Astronomers may have discovered “dark stars” – why that should be a sensation

Dark matter stars – what sounds like an ominous scenario from a sci-fi movie could actually exist. And astronomers may have discovered three such stars.

Until now, the three bright spots have been interpreted as early galaxies that formed more than 13.4 billion years ago. They were not discovered until December 2022 by the James Webb telescope. Since the researchers already suspected that the objects might also be “dark stars”, they made comparisons with model simulations.

The result: Some of their features meet the criteria for dark matter stars. As the research team Katherine Freese of the University of Texas and the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stockholm reports, they have thus “identified the first Dark Star candidates”. However, to prove this theorem perfectly, a few more tests are needed.

If the assumption is confirmed, it would “herald in a new era of astronomy” – because the existence of such stars has previously been pure speculation. The special thing about the “Dark Stars”: their brilliance may be due to the mutual destruction of dark matter particles instead of the nuclear fusion of normal atoms.

Therefore, such stars would also have an enormous mass – they could become as massive as a small galaxy. They are also considered possible precursors to early supermassive black holes.

According to the researchers, the rapid growth of supermassive black holes could also be related to such stars. “When their supply of dark matter runs out, such dark stars collapse into black holes,” the publication says.

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