(Press-News.org)
As federal funding cuts impact decades of research, scientists could turn to black holes for cheaper, natural alternatives to expensive facilities searching for dark matter and similarly elusive particles that hold clues to the universe’s deepest secrets, a new Johns Hopkins study of supermassive black holes suggests.
The findings could help complement multi-billion-dollar expenses and decades of construction needed for research complexes like Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world.
“One of the great hopes for particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider is that it will generate dark matter particles, but we haven’t seen any evidence yet,” said study co-author Joseph Silk, an astrophysics professor at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Oxford, UK. “That’s why there are discussions underway to build a much more powerful version, a next-generation supercollider. But as we invest $30 billion and wait 40 years to build this supercollider—nature may provide a glimpse of the future in super massive black holes.”
The research appears today in Physical Review Letters.
Particle colliders smash protons and other subatomic particles into each other at nearly the speed of light, exposing the most fundamental aspects of matter. Subtle energy flashes and debris from the clash could reveal previously undiscovered particles, including potential candidates for dark matter, a critical but ghostly component of the universe that scientists have yet to detect. Facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile circular tunnel, have also helped transform the internet, cancer therapy, and high-performance computing.
A black hole can spin around its axis like a planet, but with much greater strength because of its intense gravitational field. Scientists are increasingly discovering that some rapidly spinning massive black holes at the centers of galaxies release enormous outbursts of plasma, likely because of jets powered by energy from their spin and surrounding accretion disks. It’s these events that could potentially generate the same results as human-made supercolliders, the new study shows.
“If supermassive black holes can generate these particles by high-energy proton collisions, then we might get a signal on Earth, some really high-energy particle passing rapidly through our detectors,” said Silk, who is also a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and at the University of Oxford. “That would be the evidence for a novel particle collider within the most mysterious objects in the universe, attaining energies that would be unattainable in any terrestrial accelerator. We’d see something with a strange signature that conceivably provides evidence for dark matter, which is a bit more of a leap but it’s possible.”
The new study shows that plunging “gas flows” near a black hole can draw energy from its spin, becoming much more violent than scientists thought possible. Near a rapidly spinning black hole, these particles can chaotically collide. Although not identical, the process is similar to the collisions scientists create using intense magnetic fields to accelerate particles in the circular tunnel of a high-energy particle collider.
“Some particles from these collisions go down the throat of the black hole and disappear forever. But because of their energy and momentum, some also come out, and it’s those that come out which are accelerated to unprecedentedly high energies,” Silk said. “We figured out how energetic these beams of particles could be: as powerful as you get from a supercollider, or more. It’s very hard to say what the limit is, but they certainly are up to the energy of the newest supercollider that we plan to build, so they could definitely give us complementary results.”
To detect such high-energy particles, scientists could use observatories already tracking supernovae, massive black hole eruptions, and other cosmic events, Silk said. These include detectors like the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the South Pole or the Kilometer Cube Neutrino Telescope, which recently detected the most energetic neutrino ever recorded under the Mediterranean Sea.
“The difference between a supercollider and a black hole is that black holes are far away,” Silk said. “But nevertheless, these particles will get to us.”
Dr. Andrew Mummery, a theoretical physicist at University of Oxford, is also an author of the study.
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Journal: JAMA Network Open
Title: Elevated death rates associated with incarceration emphasize the need for health care interventions both during and after incarceration
Author: Utsha Khatri, MD, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Population Health Science and Policy, and Global Health and Health System Design, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Bottom line: This study shows individual incarceration rates and rates at the county level (the number of incarcerated individuals per 100,000 residents) are strongly associated with ...
Scientists at the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-Tiget), Milan, have found that gene editing using CRISPR-Cas9 in combination with AAV6 vectors can trigger inflammatory and senescence-like responses in blood stem cells, compromising their long-term ability to regenerate the blood system. The study, published in Cell Reports Medicine, outlines new strategies to overcome this hurdle, improving both the safety and efficacy of gene-editing-based therapies for inherited blood disorders.
