The alien signal discovered last year, scientists spent most of the year to decipher, and now finally have the answer

Last September, a study on gravitational waves was published. The gravitational wave signal, named GW190521, was thought to be from the merger of two black holes, yet now scientists have discovered that the problem is not so simple.

Gravitational wave GW190521

As you can see from the naming, this gravitational wave was first discovered in May 2019, and according to the records at the time, scientists captured the signal, although it lasted only 0.1 seconds.

Scientists then investigated it until more than a year later, in September last year, when, according to publicly available data, it was stated that they believed that the gravitational wave GW190521 should be caused by the merger of 2 stellar-class black holes.

And through gravitational wave GW190521, scientists also said that they found a brand new type of black hole - an intermediate-mass black hole.

The researchers said that the two merged black holes, one is 66 times the mass of the sun's solar mass, while the other is about 85 times the mass of the sun. Does not seem like a problem, but here a problem arises because according to the existing theory of black hole research, 85 times the mass of the Sun's stellar black hole should not exist.

This means that this brand new type of black hole of 142 times the mass of the Sun, which has something about its formation, may have nothing to do with gravitational waves. So, what could be causing it?

"Transparent stars" produce mysterious signals

Researchers believe that if the formation of gravitational waves GW190521 has nothing to do with stellar black holes, then perhaps it has something to do with some unknown mysterious object.

What could this mysterious unknown object be? According to the study, scientists have found that it is most likely related to the merger of two "transparent stars".

This "transparent star", the scientific name of the boson star, is a kind of existing theory of the existence of the illusion of the object, what is the concept? It is a mysterious object that exists in theory but has never been found in reality, just like the wormholes and white holes predicted by Einstein.

Research believes that this unknown object is composed of bosons with mass, which simply means that it is related to dark matter, so you can also think of boson stars as dark matter stars.

The difference between boson stars and existing objects is that existing objects are made of bright matter, made of fermions, so we can observe them, but boson stars, like dark matter, are "transparent" and invisible, so naturally, they cannot be directly observed.

In the past, some researchers have suggested that boson stars may orbit around black holes, and there will likely be a large number of boson stars around the black hole to form a dark matter galaxy, however, because the theory is not sufficient, in the international, scientists are also skeptical.

Scientists from Spain said that through modeling and analysis, they found that the probability of gravitational wave GW190521, formed by the merger of bosonic stars, is about eight times the probability of having a stellar-class black hole merger to produce, which also means that gravitational wave GW190521 is very likely to be produced by the merger of this unknown mysterious object.

After all, back in 2019, when scientists first captured this mysterious signal, they used to think that it should not exist, but in the subsequent studies, scientists ended up with a seemingly plausible but unproven object because they wanted to find a plausibility for its existence and because boson stars themselves are an unknown and unproven object. It is easy to question the explanation.

What exactly is dark matter?

Universe, modern scientific research shows that in the vast universe, the mass of dark matter accounts for about 27% of the total mass of the universe, while bright matter, as we know it, accounts for only 5% of the mass in the universe.

It is believed that the dark matter universe may be the real part of the universe, while the bright matter universe we live in may only be the "supporting role" of the vast universe.

So, what is dark matter? Simply put, it is a mysterious matter that cannot be seen, touched, or directly detected, but this is only the most basic concept, and the more in-depth answer is still unanswerable.

Some people, including some researchers, also suspect that perhaps the alien civilizations that humans have been looking for, live in the world of dark matter, which is why they come and go without a trace. In addition, between the galaxies, there is also a large amount of dark matter, perhaps it is because of dark matter, the universe will always flourish and be stable.

But what exactly is dark matter? This time, scientists also hope to follow up on the understanding of gravitational waves GW190521, to reveal the various mysteries of the dark matter world, together with wait and see!