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The Blowtorch Theory: A new model for structure formation in the universe

187 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

moi2388 1y ago
“ It argues that large numbers of extremely early, sustained, supermassive black hole jets actively shaped the universe's structure in its first few hundred million years” Isn’t the entire problem that there is no known mechanism by which these supermassive black holes would form so early with so much mass?
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago
  Well, Webb has observed SMBHs earlier than current theory would suggest. But I don't think that's the problem here, it's the opportunity: ΛCDM was the best model for the cosmic web when we thought that SMBHs could not exist so early. But now that we have observed that they do, it opens the possibility of other theories for the cosmic web, including this one (blow torch) in which the early SMBHs take a role in its creation.
  - justlikereddit 1y ago
    ΛCDM was the best model for a long while because it gave a free mystery variable to generously use as plaster to fill in an innumerable amount of yawing cracks. The convenience provided by the Dark Plaster theory have meant that despite innumerable failures in actually detecting it have been handwaved off by an equally convenient "it's just a bit darker than expected".
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      A single variable to fill innumerable cracks? How would that work? All the cracks just happen to line up so the same value of the variable fills each one? Wouldn't that mean there's just one crack?
      - jesse__ 1y ago
        According to the article, the plaster changes properties based on the crack it's currently filling, which is the whole problem.
        JulianPGough 1y ago
        Yes. (See longer version of this "yes" above!)
      - JulianPGough 1y ago
        Currently, Cold Dark Matter, as used in simulations etc, usually has six free parameters. Most simulations of structure formation at the level of the universe as a whole ONLY model Cold Dark Matter (i.e., they treat baryonic matter as a rounding error, and leave it out: that's partly understandable, as baryonic matter is much harder to model than Cold Dark Matter, and trying to model it eats compute.) And when they DO add baryonic matter to simulations (usually of smaller-scale structure formation), that usually has four free parameters, which are also not based on observation, but can be tuned to fit. So you can end up with 10 free parameters in the simulations. As von Neumann once said, "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." At this point, with ten, it's basically CGI. And the model gets tweaked afresh to suit each new observational anomaly. So you can tweak it to fit, say, large galaxies, but then it doesn't fit small galaxies. (The cusp/core problem.) But that's OK, because you can tweak it to fit small galaxies! (But then it won't fit large galaxies.) And on it goes. A key problem is that, after 50 years of tweaking, it still didn't predict the rapid, efficient structure formation of the early universe as revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Three-stage cosmological natural selection (the parent to Blowtorch Theory) did. https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the...
        thicktarget 1y ago
        >Cold Dark Matter, as used in simulations etc, usually has six free parameters. That is not correct. LCDM as a cosmology is described by 6 parameters mostly for CMB analyses, but this is much more than just CDM. These parameters include the amount of normal matter, the cosmological constant, the amount of dark matter, reionization, the Hubble constant and two parameters which describe the initial fluctuations. CDM only has one parameter in the model, its density. As you can see there aren't many nobs to turn. These parameters are also fixed to observational values. And if you think you can fit all modern cosmological data with a physically-meaningful model and fewer parameters then go ahead.
- vlovich123 1y ago
  > (And even as this Blowtorch Theory post was being researched and written, a paper was published detailing an extraordinary blazar – a jet, a blowtorch, pointed straight at the earth from over 13 billion years ago, just 750 million years after the Big Bang – far earlier than Lambda Cold Dark Matter predicted, but slap-bang where the theory outlined here said we would find them. See: A blazar in the epoch of reionization, by Eduardo Bañados et al, Nature, December 17, 2024.) We don’t know how they form but we do now know they exist through Webb.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    My take on it is that it's been known for a long time (1970s) that supermassive black holes couldn't possibly have been formed between the big bang and the present, never mind the early times that JWST can see into. Astronomers will make excuses for that and say that they didn't really prove that galaxies had black holes in them and that they were really massive recently but the tension has existed for a long time because people suspected that galaxies had huge black holes but there was no path to form black holes that big. I worked for arXiv in the 00's and had a coworker who'd gotten a PhD in astrophysics about accretion disks who was really bitter about how the poor job prospects in astronomy let senior astronomers bully junior astronomers creating a false consensus about how accretion disks and other phenomena worked. When I first heard about ΛCDM my first instinct was that some bullying was going on. [1] Observations that the "first billion years" might have taken 10 billion years or so have been coming for a while but with JWST there is an absolute flood of them. [1] The cold dark matter doesn't bug me half as much as the dark energy. I mean, once you look at anything bigger than a star cluster it's obvious that dark matter is there or otherwise gravity works differently in a way that is huge for objects bigger than a star cluster but doesn't show up in precision measurements at all in the solar system.
