What are dark stars?

They’re not dark

Despite their name, these early members of our universe are not dark – they would have blazed brilliantly, lighting up their surrounding area with a luminosity about a billion times brighter than our Sun.

They’re likely to be invisible now

Dark stars are unlikely to have survived to what we perceive to be the modern era of the universe – at least in terms of their high luminosity. If they are visible, they could be detected from their gamma ray, antimatter and neutrino emissions.

They’re likely to have been the first ‘stars’

During the early days of our universe, usual stars were unable to form. Instead, dark stars are thought to have come from enormous clouds of hydrogen and helium ranging between four and 2,000 astronomical units

(AU) – one AU is equivalent to the average distance between the Earth and Sun.

They were powered by dark matter

Dark stars are thought to have comprised of mostly normal matter, much like the stars that we can see in the universe today. However, within dark stars a high concentration of dark matter – likely in a neutrino form – would have annihilated, causing illumination.