Astronomers may have detected a primordial black hole for the first time
Astronomers have detected an unusual, brief increase in the brightness of a distant star, which may have been caused by a primordial black hole with a mass of about three times that of the Moon. After a detailed analysis, the researchers concluded that this signal could have originated from one of the most elusive objects in the universe, which they have named Phoebe.
This is reported by Science Alert.
The event occurred on December 18, 2019, during the AMPM survey program, when the Dark Energy Camera recorded a 60-minute increase in the brightness of a single star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, while neighboring stars remained unchanged. This behavior did not match any known type of stellar phenomenon, as the flare lasted too long for a typical stellar flare and was too short for a supernova. Scientists ruled out possible instrument errors, the influence of other stars, and natural fluctuations in brightness, after which they modeled several possible origins of the object. Calculations showed that the object causing the microlensing effect is approximately 100,000 times more likely to belong to the Milky Way’s dark matter halo, located about 59,630 light-years from Earth, than to known stellar populations. Scientists do not rule out that the object could be a rogue planet, but they consider a primordial black hole a more likely explanation for the galaxy’s sparsely populated halo.
Theoretically, such small black holes could have formed immediately after the Big Bang due to quantum fluctuations in spacetime, but their existence has not yet been confirmed by observations due to their extremely small size. The new study emerged amid a debate when, in February 2026, astronomers from the U.S. and Japan reported 12 candidates for such objects based on data from the Subaru telescope, although in March another group of scientists from Poland identified these events as ordinary stars. The authors of the study consider their findings to be an argument in favor of the existence of primordial black holes, but note that more sensitive telescopes and new observation programs will be needed for definitive confirmation.
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