A controversial new theory suggests that supermassive black holes that lurk at the heart of most large galaxies could be the source of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe.
The suggested link – referred to as a “cosmological coupling” – was born from observations of black holes at the heart of distant galaxies that seem to have grown more rapidly than simply accreting mass or merging with other black holes would allow.
Investigating this further, the team, including lead author Duncan Farrah from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, discovered that the strength of the coupling means the growth of the black holes matched the accelerating expansion of the universe.
“There is no agreement on which model for dark energy is most likely to be correct, but the simplest model for dark energy is a ‘cosmological constant’. In this model, the whole universe is pervaded by uniform and constant energy density,” Farrah tells Physics World. “This doesn’t sound so mysterious, but the energy density must stay constant even as the universe expands. There’s no object known that behaves in the required way. Because of this, it is thought by some to be a property of the vacuum itself.”
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