    - daedrdev 1y ago
      Yes, basically black holes growing speed is limited since when they eat they push away the surrounding matter so there isn't enough time. There are also no black holes in between normal size and super massive, both nearby or far away (in the past because of the speed of light)
- itishappy 1y ago
  This post is suggesting just such a mechanism: > The second half of this post will outline the parent theory – three stage cosmological natural selection – which successfully predicted these extremely early supermassive black holes, and their jets, plus the associated rapid early galaxy formation, in advance of the first James Webb Space Telescope data.
  - itishappy 1y ago
    I want to correct a misunderstanding I had when reading the article the first time: The mechanism suggested is Direct Collapse Black Hole formation, not the "three stage cosmological natural selection" model I quoted.
- magicalhippo 1y ago
  > Isn’t the entire problem that there is no known mechanism by which these supermassive black holes would form so early with so much mass? Direct Collapse[1] models provide candidates for this, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_collapse_black_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_collapse_black_hole
  - pixl97 1y ago
    With the size of quasars we're seeing in the early universe, direct collapse seems likely. Of course this begs the next question of how didn't the universe just collapse back in on itself!
    - JSchneider321 1y ago
      Inflation seems to have been tuned to ensure this didn't happen, giving the cosmos time to grow while ensuring it didn't grow so quickly that galaxies couldn't form. Cosmological natural selection provides an explanation for this, too.
      - throwaway5752 1y ago
        "Cosmological natural selection provides an explanation" This is the biggest reach in your entire essay, that black wholes create new universes. The event horizon is complete cut off from this universe and speculating that generations upon generations of universes are created from black holes is fanciful. Your just shoehorn what is basically a massive anthropic principle onto an interesting cosmology theory unnecessarily.
        JulianPGough 1y ago
        I understand your skepticism. But the awkward fact remains that three-stage cosmological natural selection made accurate predictions about the early universe, in advance of the James Webb Space Telescope data. https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... No other theory made such accurate predictions. So it might be worth at least exploring the theory and its implications further. Certainly, there is a funding and research mismatch between ΛCDM (which did not predict what we are now seeing) and three-stage cosmological natural selection (which did) that is... startling.
absurdo 1y ago
I am going to nitpick this but I’ve come to expect this kind of posting style from medium, substack and others. It has no coherent thesis, it throws way too many links, it uses meta titles that reference memes. The SNR is incredibly low for what should be a technical synopsis because the words get in the way of information. What I want to see: I don’t care what you call it, “blowtorch” is meaningless. Tell me concretely what is it, what does it address, and how does the current widely accepted theory fail to account for certain things. I don’t need detours into minutae so the author can have their r/iamverysmart moment. I want to see the list of experiments with data points that validate hunches and disprove others. We can reduce it down to simpler terms for laymen if we start with good information. As it stands, it’s noise.
- itishappy 1y ago
  I'm not sure I agree. The first few sections are clear, concise, supported by links to observations you expect, and cover exactly what you say is missing: > THE PROBLEM > THE CURRENT, PASSIVE, ANSWER > AN ALTERNATIVE, ACTIVE, ANSWER > A MORE FRUGAL ANSWER > SUPPORTIVE EVIDENCE Here's a direct link to that last section: https://theeggandtherock.com/i/158515951/supportive-evidence https://theeggandtherock.com/i/158515951/supportive-evidence Edit: Alright, as I get further into the article I see more and more what you're mentioning...
  - absurdo 1y ago
    > Edit: Alright, as I get further into the article I see more and more what you're mentioning... I was waiting for this edit but didn’t want to be mean about it :-)
    - itishappy 1y ago
      Appreciate your patience! :-)
- JulianGough123 1y ago
  It also made predictions about the early universe, in advance of the James Webb space telescope sending back any data: https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... And those predictions were later confirmed by the James Webb: Https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supermassive Which is a data point worth pondering.
