{"id":416515,"date":"2026-02-09T17:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T17:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/416515\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T17:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T17:37:07","slug":"the-new-idea-that-turns-the-universes-expansion-into-a-kind-of-cosmic-fuel-that-no-one-had-taken-this-seriously-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/416515\/","title":{"rendered":"the new idea that turns the universe\u2019s expansion into a kind of cosmic \u201cfuel\u201d that no one had taken this seriously before"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades, black holes<\/a> were treated like a cosmic punchline. In the 1930s, astronomer Arthur Eddington<\/a> openly mocked the idea that a star could collapse into something so extreme, calling it \u201cabsurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now the conversation has flipped. A new peer-reviewed study argues that black holes could be tied to dark energy<\/a>, the unknown \u201cpush\u201d that makes the universe expand faster<\/a> and faster, and the team says fresh data is turning this from a thought experiment into a testable claim.<\/p>\n

From \u201cabsurd\u201d to unavoidable<\/p>\n

Black holes went from math on paper to observed reality over the last century, helped along by new instruments and a lot of stubborn scientists. Stephen Hawking<\/a> made them mainstream in physics, but even today, researchers still debate what is happening deep inside them.<\/p>\n

That old skepticism matters because it shapes how careful scientists are now. When a new idea claims black holes might also explain dark energy, the burden of proof is high, and the debate is very much alive.<\/p>\n

Dark energy in plain language<\/p>\n

Dark energy<\/a> is the name scientists give to whatever is driving the universe\u2019s accelerated expansion. In simple terms, it\u2019s like a background \u201cpressure\u201d that keeps nudging space itself outward, even though gravity should be pulling things together.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a small detail. The University of Michigan<\/a> press release behind the new work notes that dark energy makes up roughly 70% of the universe, yet scientists still do not know what it is made of.<\/p>\n

The key concept behind the new claim<\/p>\n

The study focuses on an idea called cosmological coupling. In practical terms, it suggests a black hole\u2019s effective mass could grow as the universe expands, even if it is not actively swallowing stars or gas.<\/p>\n

That growth matters because it can mimic the effect of dark energy. Researchers including Kevin Croker<\/a> say that if black holes carry something like \u201cvacuum energy,\u201d their connection to the expanding universe could help drive the acceleration we measure from far away.<\/p>\n

What the researchers actually did<\/p>\n

The team tested the idea against measurements from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument<\/a>, a project that maps the universe in 3D by tracking millions of galaxies and how their light is spread across space. <\/p>\n

If you want a simple picture, it is like using an enormous cosmic survey to measure how \u201cstretched\u201d the universe is at different times.<\/p>\n

In the new paper, the scientists compared that expansion history to when black holes should have been \u201cborn,\u201d mostly from the collapse of massive stars. Gregory Tarl\u00e9 described the concept as a kind of \u201cBig Bang<\/a> played in reverse,\u201d where matter collapsing into a black hole could be linked to a rise in dark energy.<\/p>\n

What this could change, and what comes next<\/p>\n

If this picture holds up, it would offer a concrete origin story for dark energy that does not require inventing a brand-new field of physics from scratch. It would also connect huge, abstract questions<\/a> to something more grounded, the life and death of stars.<\/p>\n

But there are big open questions. Brian Cartwright and Rogier Windhorst point out that the strongest signal in this analysis comes from black holes born later in cosmic history<\/a>, and researchers still need to pin down where those black holes are today and how they moved over billions of years.<\/p>\n

Related reading includes the team\u2019s earlier work on black hole growth in dormant galaxies, described in this 2023 Imperial College London release and in the University of Hawai\u02bbi System News<\/a> summary, along with the newer DESI-based<\/a> press release and the paper preprint for readers who want the details.<\/p>\n

The main study has been published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For decades, black holes were treated like a cosmic punchline. In the 1930s, astronomer Arthur Eddington openly mocked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2302,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-416515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}