Mysterious cosmic signal may be the first evidence of Primordial Black Holes

This artist’s concept takes a fanciful approach to imagining small primordial black holes. In reality, such tiny black holes would have a difficult time forming the accretion disks that make them visible here. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae48f9
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Scientists at the University of Miami believe they are close to confirming the existence of one of the most intriguing objects in the universe: primordial black holes

These celestial bodies are thought to have formed in the first moments after the Big Bang, unlike ordinary black holes, which arise from the death of giant stars.

While definitive proof may still take years, recent research offers hope of solving one of the greatest enigmas of cosmology: the nature of dark matter, that invisible substance that represents about 85% of all matter in the universe and helps hold galaxies together through gravity.

It all began with an unusual signal captured by the LIGO observatory, which detects gravitational waves-ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by violent cosmic events, such as the collision of black holes.

At the end of last year, LIGO recorded a wave suggesting a merger involving at least one object with a mass less than that of the Sun.

Black holes formed by supernovae generally have masses several times greater than that of our Sun, which makes this signal quite strange and difficult to explain using conventional astrophysics methods.

Researchers Nico Cappelluti and his doctoral student Alberto Magaraggia analyzed the data and concluded that the best explanation would be the detection of a primordial black hole.

These hypothetical objects could have formed in the extremely dense conditions of the early universe, long before the emergence of the first stars.

They estimated how many such black holes could exist in the cosmos and how many LIGO would have a chance of detecting.

The results are encouraging: events like this should be rare, which perfectly matches the low frequency of similar observations so far.

According to the study published in The Astrophysical Journal, this LIGO signal, which has no traditional astronomical explanation, strongly points to a primordial black hole.

More than that, research indicates that these ancient objects could represent a significant portion-or even the entirety-of the dark matter that so intrigues scientists.

“We believe our work will help confirm that they really exist,” stated Cappelluti.

The idea of “”primordial black holes is not new.

It dates back to the Soviet scientists Yakov Zeldovich and Igor Novikov, during the Cold War era, and gained traction in the 1970s with physicist Stephen Hawking, who suggested that these black holes could emit radiation and help explain dark matter.

LIGO, which made its first historic detection of gravitational waves in 2015, confirming predictions of Einstein’s theory of relativity, opened new doors to test these old theories.

The observatory has two facilities in the United States, working in conjunction with detectors in Italy (Virgo) and Japan (KAGRA).

Although the current LIGO is excellent at capturing recent, high-frequency events, it was not designed to observe signals directly from the Big Bang.

Therefore, scientists are eagerly awaiting equipment upgrades and new next-generation observatories.

The European Space Agency’s LISA, scheduled for 2035, and the Cosmic Explorer, currently in the planning stages, will be much more sensitive and will be able to explore gravitational waves from much earlier epochs of the universe.

For now, researchers emphasize that more data is needed.

One or more similar detections would be the “smokescreen” to confirm the existence of these primordial black holes.

However, what is already clear is that they can no longer be ruled out.

This discovery, if confirmed, would not only reveal a new class of cosmic objects, but could also finally solve the mystery of dark matter, changing our understanding of the formation and evolution of the universe.

The road is still long, but the mysterious signal captured by LIGO shines a promising light on the horizon of modern astronomy.

Published in 06/10/2026 14h34

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Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption. Information about DOI, author and institution can be found in the body of the article.

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