Scientists at Nagoya University in Japan claim to have discovered dark matter that dates back 12 billion years ago, which would make it the earliest observation of the hypothetical substance to date.

Their findings — as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters — could potentially offer some tantalizing answers about the nature of the universe.

Until now, observations of dark matter only went as far back as ten billion years. Any further than that, and the light was too faint to observe.

Space is the coolest.

A new hypothesis proposes that a large fraction of dark matter may be bound up inside tight balls the size of Neptune — so-called dark matter planets.

What remains are mostly neutron stars or black holes. And now, Hubble seems to have documented the instant when a supernova blinked out — implying that it captured the moment a black hole took control.

While some supernova explosions, such as SN 1,054, are violent and leave clouds of debris for thousands of years (a.k.a. nebula), the star in question seems to have exploded and then had all its gas pulled back into the black hole at the core. This may occur if the star’s core collapse is very big. Rather than exploding, the gas falls into the star’s core.

Over the past few years, astronomers have become aware of some shocking new properties of black holes.

As it turned out, they not only mercilessly consume and destroy everything that falls into them.

Black holes can also spew out fountains of hot matter and surround themselves with firewalls.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies.

Scientists used a fossil relic left over from the Big Bang to perform the earliest detection of dark matter ever.

Astronomers used the cosmic microwave background, radiation left over from just after the Big Bang, to conduct the earliest ever detection of dark matter.