Dark stars: The first stars in the universe

An interesting article. The wrap up states "Understanding the early years of our wondrous universe and how the first stars came to be is crucial to understanding what we see around us today, as well as understanding the more complex objects and phenomenons in the solar system. It is a murky period that is difficult to observe, but with the next generation of telescopes, such as the JWST, it might finally be possible to detect both the supermassive dark stars of the early universe and their less impressive cousins in the galactic center. Discovering whether it was Population III stars, dark stars, or both that were the first stars to form in the universe will have a profound effect on cosmology. It won't be long before we can shed some light on these dark members of the cosmos."

I find reports on dark stars kicked around now for sometime in cosmology. Dark stars: a review, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016RPPh...79f6902F, June 2016. "...Thus, the first phase of stellar evolution in the history of the Universe may have been dark stars. We review how dark stars come into existence, how they grow as long as dark matter fuel persists, and their stellar structure and evolution. The studies were done in two different ways, first assuming polytropic interiors and more recently using the MESA stellar evolution code; the basic results are the same. Dark stars are giant, puffy (˜10 AU) and cool (surface temperatures  ˜10 000 K) objects."

Dark stars are said to form about 200 million years after the BB event. Using the cosmology calculators, the universe size could be < 4 billion light years in diameter where z ~ 18 or so. The universe today is said to be some 93 billion light years in diameter based upon CMBR z ~ 1100 today. Assuming dark stars were real, they evolved in a universe vastly different than observed in astronomy today. In inflation theory by Alan Guth, magnetic monopoles appear in abundance like H today is seen, and are moved into some other bubble before our universe continues its cosmic evolution into stars. Magnetic monopoles are stable so we could have magnetic monopole stars in the early universe too :)

Cosmology Calculators (caltech.edu)
Cosmology calculator | kempner.net
 

Latest posts