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In a new paper, Croker and his colleagues have investigated the link between black holes and dark energy – not as the black hole grows, but when it is born. They used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument to study the formation rate of black holes from the core collapse of massive stars at the end of their lifespan, much later in the lifetime of the Universe than when the supermassive black holes formed, and compared this with the expansion of the Universe.
"The two phenomena were consistent with each other – as new black holes were made in the deaths of massive stars, the amount of dark energy in the Universe increased in the right way," says physicist Duncan Farrah of the University of Hawai'i.
"This makes it more plausible that black holes are the source of dark energy."
According to the theory of cosmological coupling, black holes convert normal matter into dark energy. The team's calculations not only reproduced an expansion rate for the Universe consistent with current measurements, but provide an explanation for another problem: we have not been able to find all of the normal matter that should be in the Universe.
The rate of formation of black holes gives a dark energy conversion rate that is consistent with the amount of missing normal matter.
The work handily offers solutions to several outstanding questions in one fell swoop – pushing it towards the top of the pile for explanations for the mysterious force pushing the Universe apart.
"Fundamentally, whether black holes are dark energy, coupled to the universe they inhabit, has ceased to be just a theoretical question," Tarlé says. "This is an experimental question now."
The research has been published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.