According to Freese and Winkler, however, a Dark Big Bang is consistent with the evidence for dark matter – as long as it happened promptly, within about a month of the first Big Bang.

Energy transition Dark matter may have been created after the Big Bang, something that could soon be tested by gravitational wave detectors. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Tomertu) New constraints on a theory that says dark matter was created just after the Big Bang  – rather than at the Big Bang – have been determined by Richard Casey and  Cosmin Ilie at Colgate University in the US.

The nature of dark matter has puzzled astronomers since discovering that 85% of the universe's matter is invisible through our telescopes.

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Cosmin Ilie and Richard Casey ’24 have explored an idea put forth by two scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, Katherine Freese and Martin Winkler, suggesting that dark matter may have originated from a separate “Dark Big Bang,” occurring shortly after the birth of the universe.