Black Holes Slamming Into the Moon Could End the Dark-Matter Debate

upstart writes:

Black holes slamming into the moon could end the dark-matter debate:

Circa 14 billion years ago, when the universe's clock began to tick, space was still a tight, blazing hot, frenzied packet of cosmic stuff. Stars were yet to shine, planets hadn't been born, and jittery particles of every shape and size were zipping around at random. It was chaos.

But somewhere amid the lawlessness, in between spirals of stardust, a few minuscule, unstable and hyper-dense pockets of flaming matter might have collapsed. And if they did, scientists believe they would've dotted the early universe with clusters of black holes even smaller than atoms.

Don't let these petite spheres of doom fool you. A black hole half the size of a golf ball would have a mass equivalent to Earth's. Even microscopic black holes, with masses comparable to asteroids, would've unceasingly sucked in and destroyed everything along their path.

Slowly, as the universe progressed, swarms of them would have seen planetary systems rise and fall, and billions of years ago there's a fair chance they'd have even whizzed through our corner of the cosmos. Eventually, these mini black holes would've sailed away from each other. But if they did exist, experts think they'd still be roaming in and around the galaxies right this second.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.