JWST just found a 50‑million‑solar‑mass black hole 750 million years after the Big Bang, with no galaxy around it. That’s not supposed to happen under the standard “stars → galaxies → black holes” model.
It’s pure hydrogen, so it formed before nearby stars had time to seed heavier elements. That leaves a few options: primordial black hole from the Big Bang, direct collapse of a gas cloud, or a galaxy that formed and disappeared.
There are ~300 similar “little red dots” in JWST data. If most are black holes, the early universe was building them in parallel with — or before — galaxies. Either way, the neat timeline in textbooks is wrong.
BugsJustFindMe 13 minutes ago [-]
> It’s pure hydrogen
The gas around it is pure hydrogen. We can't know what's inside. Could be stacks of little green men and ponies in there.
ndsipa_pomu 9 minutes ago [-]
Arguably, it makes no difference at all as to what's inside (apart from the inference that the early universe had lots of singularity seeking ponies and little green men)
codethief 5 hours ago [-]
> the early universe was building them in parallel with — or before — galaxies
Reminds me of the "blowtorch theory"[0] discussed here on HN a while ago.
Note that in spite of the name it's not a "theory" that gives an clear and accurate prediction.
We mix results of many theories, like electromagnetism, general relativity dopler effect, atoms ionization and spectrum, centripetal force, ... to get an accurate prediction and error estimation of how much mass a galaxy must have. Different calculations disagree, so we are forced to try to fix the theory (MOND) or guess there is dome difficut to see mass (dark matter).
The "blowtorch theory" is only a few general ideas and handwaving, without clear and precice calculations. So it's impossible to know if it explains all the current data (without dark matter) or even if the predictions digree so much with the current data that we need even more weird stuff to match it.
reactordev 2 hours ago [-]
If the theory of abnormal galaxy formation hold up, then the Big Bang was spitting out both simultaneously. Maybe there’s a mathematical “tipping point” for mass where the weight of it crushes the atoms? Resulting in early black holes from abnormal matter… not from a collapse but just from mass being in close proximity. There still so much to learn…
gus_massa 4 minutes ago [-]
> “tipping point” for mass where the weight of it crushes the atoms?
If you have a material of constant density like water, bananas or rocks, then if you have a ball that is big enough you get a neutron star where all the atoms collapsed in a huge-mega-super-nuclei. (I think the surface may have some normal atoms, and the center may be even more strange.) If the ball is even more big enough you get a black hole. If you use a gas like Hydrogen that has no constant density, the calculation is similar, but more complex.
IANAA, but I expect that the collapse into the black hole does not capture the 100% of the initial mass if the object is a rotating irregular blob, so in this huge cases near the big bang I expect the leftover to form something that looks like a galaxy. And the lack of leftover is what is surprising. (Again, IANAA.)
Except in neutron stars and black holes, atoms are very stable. There are many conservation laws, like the number of leptons (like the electron) and barions (like the proton/neutron) that make it hard to create weird stuff. You can create weird stuff for a very short time, but almost immediately it goes back to normal stuff. As always, there may be some surprise in particle physics, but I don't remember or expect something like this.
sandworm101 5 hours ago [-]
Well, the black hole isnt hydrogen. This is the gas around it. And being pure hydrogen seems sus as there should be some helium in there according to most models.
Not only that, but getting stars to form using pure hydrogen is tricky. That helium helped early stars collapse and ignite. Not seeing any helium in an early-universe object is a big deal, suggesting some sort of error.
felbane 1 hours ago [-]
Bug fixes:
- Corrected an infrequent issue with getResultingProtonCount that would cause it to always return 1 for certain origin bodies.
(In the merge request comments: "This why we don't let junior devs commit unreviewed code to critical branches, guys.")
Cthulhu_ 5 hours ago [-]
Was it wrong, or based on incomplete data?
tempodox 4 hours ago [-]
If you draw conclusions from incomplete data, they tend to be wrong. Even Prof. van Dusen and Sherlock Holmes knew that. So if there were any difference, it would be sheer luck.
HPsquared 2 hours ago [-]
In most fields it's impossible to have complete data.
JWST is the best thing to happen to science in decades.
Scientists having to face the fact that their theories aren't perfect and that they don't have all the answers about the universe is a good reminder that it's important to differentiate between actually settled hard science and "best guess at how this works" science.
There are still so many unanswered questions in many hard science fields like physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, etc and it's good for this new generation to not forget that.
mapt 8 minutes ago [-]
You are regurgitating almost pure grievance against people who just want to study the universe.
