Speaker: David Kaiser, MIT

October 10, 2026

5:00 – 5:45 pm

Could Tiny Black Holes from the Big Bang Solve the Mystery of Dark Matter?

For fifty years, physicists have been stymied by the puzzle of dark matter. From the motion of enormous clusters of galaxies to the rate at which individual galaxies spin, decades of careful measurements have indicated that all the matter that astronomers can see contributes only a tiny fraction of all the mass in the universe. Many hypothetical new particles have been proposed, which might play the role of dark matter. Yet after decades of clever experiments, no evidence of any such particle has turned up. In recent years, many physicists have returned to a different idea: what if all of dark matter consists of ordinary matter locked up within black holes, which could have formed right after the big bang? Recent studies have clarified various ways in which such “primordial black holes” could have formed. Meanwhile, if these tiny black holes do make up the dark matter, then we may expect at least one of them to cross through the inner Solar System per decade. Such close encounters could be detected based on how they would affect the motion of visible, well-tracked objects, such as the planet Mars. Nearby primordial black holes also offer the best chance—and probably the only chance—to detect Hawking radiation, a fundamental prediction about black holes that Stephen Hawking introduced fifty years ago, but which has never yet been detected.

David Kaiser is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Physics at MIT. He is the author of several award-winning books about modern physics, including How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival and Quantum Legacies: Dispatches from an Uncertain World. Kaiser directs a research group at MIT that focuses on the big bang and black holes, and has also designed and helped to conduct novel experimental tests of quantum theory. A Fellow of the American Physical Society, Kaiser has received MIT’s highest awards for his excellence in teaching. His work has been featured in Science, Nature, the New York Times, and the New Yorker magazine. His group’s efforts to conduct a “Cosmic Bell” test of quantum entanglement, together with Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger, were featured in the documentary film Einstein’s Quantum Riddle, which premiered on PBS in 2019. 

Tickets & Important Information

Time: 5:00-5:45 pm
Duration: Approximately 40 minutes
Cost: $6 for members, $7 for non-members (per person). General museum admission will not be charged for attendees arriving after 4:30 pm on Speaker Series days
Location: Alden Planetarium
Age Range: All ages are welcome. Recommended 15+

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