WhitneyLand 1y ago
There’s no math. Modern cosmology requires simulations, simulations require mathematical models. It’s well researched and points out legitimate shortcomings in current theories. But without the math you don’t know if everything is really adding up and we’re kind of left with cool story bro.
- JulianGough123 1y ago
  I understand your critique. But it proposes a sequencing of events which is novel, and testable. For example, it made these predictions in advance of the James Web’s first data: https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... And these were later validated by the James Webb: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supermassive https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supe...
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    >For example, it made these predictions in advance of the James Web’s first data: This isn't how any of this works. Actual models predict things by being models, you know, equations and numbers that output more equations and numbers. What you have is vague speculation and hand waving ideas.
    - WhitneyLand 1y ago
      To be fair, predictions are the final gold standard, but not all predictions are equal. The math would allow for the predictions to be precise, quantifiable, and directly falsifiable. As is the predictions qualify as interesting, but there are also weaknesses. Some of it was already predicted by others, some needs more verification, some of the claims were more broad “lots of jets, lots of quasars” so they say less than more precise predictions would.
      - colechristensen 1y ago
        [flagged]
surprisetalk 1y ago
> By contrast, the model I’m exploring actually predicts shit in advance. > Feel free to check: Predictions here. [0] https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-we...
fasteddie31003 1y ago
This is yet another item on the cosmic formation hypothesis conveyor belt. These types of hypotheses have been coming and will continue to come forever. They are non-falsifiable and are just stories. They will only ever be hypotheses. We cannot visit the past to see what exactly happened and test them to consider them theories. Being a strong skeptic means understanding that a hypothesis does not represent deep truths of the universe and should not be used to inform any decision. It's in human nature to need origin stories. Science's current one is the Big Bang. It is only a hypothesis and will never get to the next level of scientific rigor because it's impossible to test. I only believe in falsifiable theories. A good skeptic should realize the differences in scientific rigor and know that this is just a story with no truth behind it.
- JulianGough123 1y ago
  If it will help, you can check out the predictions this approach was able to make before the James Web space telescope sent back any data. https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... And how they were validated later by the James Webb. https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supermassive https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supe...
  - exe34 1y ago
    Do you have a link to the journal article?
- MadcapJake 1y ago
  Cosmology, like many sciences, is about learning the scientific truth through the remnants left behind. Just like we can see an early earth by digging, we can see an early universe by zooming. A well reasoned theory in any science should include and test for implications in the past and present. We can't just ignore time if we want a proper understanding of the universe.
- pantalaimon 1y ago
  > They are non-falsifiable and are just stories. It makes a falsifiable prediction: > What’s novel in my theory is the idea that all the supermassive black holes must form first, by direct collapse – before galaxies form, and indeed before there’s any significant number of stars, or (probably) any stars at all. This emerges directly from the application of Darwinian evolutionary logic to universes. It’s not predicted by any other theory, and if I’m wrong, my theory wobbles badly and a wheel falls off. So the theory is falsifiable. And in the other post > Most of the first generation of stars will, if I am right, contain traces of carbon at formation, because early quasars make it by fusion and distribute it into the clouds to seed star formation. And such stars will therefore be relatively efficient at fusion, element formation, etc. (They will still be very low in carbon, and other elements such as oxygen, relative to later stars; but not completely lacking, as Population III stars are theorised to be.) with more predictions: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-we...
JulianGough123 1y ago
I’m slightly startled to see my Blowtorch Theory post at number one here. (A friend sent me a screenshot, so I came over to check if he was joking.) I’m happy to answer questions, though I will be dealing with a five-year-old and eating dinner at the same time, which may lead to delayed responses.
- lspears 1y ago
  Amazing. What caused you to look for a solution without a particle?
