While the scientific establishment has spent decades chasing invisible particles that never quite show up, a leading cosmologist has dropped a theory that turns everything on its head: dark matter isn’t some exotic new particle. It could be ancient black holes that survived from an entirely different universe.
This idea, laid out by Professor Enrique Gaztanaga of the University of Portsmouth, doesn’t just tackle one cosmic puzzle. It offers a clean fix for the Big Bang’s thorniest problems and lines up with fresh observations that have astronomers scrambling.
Gaztanaga argues the elusive substance that makes up roughly 27 per cent of the universe’s mass may actually be “relic” black holes formed in a previous collapsing phase of the cosmos.
What is dark matter? Elusive substance could be made of black holes from a different UNIVERSE, scientist claims https://t.co/GdjXzdJ1Ee
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) April 15, 2026
“The idea is that dark matter may not be a new particle, but instead a population of black holes formed in a previous collapsing phase and bounce of the Universe,” Professor Gaztanaga says.
He rejects the standard singularity model where everything explodes from an infinitely dense point that breaks physics. Instead, he proposes a “bouncing” universe.
“The Big Bang corresponds to a bounce from a previous collapsing phase, rather than the absolute beginning of everything,” the Professor Gaztanaga further noted, adding “So it is the start of the expansion we observe, but not necessarily the beginning of time itself.”
In this picture, black holes from the collapsing galaxies of that earlier universe survived the bounce and now drift through our cosmos, exerting gravity without emitting light.
We may have been wrong about wormholes.
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 16, 2026
Recent research challenges the popular notion that wormholes—hypothetical tunnels through spacetime enabling interstellar travel—are directly linked to the original Einstein-Rosen bridge. In 1935, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen… pic.twitter.com/ipm9RlXl54
“These ‘relic’ black holes would survive into the expanding phase we observe today and behave exactly like dark matter: they interact gravitationally, but do not emit light,” he explains.
The theory also neatly accounts for the James Webb Space Telescope’s baffling discovery of bright red dots—rapidly growing black holes—mere hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. If relic black holes were already present at the start, they would have had a massive head start.
A study of the fascinating galaxy system nicknamed "The Stingray" suggests that mysterious little red dots could be a phase in the evolution of galaxies powered by actively feeding black holes, rather than a distinct class of objects. https://t.co/FfKPDQVxl7
— Live Science (@LiveScience) April 9, 2026
It also sidesteps the need for new particles while explaining how supermassive black holes formed so quickly in the early universe.
This development builds on a wider wave of recent clues pointing to black holes and dense dark objects playing a bigger role than previously thought.
Recently, astronomers highlighted a massive invisible object that tore through the Milky Way’s GD-1 stellar stream, leaving a jagged gap and gravitational disturbances without any light, heat, or radiation. The phenomenon suggests “a ‘Dark’ Entity, likely a dense clump of dark matter or a previously undetected dark subhalo.”
BREAKING?: Astronomers have identified a massive, invisible object that recently tore through the Milky Way’s GD-1 stellar stream, leaving a jagged gap and creating significant gravitational disturbances without emitting light, heat, or radiation.
— Night Sky Today (@NightSkyToday) April 8, 2026
The Phenomenon suggests a… pic.twitter.com/cp2FQIrhTj
This phenomenon has been witnessed before.
Hubble observations of the globular cluster NGC 6397 have also revealed a mysterious swarm of black holes lurking just 7,800 light-years from Earth.
NEWS?: A mysterious swarm of black holes has been found lurking just 7,800 light-years away from Earth. pic.twitter.com/R8rH9m1ouF
— For all Curious (@fascinatingonX) April 10, 2026
For years the default dark matter story has been “trust us, it’s some particle we haven’t found yet.” Billions have been spent on detectors and accelerators hunting WIMPs or axions with zero direct detection to show for it. Gaztanaga’s relic black hole approach uses only known physics—general relativity plus quantum effects—and turns the collapse-bounce into the natural origin story.
Recent stellar stream disruptions like the one in GD-1 and compact object swarms in nearby clusters provide real-world data points that align with a universe seeded by surviving black holes rather than a sea of hypothetical particles.
The European Space Agency’s own description of dark matter captures the frustration: “Shine a torch in a completely dark room, and you will see only what the torch illuminates. That does not mean that the room around you does not exist.”
Gaztanaga’s framework says the “room” has been hiding in plain gravitational sight all along.
Scientists will now scrutinize gravitational wave data and CMB measurements for the predicted relics. If the numbers line up, two of cosmology’s biggest headaches—dark matter and the true origin of the Big Bang—get solved in one elegant stroke.
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