Black holes are eaters of all things, even radiation. But what if their rapacious appetites had an unexpected side effect? A new study published in Physical Review Letters suggests that black holes might spew dark energy—and that they could help explain an intriguing conflict between different measurements of the universe.
Dark energy is the force driving the accelerated expansion of the universe. No one knows what it is, but it’s thought to permeate everything. In the theory proposed in the new study, dark energy is also something that arises from dead stars—and therefore didn’t exist in the universe until stars were around to begin dying. Although the idea is controversial, it’s a prominent example of a newly energized attempt to understand how dark energy works, whether it changes over time and whether our cosmic accounting may be off.
“I view this black hole paper as an interesting entry in this growing canon of people testing out, ‘What if I add these physics—does that reconcile these tensions?’” says Jessie Muir, a physicist at the University of Cincinnati.
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