Dark matter, the unseen substance that makes up most of the universe’s matter, could play a more dramatic role than previously thought.
A new study suggests that heavy dark matter particles trapped inside a dense star could accumulate at its core, collapse into a tiny black hole roughly the mass of a loaded semi-truck and gradually transform the entire star into a black hole. The authors of the study, published in the latest issue of the Physical Review D , are H.A. Adarsha and Chandrachur Chakraborty of the Manipal Centre for Natural Sciences at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, and Sudip Bhattacharyya of Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Their study focuses on two extremely dense types of stellar objects — millisecond pulsars and white dwarfs.
Because many millisecond pulsars and white dwarfs have survived for billions of years, dark matter capable of destroying them sooner can be ruled out,” the study said. “We find that continued dark matter feeding can allow black holes born with masses as low as about 40 tonnes to overcome evaporation and eventually consume their host stars.
