NASA telescope hunts for 'featherweight' black holes which have gone undetected
Representational image of black holes in space.
Black holes present in the universe have always intriguedastronomers who have tried to unravel the mysteries they encompass within their unknown vastness.
Till now many black holes have been discovered by astronomers some of which are only a few times the sun's mass while some are tens of billions of times the mass of our sun.
It has now been suggested by a group of scientists that NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope can find a class of "featherweight" black holes which may have eluded detection till now.
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The black holes are formed either when a massive star collapses or when there is a merger of heavy objects in the galaxies.
The scientists, however, suspect that smaller "primordial" black holes, which include some with masses similar to that of Earth, may have been formed during the first chaotic moments of the early universe.
University of California Santa Cruz's postdoctoral researcher William DeRocco said, "Detecting a population of Earth-mass primordial black holes would be an incredible step for both astronomy and particle physics because these objects can't be formed by any known physical process."
He had led the study about how the black holes can be revealed by Roman.
How primordial black holes may have been formed?
According to scientists, the universe experienced a brief but intense phase when it was born, which is known as inflation when space stretched out faster than the speed of light.
In such conditions, the areas which were denser in comparison to the surroundings are likely to have collapsed and formed low-mass primordial black holes.
Although, the theory predicts that the smallest ones may have evaporated before the universe reached its present state, those which had masses similar to Earth may have survived.
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Scientists are trying to discover these tiny objects which they believe will have an enormous impact on physics and astronomy.
Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore Kailash Sahu said, "It would affect everything fromgalaxy formationto the universe's dark matter content to cosmic history."
"Confirming their identities will be hard work and astronomers will need a lot of convincing, but it would be well worth it," he added.
(With inputs from agencies)