Observations by NASA’s recently launched James Webb Space Telescope could hint that many black holes formed during the birth of the universe.
This collapse would happen only as soon as elementary particles called quarks are able to coalesce into protons, Hasinger says, which would begin while the universe was just a fraction of a second old.
Designed to examine signals from more than 13.5 billion years ago, the James Webb Telescope could be the bridge between Hawking’s decades-old idea and dark matter. Back when Hawking proposed primordial black holes, researchers “didn’t have a real sense of scale,” Hasinger says. They thought the black holes created would be very small, so scientists in the years that followed looked for the gamma rays produced by small black holes.
Hasinger is confident that the James Webb telescope will see stars, if they exist, in what’s called the “deep field,” the dark region of space where the Hubble Space Telescope spotted a plethora of the oldest observed galaxies for the first time. And if that happens, it’s likely to occur in a matter of months after the observatory begins operation.
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