Some of those ripples in space we've been detecting might actually be coming from 'dark stars' made of invisible matter.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
Gravitational Waves from Mergers of Asymmetric Dark Stars
arXiv · 2603.22949
The Takeaway
While we usually assume gravitational waves come from colliding black holes or neutron stars, this research shows that 'asymmetric dark matter' could form its own compact stars that merge and create signals that look like black holes but follow entirely different rules.
From the abstract
A strongly self-interacting component of asymmetric dark matter (DM) particles can form compact dark stars (DSs). These objects have a broad spectrum of masses and radii, with distinct evolution histories from both neutron stars and black holes (BHs). We argue that these differences allow a population of DSs to contribute significantly to the astrophysical merger rate in unique and discernible ways. Specifically, their merger rate could dominate at low redshifts over other sources, while their m