* Astronomy

Did 'Dark Gulping' Generate Black Holes in Early Universe?
A process called 'dark gulping' may solve the mystery of the how supermassive black holes were able to form when the Universe was less than a billion years old. Dr Curtis Saxton will be presenting the study at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield. Dr Saxton and Professor Kinwah Wu, both of UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, developed a model to study the gravitational interactions between the invisible halo of dark matter in a cluster of galaxies and the gas embedded in the dark matter halo.  They found that the interactions cause the dark matter to form a compact central mass, which can be gravitationally unstable, depending on the thermal properties of the dark matter.  If the cluster is disturbed, the dark matter central mass would undergo a very rapid collapse, without a trace of electro-magnetic radiation being emitted.  This fast dynamical collapse of the unstable dark-matter is called dark gulping.

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