Dark Stars in the Early Universe

Image Credit: Bill Saxton, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF. In this image, from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile, we are seeing three stars forming from a dusty disk within our own Milky Way. The two objects in the center are separated by 61 astronomical units (Earth-Sun distance is one AU, astronomical unit). One sees evidence of the disk fragmenting to form additional protostars.

Dark Stars is the name given to hypothetical stars in the early universe that were overwhelmingly composed of ordinary matter (baryons [protons and neutrons] and electrons) but that also were ‘salted’ with a little bit of dark matter. They are not to be confused with black holes, although a black hole end state is a possibility for some dark stars.