The James Webb Space Telescope detects supermassive black holes from a time when the universe was less than a billion years old. This contradicts all known models of their formation—and researchers are proposing an unexpected explanation: the energy released by the decay of dark matter may have accelerated the formation of these cosmic giants.
Problem of time
Supermassive black holes—objects with masses millions or billions of times greater than that of the Sun—form through mergers and the accretion of matter. According to standard models, this process takes at least a billion years.
However, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has already detected such objects just 500 million years after the Big Bang. It seems that something must have significantly accelerated their growth.
Direct collapse: mechanism exists, but is rare
One possible mechanism is the so-called direct collapse: a massive cloud of gas collapses directly into a black hole, bypassing the star formation stage. But for this to happen, the cloud needs to receive enough energy from external sources—for example, from the radiation of nearby stars.
The problem is that the necessary conditions occurred too rarely to account for the number of early supermassive black holes that the JWST observes.
Dark matter as a source of energy
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, suggest that the decay of dark matter could be an alternative source of energy. Dark matter accounts for about 85% of all matter in the universe, but it does not interact with light and has not yet been directly detected.
Some theoretical particles that go beyond the Standard Model of particle physics are capable of decaying, releasing a tiny amount of energy. According to the study’s authors, an amount of energy equivalent to one-billionth of a trillionth of a single AA battery would be enough to “recharge” the primordial gas clouds and trigger a direct collapse.
Masa is under suspicion
“The first galaxies are essentially balls of pristine hydrogen gas whose chemistry is incredibly sensitive to atomic-scale energy injection,” notes co-author Flip Tanedo. The team was able to determine a hypothetical range of masses for dark matter particles capable of initiating such a process: from 24 to 27 electronvolts.
These are very light particles—by comparison, the mass of an electron is about 511,000 electronvolts. Study lead author Yash Aggarwal notes: “Given that the James Webb Space Telescope continues to discover more and more supermassive black holes in the early universe, this mechanism could help bridge the gap between theory and observations.”
The paper was published in April 2026 in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
According to space.com