  - JulianPGough 1y ago
    I watched the search for the Higgs Boson and the search for Cold Dark Matter carry on in parallel for decades. The former was clearly actual science: they had a theoretical particle, they knew what it did, it had a place that made sense in the Standard Model, they had an estimate for the energy range in which they could find it, they built an instrument to look for it, and they found it. The latter... well, it was clearly epicycles. Endlessly tweakable, with six free parameters, not in the Standard Model, a bunch of different guesses as to what it actually was, a bunch of different energies at which it might be found – oh dear, not there, well it must be at a much higher energy then – always on the brink of discovery but never actually discovered... And then, as I began researching my book on cosmological natural selection, I could see that an evolved, fine-tuned universe was going to have startling emergent-looking properties built into its developmental process. Baryonic matter was going to pull off some weird shit, as the interaction of extremely fine-tuned parameters led to highly unlikely-looking outcomes. These would look like inexplicable anomalies, if your fundamental assumption was that we lived in a random and arbitrary one-shot universe. And cold dark matter started to look awfully like the kind of think you would have to invent to save the old paradigm... So as I developed my approach, I assumed dark matter was an error, and did my best to explain everything using fine-tuned parameters, and baryonic matter only.
- ordu 1y ago
  So, life exists to create more universes? It seems, that you've found the meaning of Life, Universe and possible Everything, and turns out it is not 42?
mellosouls 1y ago
So many private TOEs out there, it's not at all obvious why this one merits special examination here or anywhere else. The guy is calling for funding and support with an evangelistic fervour classically associated with those reluctant to pursue their case through accepted mechanisms of scrutiny and peer review.
- wyager 1y ago
  "accepted mechanisms of scrutiny and peer review" have produced very little value in physics for 50+ years. We've picked all the low hanging fruit we can reach with that epistemic framework. We should probably expect future developments to happen elsewhere.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - JulianPGough 1y ago
    I like you, wyager. Marry me. Yeah, I think cosmology has very slowly walked into a swamp with ΛCDM. And it's having enormous trouble backing out of the swamp, even though the James Webb Space Telescope is screaming at them that they need to. But ΛCDM is now baked into every simulation, and is assumed up front by pretty much every paper in the field. So they're in a very difficult situation. New ideas, and change, will have to come, initially, from outside the field. Which will liberate a lot of very brilliant people who are trapped in the old paradigm.
  - jplusequalt 1y ago
    >have produced very little value in physics for 50+ years I guess the entire field of solid state physics and materials science doesn't exist?
    - eximius 1y ago
      In relation to cosmology, that's mostly correct?
    - 1y ago
oscarmoxon 1y ago
Personally, I love this theory. The thought of natural assembly and selection at the level of Black Holes is alluring. Not sure what The Black Mirror Hypothesis (https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/when-you-fall-into-a-black-hole-you https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/when-you-fall-into-a-bl...) would have to say about this, though.
- Xmd5a 1y ago
  I've been calling out the similarity of works done by Barbour, Turok, Farnes & Petit for a long time, and the last developments by Turok's team vindicate this intuition. It is now very close to Jean-Pierre Petit's Janus model. Curt Jaimungal announced he'd interview him soon. https://januscosmologicalmodel.com https://januscosmologicalmodel.com Petit's models implies negative masses that would sit at the center of the cosmic voids, giving it structure. Someone wrote simulation showcasing this emergent phenomenon a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtcbBpieR5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtcbBpieR5U
motbus3 1y ago
I feel it is more likely for me to be a NPC in someone else's simulation game
sixo 1y ago
The same but without leaning so heavily on Smolin's cosmological-natural-selection would be quite a bit more compelling. It should not be necessary; if it's true then the physics of our universe alone should predict it.
- itishappy 1y ago
  Agreed, but my interpretation here is that Blowtorch Theory does just that. It just predicts that direct collapse supermassive blackholes determine the large scale structure of the universe using existing physics. The parent theory leans on Cosmological Natural Selection to explain away the anthropic principle, but it's a separate theory not required by Blowtorch Theory. > Blowtorch theory works, and can be explored, independently of its parent theory: however, three-stage cosmological natural selection gives an important and useful framework for more deeply understanding blowtorch theory and its implications.
nyeah 1y ago
Is there some math to go with this?
- colechristensen 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - jplusequalt 1y ago
    I think the ideas are presented in a clear manner, but we're talking cosmology and physics, a theory needs a mathematical model for it to be evaluated
colechristensen 1y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago
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curtisszmania 1y ago
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aradox66 1y ago
There is no shortage of cranks generating novel cosmological theories, but this writer doesn't seem to be one of them. He's interested in predictive power! I think it's fascinating and enjoy this theory a lot, but the epistemics strike me a little funny. The mechanism itself can't be tested. If this mechanism exists, these observations would tend to be expected from a random sample of possible universes. There's absolutely no way to evaluate how "representative" our n=1 observation is. I'm not yet convinced this kind of approach is valid, although I'm almost certain there's nothing better at a certain scale. empiricism is useless if you need a galaxy-scale particle accelerator.