The research was led by Dr. Raffaella Di Micco, group leader at SR-Tiget, New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Investigator and Associate Professor at the School ...
About The Study: In this cross-sectional study of births among individuals with a prior cesarean birth, patterns of severe maternal morbidity (SMM) by birth mode varied by race and ethnicity, with elevated rates of SMM among those from marginalized racial and ethnic groups with planned cesarean births. Future work should identify interventions to improve quality of care and promote equity for this population.
Corresponding author: To contact the corresponding author, Laura B. Attanasio, Ph.D., email lattanasio@umass.edu.
To access ...
About The Study: In this cohort study of 3.26 million individuals in the U.S., results highlighted the dual burden of incarceration on health outcomes. Individuals who were incarcerated faced significantly higher risks of death, particularly from overdoses, and elevated county incarceration rates exacerbated individual-level mortality risks. These findings suggest the need for reforms in criminal justice and public health policies to address these elevated risks and their widespread implications.
Corresponding author: To contact the corresponding author, Utsha G. Khatri, M.D., M.S., email utsha.khatri@mountsinai.org.
To access the embargoed study: ...
Barcelona, 3 June 2025 - More than 80% of early human embryos contain cells with an incorrect number of chromosomes—a phenomenon called aneuploidy. This typically stems from errors in chromosome segregation during the very first cell divisions. Remarkably, aneuploid cells are eliminated before implantation. When this does not happen, aneuploidy causes miscarriages or developmental disorders. Understanding how aneuploid cells are eliminated in these early stages is crucial for gaining insights into fertility, and it could also have implications for diseases like cancer.
A team led by Dr. Marco Milán at IRB Barcelona has developed a tool that can generate customized ...
SAN ANTONIO — June 3, 2025 — New research led by a Southwest Research Institute scientist identified a new source of energetic particles near the Sun. These definitive observations were made by instruments aboard NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which detected the powerful phenomena as the spacecraft dipped in and out of the solar corona.
These new results offer fresh perspectives on how magnetic reconnection could heat the solar atmosphere, which then transitions into the solar wind, and also how solar flares accelerate a small fraction of charged particles to ...
“As advanced age is associated with increased incidence of hypoxia-associated conditions such as asthma, emphysema, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, and apnea, our findings have important implications for many people.”
BUFFALO, NY — June 3, 2025 — A new research paper was published in Aging (Aging-US) on May 1, 2025, as the cover of Volume 17, Issue 5, titled “Defining the hypoxic thresholds that trigger blood-brain barrier disruption: the effect of age.”
In this ...
Heart disease and type 2 diabetes rank among the leading causes of death and disability in the United States, and eating a healthy diet rich in plant-based foods can help to prevent or delay both of these conditions. New research suggests that a particular component of plant-based foods, known as phytosterol, could be instrumental in lowering the risk.
According to the study, people who consumed more phytosterol—a compound structurally similar to cholesterol found in some plant foods—had a significantly lower risk of both heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Higher phytosterol intake was also associated with markers of better insulin regulation and reduced inflammation, ...
Turns out, your sweet tooth may not be shaped by your diet. Findings from a new randomized controlled trial suggest that eating more sweet-tasting foods doesn’t increase someone’s preference for sweet tastes.
The researchers found that after six months on diets with varying amounts of sweet foods, study participants' preference for sweetness stayed the same, no matter how much sweet-tasting foods they ate.
“We also found that diets with lower or higher dietary sweetness ...
Recent years have seen growing scrutiny and debate around processed foods, but researchers have struggled to pin down what aspects of food processing are most relevant to health. Now, scientists have developed a system for classifying processed foods based on information about the health impacts associated with particular ingredients.
The new approach was developed by WISEcode, creator of an app that provides consumers with information about the food ingredients found in packaged goods.
“WISEcode’s approach is more nuanced and objective than previous classification ...