Does Dark Matter Come From Black Holes Formed Before the Big Bang?

'The Big Bang may not have been the beginning of the universe,' writes LiveScience, citing 'a theory of cosmology that suggests the universe can 'bounce' between phases of contraction and expansion.'

The recent study suggests that dark matter could be composed of black holes formed before the Big Bang, during a transition from the universe's last contraction to the current expansion phase...

In the new study, researchers explored a scenario where dark matter consists of primordial black holes formed from density fluctuations that occurred during the universe's last contraction phase, not long before the period of expansion that we observe now. They published their findings in June in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics... In this 'bouncing' cosmology, the universe contracted to a size about 50 orders of magnitude smaller than it is today. After the rebound, photons and other particles were born, marking the Big Bang. Near the rebound, the matter density was so high that small black holes formed from quantum fluctuations in the matter's density, making them viable candidates for dark matter.

'Small primordial black holes can be produced during the very early stages of the universe, and if they are not too small, their decay due to Hawking radiation [a hypothetical phenomenon of black holes emitting particles due to quantum effects] will not be efficient enough to get rid of them, so they would still be around now,' Patrick Peter, director of research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. 'Weighing more or less the mass of an asteroid, they could contribute to dark matter, or even solve this issue altogether.'

The scientists' calculations show that this universe mode's properties, such as the curvature of space and the microwave background, match current observations, supporting their hypothesis.

'If this hypothesis holds, the gravitational waves generated during the black hole formation process might be detectable by future gravitational wave observatories, providing a way to confirm this dark matter generation scenario...'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.