- growlNark 1y ago
  > empiricism is useless if you need a galaxy-scale particle accelerator. I would say it's just not available more than that it's useless—albeit, only not available in theory.
- eskatonic 1y ago
  The Xeelee would like a word.
culebron21 1y ago
The dark matter and energy and other dark things, at least as described in the article, resemble the numerous epicycles that were needed for geocentric and cycle-based model of planet movements. They did fix trajectories to some extent, but made no sense.
Mr_Eri_Atlov 1y ago
What a fascinating concept! I look forward to these predictions being evaluated in the future with additional data. It's certainly an elegant idea.
thicktarget 1y ago
Let me start by saying there are a lot of false claims in the dark matter section. It's also filled with self contradiction, announcing that DM as wrong, and later pronouncing LCDM as unfalsifiable. The pillars of modem cosmology are the ability to quantitatively describe and predict large-scale structure, the expansion history of the universe, the CMB and primordial nucleosynthesis. Can this "model" calculate any of those things? No. What the author has here is some ideas, not a model. To demonstrate you can even reproduce the Cosmic Web you have to actually run some calculations, or simulations. How do you know AGN bubbles produce a universe that looks anything like ours? The author dismisses simulations as "not science", while paradoxically using them as the only representation of the cosmic web in the article. These simulations have a lot of value, they demonstrate that standard cosmology and normal gravity has no problem forming voids and filaments. These simulations have been compared to countless new observations, which this model cannot because it's purely qualitative. The article says these simulations are worthless because they don't work from first principles, this is a practical limitation that you cannot simulate galaxies down to the resolution of atoms on any existing computer. You have to make some simplifications. The structure of the cosmic web is seen in all of them, even going back to very early simulations, it doesn't depend on these assumptions. And at the end of the article we go back to the problem of dark matter, and find out the author has no explanation for rotation curves or other classical tests of DM. So despite bashing DM cosmology, this model explains none of the pillars of evidence for dark matter. At some point in developing an idea like this you need to actually start applying physics, either with calculations or simulations. Every new hypothesis is perfect before it has been subjected to rigor and analysis.
- itishappy 1y ago
  I agree with most of what you've said here, particularly the following line which I'm copying for emphasis because I think it's incredibly important. > These simulations have a lot of value, they demonstrate that standard cosmology and normal gravity has no problem forming voids and filaments. That being said, I think the author intends for this article to be more of a call to action than an actual result. Simulations aren't cheap, somebody needs to actually do the work. The point that there aren't any simulations without dark matter is an important one too.
eximius 1y ago
Is there anything inherently requiring the three stage cosmological theory to bring about the Blowtorch theory? I find the Blowtorch theory very compelling - but the cosmological/evolution argument seems qualitatively... less scientific, or at least less physics-related. It is very interesting! But, I think its association would damage the pair. Anything stopping Blowtorch theory from standing on it's own?
- JSchneider321 1y ago
  I believe Gough has expressed properly that you're welcome to consider Blowtorch Theory and ignore CNS entirely and it still works as an astrophysical model. Honestly, the longer process of reading the series of articles on the substack where Gough explains how we got the model of the cosmos we currently have helps to explain some of the strange mismatches we've had to deal with throughout history, and CNS (developed originally by the brilliant physicist Lee Smolin) offers explanatory power using no new physics, no exotic matter, and applies the process of natural selection (which is the only observed way we've identified increasingly complixifying self-organizing systems) to the cosmos, and it works shockingly well. I felt the same way when I first read the theory, and the idea of being inside a black hole sounded silly. But the more I read, the less crazy it sounded, and I'm at the point now where it feels crazier to ignore all this evidence.
myko 1y ago
Dark matter exists, it is a thing–that thing is a set of observations of the universe. It isn't an understood phenomena but suggesting dark matter does not exist is nonsense, the observations exist–and contradict our understanding of the universe–the question is why they do. Lambda Cold Dark Matter might not be the answer, but it is important not to conflate that with dark matter generally.
eximius 1y ago
There is so much anger in this thread because someone is making qualitative predictions instead of quantitative predictions (except there are some statistical predictions, albeit based around correlations to existing observational phenomenon, but that seems valid to me?). In some ways, it is a symptom of the success of science so far that we consider that the baseline for credibility. If the predictive observations from this theory hold true, then it's possible a mathematical framework can be developed for it.
