For decades, scientists have puzzled over dark energy—the mysterious force causing the universe to expand faster and faster.
Now, researchers from Durham University, the University of Michigan, and the international Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) mission have put forward a bold idea: black holes themselves may be engines that generate dark energy.
The study, published in Physical Review Letters, combines DESI data with measurements of the cosmic microwave background—the faint afterglow of the Big Bang.
Together, these observations point to a new way of explaining the contents of the universe and how they evolve over time.
In this new model, when stars collapse into black holes, a hidden process may slowly convert the matter falling in into dark energy.
This transformation follows the history of star formation in the universe, meaning the amount of dark energy naturally changes as more stars are born and die. This idea fits both early- and late-universe data, potentially solving a long-standing cosmic mystery.
The proposal comes on the heels of DESI’s surprising finding that dark energy may not be constant, as scientists long assumed, but could actually be changing over time.
If true, this would mark a major shift in our understanding of the cosmos. The new model not only provides a possible source of dark energy but also sheds light on one of physics’ other big puzzles: the mass of neutrinos.
Neutrinos are ghostlike particles that flood the universe, created in nuclear reactions in stars and during the Big Bang. Scientists know neutrinos have a tiny amount of mass, but they have never been able to measure it precisely.
In fact, when researchers analyzed DESI data under the “standard model” of cosmology—which assumes constant dark energy—they ran into a bizarre problem: the calculations suggested neutrinos had negative mass, something that makes no physical sense.
Last year, a Durham team led by Dr. Willem Elbers proposed that the evolving nature of dark energy could explain this conflict. The new study, led by the University of Michigan, builds on that idea with a concrete model.
By linking dark energy to black holes, the researchers restored the neutrino mass to a positive value, in line with established physics.
DESI is one of the most ambitious astronomy projects ever undertaken, involving more than 900 scientists from over 70 institutions worldwide. The five-year mission, managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is creating the most detailed map yet of the universe’s large-scale structure, tracing how galaxies and cosmic webs have grown over billions of years.
If the new theory proves correct, it could profoundly reshape our understanding of both black holes and dark energy. Instead of being cosmic dead ends, black holes might be the very engines fueling the universe’s accelerated expansion.
Source: Durham University.
