Cosmic Instability Could Have Created Dark Matter

Our Universe may be sitting on the edge of destruction, as theory suggests that the Higgs field is in a metastable state. If this field tunneled to its “true” minimum energy state, the release of energy would be cataclysmic. The danger may be over-stated, as other physical mechanisms could have kept the Universe stable throughout its history. Nevertheless, the Higgs instability could have a major cosmological impact as the source of dark matter. According to this new scenario, dark matter consists of a large population of black holes that formed from fluctuations in the unstable Higgs field at the dawn of the Universe. These so-called primordial black holes have been proposed before, but this is the first hypothesis that doesn’t require physics beyond the standard model.