A recent study by an international team of scientists—led by the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics, the University of Aveiro, and including OzGrav researchers—shows that the “heaviest black hole collision” ever observed might be something even more mysterious—dark matter. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time that travel at the speed of light. Predicted in Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, they originate in the most violent events of our Universe, carrying information about their sources. Since 2015, humankind can observe and interpret gravitational waves thanks to the two Advanced LIGO detectors (Livingston and Hanford, USA) and the Advanced Virgo detector (Cascina, Italy). To date, these detectors have already observed around 50 gravitational-wave signals which originated in the coalescence and merger of two of the most mysterious entities in the Universe—black holes and neutron stars—deepening our knowledge of the Universe. Gravitational wave astronomy could eventually provide us with evidence for previously unobserved or unexpected objects and shed light on current open issues, like the nature of dark matter—a discovery that may have already happened. In September 2020, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations (LVC) announced the gravitational-wave signal called GW190521. The signal was consistent with the collision of two black holes of 85 and 66 times the mass of the Sun, which produced a final 142 solar mass black hole—this was the first-ever detected intermediate-mass black hole. This discovery was extremely important as intermediate black holes were long considered the missing link between two well-known black-hole families: the stellar-mass black holes, that form from the collapse of stars, and the supermassive black holes, that hide in the centre of almost every galaxy. Despite its significance, the observation of GW190521 posed an enormous challenge to scientists’ understanding of stellar evolution: the life and death of stars is significantly more massive than our Sun. If this is correct, the heaviest of the two colliding black holes shouldn’t have occurred as the end-result of the gravitational collapse of a massive star. In an article recently published in Physical Review Letters, a team of scientists lead by OzGrav alumnus Dr Juan Calderón Bustillo, (now “La Caixa Junior Leader - Marie Curie Fellow”, at the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics) and Dr Nicolás Sanchis-Gual, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Aveiro and at the Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon), together with OzGrav researchers from Monash University Dr Rory Smith and Avi Vajpeyi, and collaborators from the University of Valencia and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, has proposed an alternative explanation for the origin of the signal GW190521: the collision of two exotic compact objects known as boson stars. Such hypothetical stars are among the simplest exotic compact objects proposed, and present as well-founded dark matter candidates. Within this interpretation, the team estimated the mass of a new particle constituent of these stars: an ultra-light boson with a mass billionths of times smaller than that of the electron. Dr Nicolás Sanchis-Gual, explains: “Boson stars are objects almost as compact as black holes, but they don’t have a ‘no-return’ surface, or event horizon. When they collide, they form a boson star that can become unstable, eventually collapsing to a black hole, and producing a signal consistent with what LIGO and Virgo observed. Unlike regular stars, which are made of what we commonly know as matter, boson stars are made up of what we know as ultralight bosons. These bosons are one of the most appealing candidates for constituting dark matter, which forms ~27% of the Universe.” The team compared the GW190521 signal to computer simulations of boson-star mergers and found that these explain the data slightly better than the analysis conducted by LIGO and Virgo. The result implies that the source would have different properties than stated earlier. Dr Calderón Bustillo explains: “First, we wouldn’t be talking about colliding black holes anymore, which eliminates the issue of dealing with a forbidden black hole. Second, because boson star mergers are much weaker, we infer a much closer distance than the one estimated by LIGO and Virgo. This leads to a much larger mass for the final black hole, of about 250 solar masses, so the fact that we have witnessed the formation of an intermediate-mass black hole remains true”. The team found that even though the analysis tends to favour “by design” the merging black-holes hypothesis, a boson star merger is actually preferred by the data, although in a non-conclusive way. Professor José A. Font from the University of Valencia says: “Our results show that the two scenarios are almost indistinguishable given the data, although the exotic boson-star one is slightly preferred. This is very exciting since the computational framework of our current boson-star simulations is still fairly limited and subject to major improvements. A more evolved model might lead to even larger evidence for the boson-star scenario and would also allow us to study similar gravitational-wave observations under the boson-star merger assumption”. This result would not only involve the first observation of boson stars, but also that of their building block, a new particle known as ultra-light boson. Such ultra-light bosons have been proposed as the constituents of what we know as dark matter, which makes up around 27% of the observable Universe. Professor Carlos Herdeiro, from University of Aveiro says that “one of the most fascinating results is that we can actually measure the mass of this putative new dark-matter particle, and that a value of zero is discarded with high confidence. If confirmed by subsequent analysis of this and other gravitational-wave observations, our result would provide the first observational evidence for a long-sought dark matter candidate”. OzGrav researcher Dr Rory Smith adds: “Gravitational-wave astronomy is still very much in its infancy. However, the fact that we are already able to start drawing connections between gravitational-wave observations and fundamental particle physics is a remarkable sign of how powerful this new field is. Even if future observations rule out boson stars as real astronomical objects, we should expect many new and exciting discoveries in the future”. Written by Dr Juan Calderón Bustillo. Also featured on Space Australia.
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