Every researcher in every field all the time wants more data, better studies, more evidence. That is basically what science is.
This attitude about "those damn smug scientists who think they know everything" emerges from authoritarian nationalists selling resentment politics, and it has led to widespread violence against scientists in the past. Its prevalence in Germany is one part of why the US got the bomb first, and its prevalence in the Soviet and Chinese systems is part of why were not able to keep up with us economically (until recently).
This political project actively intends to defend enterprises like JWST (sometimes even after building and launching the damn thing!), and current budgets have dozens of existing projects being shut down for good.
danparsonson 29 minutes ago [-]
"Scientists having to face the fact that their theories aren't perfect" - I think you fundamentally misunderstand how science works, or else you hang out with some extremely arrogant astronomers.
Why do you think they put the JWST up there, if not to get better data and thereby improve our understanding of the universe? If we thought our theories were already perfect, what would be the point in doing more research?
It’s pure hydrogen, so it formed before nearby stars had time to seed heavier elements. That leaves a few options: primordial black hole from the Big Bang, direct collapse of a gas cloud, or a galaxy that formed and disappeared.
There are ~300 similar “little red dots” in JWST data. If most are black holes, the early universe was building them in parallel with — or before — galaxies. Either way, the neat timeline in textbooks is wrong.
The gas around it is pure hydrogen. We can't know what's inside. Could be stacks of little green men and ponies in there.
Reminds me of the "blowtorch theory"[0] discussed here on HN a while ago.
[0]: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/the-blowtorch-theory-a-new-mo...
Note that in spite of the name it's not a "theory" that gives an clear and accurate prediction.
We mix results of many theories, like electromagnetism, general relativity dopler effect, atoms ionization and spectrum, centripetal force, ... to get an accurate prediction and error estimation of how much mass a galaxy must have. Different calculations disagree, so we are forced to try to fix the theory (MOND) or guess there is dome difficut to see mass (dark matter).
The "blowtorch theory" is only a few general ideas and handwaving, without clear and precice calculations. So it's impossible to know if it explains all the current data (without dark matter) or even if the predictions digree so much with the current data that we need even more weird stuff to match it.
If you have a material of constant density like water, bananas or rocks, then if you have a ball that is big enough you get a neutron star where all the atoms collapsed in a huge-mega-super-nuclei. (I think the surface may have some normal atoms, and the center may be even more strange.) If the ball is even more big enough you get a black hole. If you use a gas like Hydrogen that has no constant density, the calculation is similar, but more complex.
IANAA, but I expect that the collapse into the black hole does not capture the 100% of the initial mass if the object is a rotating irregular blob, so in this huge cases near the big bang I expect the leftover to form something that looks like a galaxy. And the lack of leftover is what is surprising. (Again, IANAA.)
Except in neutron stars and black holes, atoms are very stable. There are many conservation laws, like the number of leptons (like the electron) and barions (like the proton/neutron) that make it hard to create weird stuff. You can create weird stuff for a very short time, but almost immediately it goes back to normal stuff. As always, there may be some surprise in particle physics, but I don't remember or expect something like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis
Not only that, but getting stars to form using pure hydrogen is tricky. That helium helped early stars collapse and ignite. Not seeing any helium in an early-universe object is a big deal, suggesting some sort of error.
- Corrected an infrequent issue with getResultingProtonCount that would cause it to always return 1 for certain origin bodies.
(In the merge request comments: "This why we don't let junior devs commit unreviewed code to critical branches, guys.")
Is that not an indirect measurement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000
Coincidence? I don't think so. /s
Scientists having to face the fact that their theories aren't perfect and that they don't have all the answers about the universe is a good reminder that it's important to differentiate between actually settled hard science and "best guess at how this works" science.
There are still so many unanswered questions in many hard science fields like physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, etc and it's good for this new generation to not forget that.
Every researcher in every field all the time wants more data, better studies, more evidence. That is basically what science is.
This attitude about "those damn smug scientists who think they know everything" emerges from authoritarian nationalists selling resentment politics, and it has led to widespread violence against scientists in the past. Its prevalence in Germany is one part of why the US got the bomb first, and its prevalence in the Soviet and Chinese systems is part of why were not able to keep up with us economically (until recently).
This political project actively intends to defend enterprises like JWST (sometimes even after building and launching the damn thing!), and current budgets have dozens of existing projects being shut down for good.
Why do you think they put the JWST up there, if not to get better data and thereby improve our understanding of the universe? If we thought our theories were already perfect, what would be the point in doing more research?