- oh_my_goodness 1y ago
  I consider it underhanded to label reasonable disagreement as "anger."
  - eximius 1y ago
    Those are not the comments I'm talking about. There are some in this thread that are derisive due to its focus on qualitative theory and predictions instead of a mathematical foundation.
    - nyeah 1y ago
      I can't quite see why complaints about the lack of quantitative support are unreasonable. They sound reasonable to me. In fact there seems to be a very broad consensus that the article lacks supporting numbers.
  - culebron21 1y ago
    Apart from reasonable disagreement, there's a lot of downvotes and flagged posts here.
    - nyeah 1y ago
      I agree that reasonable dissenting posts have been flagged here. If that's what you're saying?
      - 1y ago
fpoling 1y ago
It is a very interesting idea that cosmologist were wrong to ignore electromagnetic forces when most of the matter in early universe were plasma. On the other hand the notion of evolution implies the existence of global time ordering. Yet black holes makes this impossible. So I am very skeptical about any theory that tries to bring the notion of evolution to the universe. Also the notion that there can be another universe with different physical constants is even worse than the ever changing notion of dark matter. At least the latter gives a plausible mechanism about why that matter does not interact with normal matter while the notion of changing constants does not even attempt to provide a mechanism.
mickey475778 1y ago
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- bglazer 1y ago
  Stop posting llm slop
scotty79 1y ago
I think the truth is even one step further away from current models in exactly this direction. Blowtorch Theory posits that supermassive black holes formed very early, before the stars. I believe they didn't just form early, but that they were always there and the smoothness of the CMB doesn't come from natural isotropy of 'creation'. In my opinion it's so smooth because on the way to us the light was thoroughly mixed by the chaotic gravity (and now possibly electromagnetism) of all the supermassive black holes of the observable universe and the 'dust' swirling between them that were at the time that CMB light originated, crammed into a bubble of the size of merely 100 mln light-years. The relationship between CMB and supermassive blackholes exists but it's the other way around. It's not CMB that spawned black holes. It's black holes that generated the smoothness of CMB. The smoothness comes from overlapping gravitational lensing of trillion galaxies in concentrations ranging form 100 mln light years to 13 bln and acting for 13 bln years. In my idea "Where did the supermassive black holes came from?" is the same kind of question like "Where did the universe came from?" The fact that in current Big Bang model we can imagine simple, mathematical origins (point like beginning of spacetime) doesn't make it more likely to be true. There's no doubt that Big Bang was a very energetic event, but you could get very energetic events without invoking creation. Just imagine two very dense black hole clusters, slamming into each other at relativistic speeds, each consisting of trillions (or more) of supermassive black holes. What's great about this Blowtorch Theory is that it connects things we can actually observe, large scale structure of the universe, with the activity of those very early supermassive black holes (wherever they came from) in a measurable way thus potentially providing evidence of their very early existence. I hope it catches on because it's huge step in the right direction.
kristel100 1y ago
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3abiton 1y ago
I can't wait for the modified gravity folks to pitch in on this.
iainmerrick 1y ago
This cosmology strongly reminds me of the last section of Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, which vividly describes a god creating a succession of universes, gradually selecting for and evolving towards consciousness. That book also has solar blowtorches! Although in a different context, not as the mechanism for generating structure in the early universe.

187 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

“ It argues that large numbers of extremely early, sustained, supermassive black hole jets actively shaped the universe's structure in its first few hundred million years” Isn’t the entire problem that there is no known mechanism by which these supermassive black holes would form so early with so much mass?

CGMthrowaway 1y ago
Well, Webb has observed SMBHs earlier than current theory would suggest. But I don't think that's the problem here, it's the opportunity: ΛCDM was the best model for the cosmic web when we thought that SMBHs could not exist so early. But now that we have observed that they do, it opens the possibility of other theories for the cosmic web, including this one (blow torch) in which the early SMBHs take a role in its creation.
