Tiny black holes from the dawn of time may be altering our planet's orbit, new study suggests

This computer-simulated image shows a supermassive black hole at the core of a galaxy.

Some of the universe's oldest black holes swoop past our cosmic neighborhood at least once every decade, moving planets in their wake, a new study suggests. And if scientists can detect them, it would provide the first proof that these black holes exist as dark matter.

Black holes, regions of immense gravity that even trap light, are some of the cosmos' most bizarre objects. But arguably the strangest among them are primordial black holes (PBHs). Astronomers have hypothesized that PBHs formed when dense, hot regions of space collapsed in the second immediately following the Big Bang.