of equipment, the James Webb Space Telescope is changing that.
This incredible instrument is helping scientists explore the mind of the late Hawking and finally
confirm his theory about black holes.
The JWST is a testament to what humans can achieve when they work together towards a
common goal.
It's a one-of-a-kind space telescope that's worth its hefty price tag and risks.
Developed by NASA in collaboration with the European and Canadian Space Agencies, with
input from over 300 universities, it's the most powerful telescope ever built.
After a successful launch, NASA announced that the JWST should exceed its minimum mission
life of 10 years.
Since its launch, the telescope has continued to achieve amazing feats.
And now that we know that Voyager 1 can also detect tiny black holes, the race is truly
on between the two titans.