Black holes formed by ‘Big Bang replays’ could be responsible for dark energy

Scientists have strengthened the potential connection between dark energy and black holes. A new study suggests that as more black holes were born in the 14.6-billion-year-old cosmos from “small iterations of the Big Bang,” the power of dark energy came to dominate and continues to change to this day.

Dark energy is the placeholder name given to the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe in its current era. This is alarming because scientists have no idea what dark energy is, yet it dominates our Universe, accounting for about 70% of the balance of cosmic matter and energy. However, this was not always the case. Before the era of dark energy dominance, matter and gravity controlled the Universe and managed to slow its initial expansion caused by the Big Bang almost to a stop. Then, about 5 billion years ago, dark energy staged its cosmic revolution, once again turning the gas on in the expansion of the Universe. The problem is that no one knows where it came from or how the transition from matter to dark energy occurred.

To solve this mystery, a group of scientists asked the question: Where in the modern Universe is gravity as strong as it was at the beginning of the Universe? The answer lies only in the core of black holes. Thus, the team determined that black holes may be “cosmically connected” to dark energy.

“According to the cosmological coupling hypothesis, black holes are connected to the expanding universe and are filled with dark energy that grows as the universe expands,” team member Gregory Tarle, a professor of physics at the University of Michigan, told Space.com. “This new development provides supporting evidence that cosmologically connected black holes may well be the dark energy of the Universe.”