- justlikereddit 1y ago
  ΛCDM was the best model for a long while because it gave a free mystery variable to generously use as plaster to fill in an innumerable amount of yawing cracks. The convenience provided by the Dark Plaster theory have meant that despite innumerable failures in actually detecting it have been handwaved off by an equally convenient "it's just a bit darker than expected".
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    A single variable to fill innumerable cracks? How would that work? All the cracks just happen to line up so the same value of the variable fills each one? Wouldn't that mean there's just one crack?
    - jesse__ 1y ago
      According to the article, the plaster changes properties based on the crack it's currently filling, which is the whole problem.
      - JulianPGough 1y ago
        Yes. (See longer version of this "yes" above!)
    - JulianPGough 1y ago
      Currently, Cold Dark Matter, as used in simulations etc, usually has six free parameters. Most simulations of structure formation at the level of the universe as a whole ONLY model Cold Dark Matter (i.e., they treat baryonic matter as a rounding error, and leave it out: that's partly understandable, as baryonic matter is much harder to model than Cold Dark Matter, and trying to model it eats compute.) And when they DO add baryonic matter to simulations (usually of smaller-scale structure formation), that usually has four free parameters, which are also not based on observation, but can be tuned to fit. So you can end up with 10 free parameters in the simulations. As von Neumann once said, "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." At this point, with ten, it's basically CGI. And the model gets tweaked afresh to suit each new observational anomaly. So you can tweak it to fit, say, large galaxies, but then it doesn't fit small galaxies. (The cusp/core problem.) But that's OK, because you can tweak it to fit small galaxies! (But then it won't fit large galaxies.) And on it goes. A key problem is that, after 50 years of tweaking, it still didn't predict the rapid, efficient structure formation of the early universe as revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Three-stage cosmological natural selection (the parent to Blowtorch Theory) did. https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the...
      - thicktarget 1y ago
        >Cold Dark Matter, as used in simulations etc, usually has six free parameters. That is not correct. LCDM as a cosmology is described by 6 parameters mostly for CMB analyses, but this is much more than just CDM. These parameters include the amount of normal matter, the cosmological constant, the amount of dark matter, reionization, the Hubble constant and two parameters which describe the initial fluctuations. CDM only has one parameter in the model, its density. As you can see there aren't many nobs to turn. These parameters are also fixed to observational values. And if you think you can fit all modern cosmological data with a physically-meaningful model and fewer parameters then go ahead.
vlovich123 1y ago
> (And even as this Blowtorch Theory post was being researched and written, a paper was published detailing an extraordinary blazar – a jet, a blowtorch, pointed straight at the earth from over 13 billion years ago, just 750 million years after the Big Bang – far earlier than Lambda Cold Dark Matter predicted, but slap-bang where the theory outlined here said we would find them. See: A blazar in the epoch of reionization, by Eduardo Bañados et al, Nature, December 17, 2024.) We don’t know how they form but we do now know they exist through Webb.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  My take on it is that it's been known for a long time (1970s) that supermassive black holes couldn't possibly have been formed between the big bang and the present, never mind the early times that JWST can see into. Astronomers will make excuses for that and say that they didn't really prove that galaxies had black holes in them and that they were really massive recently but the tension has existed for a long time because people suspected that galaxies had huge black holes but there was no path to form black holes that big. I worked for arXiv in the 00's and had a coworker who'd gotten a PhD in astrophysics about accretion disks who was really bitter about how the poor job prospects in astronomy let senior astronomers bully junior astronomers creating a false consensus about how accretion disks and other phenomena worked. When I first heard about ΛCDM my first instinct was that some bullying was going on. [1] Observations that the "first billion years" might have taken 10 billion years or so have been coming for a while but with JWST there is an absolute flood of them. [1] The cold dark matter doesn't bug me half as much as the dark energy. I mean, once you look at anything bigger than a star cluster it's obvious that dark matter is there or otherwise gravity works differently in a way that is huge for objects bigger than a star cluster but doesn't show up in precision measurements at all in the solar system.
