Researchers from the Max Planck Institute suspect the existence of a small black hole in the interior of the Sun

It seems that this is a hypothesis that cannot be rejected outright. Black holes can hide inside stars. What seems improbable at first could help explain strange gravitational effects in the universe attributed to dark matter.

A research team led by Earl Bellinger of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching near Munich has gone so far as to describe the process of being devoured by black holes. A possible explanation for dark matter To be examined as such. Bellinger and his colleagues calculated the effects that so-called primordial black holes of different masses can have on the evolution of their host star.

Bellinger's team hypothesizes that our Sun must be a black hole that could be roughly the size of the planet Mercury. Smaller holes will have little measurable impact, while larger holes will eat the sun from the inside very quickly.

On the other hand, a Mercury-sized black hole would grow the Sun by producing intense light that would dislodge its outer layers. This would cause the temperature to drop below the temperature required for nuclear fusion over millions of years, keeping the star stable, Bellinger said.

This cooling effect would put the star in a state that could best be compared to a pot of boiling water, according to the Max Planck team. Eventually, the Sun will turn into a rare type of unusually cool star – a so-called red star.

But if there was a black hole at the center of an anomalous red star, that would cause it to pulsate in a unique way. To verify the theory, Bellinger now wants to look for this signature in the approximately 500 red stray stars currently known.

The characteristic pulsation of the Sun cannot be proven. That can be explained, Bellinger says. After all, a black hole in the Sun could be small enough to produce a signature that would be difficult to detect.

However, the body will affect the evolution of the Sun. For example, it can effectively lower the temperature of the sun and save the Earth from being swallowed by the sun.

However, this would not help humanity and other living organisms on Earth, because our planet would still be hot enough to boil the oceans and destroy all life.

However, the discovery of more stars with primordial black holes could help explain the dark matter that researchers believe causes the inexplicable gravitational effects we see in the universe. Examples include galaxies that rotate faster than one would expect based on the influence of visible matter alone. However, if black holes are hiding in stars, their extra mass could explain this effect, Bellinger says.

Paulo Montero Camacho of Tsinghua University in China points out that the new study has a serious flaw. The assumption that stars can accommodate primordial black holes still needs to be proven. Montero Camacho keeps it loud new world To ask: “It is difficult for a star to capture primordial black holes because they are very small and move very quickly.”