Shortly after the Big Bang, tiny black holes may have formed in the young universe. These primordial objects - first proposed in 1971 by Stephen Hawking - have once again become a major focus of astrophysical research. Perhaps these so-called primordial black holes still permeate the entire universe today, possibly even our own solar system. And perhaps they could solve one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics: the nature of dark matter.
On this Café & Cosmos evening, Valentin Thoss (LMU Munich) will present current research results on these “black holes from the Big Bang” and explain why they could open a new window toward solving the dark matter problem. He will show how we search for such objects and what their possible discovery could reveal about the earliest phases of the cosmos.