We propose a new method of detecting Ellis wormholes by use of the images of wormholes surrounded by optically thin dust. First, we derive steady solutions of dust and more general medium surrounding the wormhole by solving relativistic Euler equations. We find two types of dust solutions: one is a static solution with arbitrary density profile, and the other is a solution of dust which passes into the wormhole and escapes into the other side with constant velocity. Next, solving null geodesic equations and radiation transfer equations, we investigate the images of the wormhole surrounded by dust for the above steady solutions. Because the wormhole spacetime possesses unstable circular orbits of photons, a bright ring appears in the image, just as in Schwarzschild spacetime. This indicates that the appearance of a bright ring solely confirms neither a black hole nor a wormhole. However, we find that the intensity contrast between the inside and the outside of the ring are quite different. Therefore, we could tell the difference between an Ellis wormhole and a black hole with high-resolution very-long-baseline-interferometry observations in the near future.

Observations have found black holes spanning 10 orders of magnitude in mass across most of cosmic history. The Kerr black hole solution is, however, provisional as its behavior at infinity is incompatible with an expanding universe. Black hole models with realistic behavior at infinity predict that the gravitating mass of a black hole can increase with the expansion of the universe independently of accretion or mergers, in a manner that depends on the black hole’s interior solution. We test this prediction by considering the growth of supermassive black holes in elliptical galaxies over 0 < z ≲ 2.5. We find evidence for cosmologically coupled mass growth among these black holes, with zero cosmological coupling excluded at 99.98% confidence. The redshift dependence of the mass growth implies that, at z ≲ 7, black holes contribute an effectively constant cosmological energy density to Friedmann’s equations. The continuity equation then requires that black holes contribute cosmologically as vacuum energy. We further show that black hole production from the cosmic star formation history gives the value of ΩΛ measured by Planck while being consistent with constraints from massive compact halo objects. We thus propose that stellar remnant black holes are the astrophysical origin of dark energy, explaining the onset of accelerating expansion at z ∼ 0.7.

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Direct observation of black holes is one of the grand challenges in astronomy. If there are supercompact objects which possess unstable circular orbits of photons, however, it may be difficult to distinguish them from black holes by observing photons. As a model of super-compact objects, we consider a gravastar (gravitational-vacuum-star) which was originally proposed by Mazur and Mottola. For definiteness, we adopt a spherical thin-shell model of a gravastar developed by Visser and Wiltshire, which connects interior de-Sitter geometry and exterior Schwarzschild geometry. We find that unstable circular orbits of photons can appear around the gravastar. Then, we investigate the optical images of the gravastar possessing unstable circular orbits, with assuming the optically transparent surface of it and two types of optical sources behind the gravastar: (i) an infinite optical plane and (ii) a companion star. The main feature of the image of (i) is that a bright disk and a dark thick ring surrounding the disk appear in the center of the region which would be completely dark if the compact object was not the gravastar but Schwarzschild black hole. Also in the case (ii), a small disk and arcs around the disk appear in the region which would be completely dark for the lensing image by Schwarzschild black hole. Because characteristic images appear inside the gravastar in both cases, we could tell the difference between a black hole and a gravastar with high-resolution VLBI observations near future.

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