Thats

 

Kinda a big ordeal...

“Cosmological Coupling” – New Evidence Points to Black Holes as Source of Dark Energy

Dark energy

"Searching through existing data spanning 9 billion years, a team of researchers led by scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa has uncovered the first evidence of “cosmological coupling” – a newly predicted phenomenon in Einstein’s theory of gravity, possible only when black holes are placed inside an evolving universe."

"Astrophysicists Duncan Farrah and Kevin Croker led this ambitious study, combining Hawaiʻi’s expertise in galaxy evolution and gravity theory with the observation and analysis experience of researchers across nine countries to provide the first insight into what might exist inside real black holes."

“When LIGO heard the first pair of black holes merge in late 2015, everything changed,” said Croker. “The signal was in excellent agreement with predictions on paper, but extending those predictions to millions, or billions of years? Matching that model of black holes to our expanding universe? It wasn’t at all clear how to do that."

"The first paper found that these black holes gain mass over billions of years in a way that can’t easily be explained by standard galaxy and black hole processes, such as mergers or accretion of gas."

"The second paper finds that the growth in mass of these black holes matches predictions for black holes that not only cosmologically couple, but also enclose vacuum energy—material that results from squeezing matter as much as possible without breaking Einstein’s equations, thus avoiding a singularity."

"With singularities absent, the paper then shows that the combined vacuum energy of black holes produced in the deaths of the universe’s first stars agrees with the measured quantity of dark energy in our universe."

“We’re really saying two things at once: 

that there’s evidence the typical black hole solutions 

don’t work for you on a long, long timescale, 

and we have the first proposed astrophysical source for dark energy,” 

said Farrah, lead author of both papers."

“What that means, though, is not that other people haven’t proposed sources for dark energy, but this is the first observational paper where we’re not adding anything new to the universe as a source for dark energy: black holes in Einstein’s theory of gravity are the dark energy.”

"The researchers found that the further back in time they looked, the smaller the black holes were in mass, relative to their masses today. These changes were big: The black holes were anywhere from 7 to 20 times larger today than they were 9 billion years ago—big enough that the researchers suspected cosmological coupling could be the culprit."

"The conclusion is profound: Croker and Weiner had already shown that if k is 3, then all black holes in the universe collectively contribute a nearly constant dark energy density, just like measurements of dark energy suggest."

"Black holes come from dead large stars, so if you know how many large stars you are making, you can estimate how many black holes you are making and how much they grow as a result of cosmological coupling. The team used the very latest measurements of the rate of earliest star formation provided by the James Webb Space Telescope and found that the numbers line up."

"According to the researchers, their studies provide a framework for theoretical physicists and astronomers to further test—and for the current generation of dark energy experiments such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and the Dark Energy Survey—to shed light on the idea."

“If confirmed this would be a remarkable result, pointing the way towards the next generation of black hole solutions,” said Farrah.

Croker added, “This measurement, explaining why the universe is accelerating now, gives a beautiful glimpse into the real strength of Einstein’s gravity. A chorus of tiny voices spread throughout the universe can work together to steer the entire cosmos. How cool is that?”

Pretty cool I'd say...