Who hypothesized the existence of dark stars?

The OG Black Hole Idea: Meet John Michell, the Dark Star Guy

Okay, so “dark stars” sound like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, right? Massive objects that suck in everything, even light. But here’s a mind-blower: the idea isn’t exactly new. We’re talking way back to the 1700s, before even electricity was really a “thing.” Enter John Michell, a British dude who was a geologist, a clergyman, and apparently, a total genius.

Michell, in 1783, basically laid out the groundwork for black holes in a letter to his buddy Henry Cavendish. Can you imagine stumbling on that discovery? Anyway, this letter got published by The Royal Society the next year, and boom, the world got its first peek at the concept of “dark stars.” Michell, you see, was messing around with Newton’s laws and light. He figured, hey, if a star’s beefy enough, the speed you’d need to escape its gravity – the escape velocity – could be as fast or faster than light itself! If that happened, any light trying to get out would be stuck, making the star totally invisible. Pretty wild, huh?

What’s even cooler is that Michell wasn’t just throwing out a random idea. He actually thought about how we might find these invisible stars. He suggested looking at double star systems where you only see one star. If the visible star’s wobbling around like it’s got a buddy, but you can’t see the buddy, well, maybe that’s your dark star! It’s kind of like how we find black holes today – by watching how they mess with stuff around them. Talk about forward-thinking!

Now, Michell’s “dark stars” weren’t exactly the same as the black holes Einstein predicted with his relativity theory. Einstein flipped the script, showing us that gravity isn’t just a force, but a warp in space and time. But still, Michell’s idea was a crucial first step. Rediscovering his work later on really drove home how important it is to look back at the history of science. You never know where the next big idea might come from!

Wait, There’s More: Dark Stars Powered by… Dark Matter?

And the “dark star” story doesn’t end there! Fast forward to 2008, and some astrophysicists – Katherine Freese and her team – came up with a new twist. What if there were stars in the early universe that were powered not by the usual nuclear fusion, but by dark matter?

These wouldn’t be your average stars. They’d be mostly normal matter, sure, but packed with a ton of dark matter particles called neutralinos. These neutralinos would smash into each other, creating heat and stopping the star from collapsing and starting fusion. The result? A mega-star, potentially a million times bigger than our Sun!

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) might have just spotted some of these guys! It’s seen some really old, weirdly bright objects that could be these dark matter-powered stars. It’s still early days, and we need more data to be sure, but it’s a seriously exciting possibility.

So, whether we’re talking about Michell’s 18th-century thought experiment or these potential dark matter behemoths, “dark stars” are a reminder that the universe is full of surprises. They push us to think outside the box and keep exploring the mysteries of space. And who knows, maybe one day we’ll finally get a good look at one of these cosmic enigmas!