Tiny black holes alter Earth's orbit: scientists on "aliens" from the early universe

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are likely to be flying through our solar system, wreaking havoc on a stable system. In particular, they affect the orbits of the planets, causing them to "wobble" and "swing".

This is stated in a study by scientists from the Center for Theoretical Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their work has been published on the arXiv preprint site and is awaiting review by the scientific community.

According to the scientists' hypothesis, we are talking about tiny black holes that were formed in the first seconds after the Big Bang, which occurred about 14 billion years ago. One of these "aliens" from the past seems to fly through our solar system about once a decade.

Primordial black holes are very interesting for scientists, who suspect that these objects are mostly composed of dark matter. This is a hypothetical substance that does not interact with light or the electromagnetic field but is believed to make up approximately 27% of the matter that makes up the universe.

Despite the fact that this hypothesis is unproven and quite controversial, it is of interest to scientists because it hints that there are still enough surprises in the universe that have yet to be explored.

The physicists who voiced this hypothesis believe that such PBHs would be absolutely minuscule. Their size is estimated to be somewhere between "the size of a hydrogen molecule and the size of an average bacterium."

But even though they are extremely tiny, their impact on the planets of the solar system is quite powerful.

Scientists are convinced that when such a PBH flies past planets, including the Earth, they "begin to wobble or sway slightly relative to the path they were traveling before the flight."

This can be proved by measuring the distance between the planet and the Sun during such oscillations and finding that it is different from the traditional one.

However, the modeling showed that if an object with an asteroid-like mass approached the Sun at a distance twice as large as the distance between the Earth and the Sun, the deviation would be from a few centimeters to a meter. Thus, it will not be easy to catch it.

To obtain more accurate data, researchers need to use more powerful simulations of the solar system, as well as "decades of highly accurate observational data."

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