Popular Mechanics by Jackie Appel Feb 16, 2023
For the first time ever, we can explain its entire existence with no new physics.We may have just found the source of dark energy. No, seriously.
A set of two new papers led by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa propose that dark energy is produced by a combination of black holes and the expansion of the universe.
Black holes are fairly mysterious objects, despite how long we’ve been studying them. They’re hard to observe, and they evolve over long periods of time.
So, a few years ago, the team proposed a concept that could make things line up a bit better: cosmological coupling. This is the idea that not only is the mass of the black hole influenced by the stars it eats and any other black holes it merges with—it’s influenced by the expansion of the universe itself.
That’s not quite as wild as it seems. If a black hole expands along with the universe, that expansion generates energy. And because energy and mass are linked through everyone’s favorite physics equation, e=mc², if the energy increases, the mass increases with it.
With the idea of cosmological coupling in place, the question became how to prove it. The team needed to demonstrate that the expansion of the universe was strongly tied to the growth of black holes. They called the strength of this bond k.
More:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a42941836/scientists-find-source-of-dark-energy/
