Dark star (dark matter)

A dark star is a special kind of star that scientists think might have existed in the very early days of the universe, long before the stars we see today could form and shine. These stars are special because they might be made partly of something called dark matter, which is a mysterious kind of material that we cannot see but that we know must be there because of how things move in space.

Dark stars are just a theory right now, meaning scientists haven't actually seen one yet. But if they did exist, they would have been very different from the stars we know. They might have been much bigger and lived for a very long time, helping to shape the universe before normal stars could appear.

Scientists are still studying dark stars to learn more about the early universe and the hidden material that makes up most of the matter we cannot see. These stars could help us understand how everything in space began and how it has changed over time.

Properties

Dark stars would be made mostly of normal matter, like the stars we see today. But they would also contain a lot of special invisible matter called dark matter. This dark matter would create heat by clashing with itself, stopping the star from becoming small and dense like normal stars. Because of this, normal chemical reactions that make stars shine would not start.

In this idea, a dark star would be a huge cloud of gas, much bigger than our Sun, and its surface would be very hot. Over time, these stars might grow very large before they run out of dark matter and collapse. If such stars still exist today, we might find them by looking for special kinds of energy they give off.

Possible dark star candidates

In April 2023, scientists studied four very distant objects found by the James Webb Space Telescope. They thought three of these objects, named JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and JADES-GS-z11-0, might be special kinds of stars called dark stars. These dark stars could have existed in the early universe and were powered by a mysterious substance called dark matter. The scientists believe these objects were very massive, between 500,000 and 1 million times the weight of our Sun, and were extremely bright, shining as brightly as billions of Suns. They might also have been much bigger than any star we see today, possibly up to 10,000 times the size of the Sun.