Mini Black Holes ruled out as dark matter candidates by Voyager 1 investigation
A long-mooted explanation for the nature of dark matter may have been ruled out by observations made by the ageing Voyager 1 probe — humanity’s most distant spacecraft.
The Voyager 1 probe — launched in 1977 and currently 21.7 billion km from Earth after leaving the solar system six years ago — has assisted theoretical physicists to determine that a long-held theory identifying mini-black holes — left over from the Big Bang — as dark matter may be incorrect.
Alan Cummings, a space scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who has worked on Voyager 1 since 1973 and who was not involved in the analysis was surprised at the use of data from the probe in this way: “I never thought we’d be able to contribute in any way to studying dark matter.”
For as long as dark matter has been thought to exist, some astronomers have believed that it may be comprised of black holes. The theory is a slightly unfavourable one as dark matter outweighs regular matter in the Universe by…