  - daedrdev 1y ago
    Yes, basically black holes growing speed is limited since when they eat they push away the surrounding matter so there isn't enough time. There are also no black holes in between normal size and super massive, both nearby or far away (in the past because of the speed of light)
itishappy 1y ago
This post is suggesting just such a mechanism: > The second half of this post will outline the parent theory – three stage cosmological natural selection – which successfully predicted these extremely early supermassive black holes, and their jets, plus the associated rapid early galaxy formation, in advance of the first James Webb Space Telescope data.
- itishappy 1y ago
  I want to correct a misunderstanding I had when reading the article the first time: The mechanism suggested is Direct Collapse Black Hole formation, not the "three stage cosmological natural selection" model I quoted.
magicalhippo 1y ago
> Isn’t the entire problem that there is no known mechanism by which these supermassive black holes would form so early with so much mass? Direct Collapse[1] models provide candidates for this, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_collapse_black_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_collapse_black_hole
- pixl97 1y ago
  With the size of quasars we're seeing in the early universe, direct collapse seems likely. Of course this begs the next question of how didn't the universe just collapse back in on itself!
  - JSchneider321 1y ago
    Inflation seems to have been tuned to ensure this didn't happen, giving the cosmos time to grow while ensuring it didn't grow so quickly that galaxies couldn't form. Cosmological natural selection provides an explanation for this, too.
    - throwaway5752 1y ago
      "Cosmological natural selection provides an explanation" This is the biggest reach in your entire essay, that black wholes create new universes. The event horizon is complete cut off from this universe and speculating that generations upon generations of universes are created from black holes is fanciful. Your just shoehorn what is basically a massive anthropic principle onto an interesting cosmology theory unnecessarily.
      - JulianPGough 1y ago
        I understand your skepticism. But the awkward fact remains that three-stage cosmological natural selection made accurate predictions about the early universe, in advance of the James Webb Space Telescope data. https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... No other theory made such accurate predictions. So it might be worth at least exploring the theory and its implications further. Certainly, there is a funding and research mismatch between ΛCDM (which did not predict what we are now seeing) and three-stage cosmological natural selection (which did) that is... startling.

absurdo 1y ago

I am going to nitpick this but I’ve come to expect this kind of posting style from medium, substack and others. It has no coherent thesis, it throws way too many links, it uses meta titles that reference memes. The SNR is incredibly low for what should be a technical synopsis because the words get in the way of information. What I want to see: I don’t care what you call it, “blowtorch” is meaningless. Tell me concretely what is it, what does it address, and how does the current widely accepted theory fail to account for certain things. I don’t need detours into minutae so the author can have their r/iamverysmart moment. I want to see the list of experiments with data points that validate hunches and disprove others. We can reduce it down to simpler terms for laymen if we start with good information. As it stands, it’s noise.

itishappy 1y ago
I'm not sure I agree. The first few sections are clear, concise, supported by links to observations you expect, and cover exactly what you say is missing: > THE PROBLEM > THE CURRENT, PASSIVE, ANSWER > AN ALTERNATIVE, ACTIVE, ANSWER > A MORE FRUGAL ANSWER > SUPPORTIVE EVIDENCE Here's a direct link to that last section: https://theeggandtherock.com/i/158515951/supportive-evidence https://theeggandtherock.com/i/158515951/supportive-evidence Edit: Alright, as I get further into the article I see more and more what you're mentioning...
- absurdo 1y ago
  > Edit: Alright, as I get further into the article I see more and more what you're mentioning... I was waiting for this edit but didn’t want to be mean about it :-)
  - itishappy 1y ago
    Appreciate your patience! :-)
JulianGough123 1y ago
It also made predictions about the early universe, in advance of the James Webb space telescope sending back any data: https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... And those predictions were later confirmed by the James Webb: Https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supermassive Which is a data point worth pondering.

WhitneyLand 1y ago

There’s no math. Modern cosmology requires simulations, simulations require mathematical models. It’s well researched and points out legitimate shortcomings in current theories. But without the math you don’t know if everything is really adding up and we’re kind of left with cool story bro.

JulianGough123 1y ago
I understand your critique. But it proposes a sequencing of events which is novel, and testable. For example, it made these predictions in advance of the James Web’s first data: https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... And these were later validated by the James Webb: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supermassive https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supe...
- colechristensen 1y ago
  >For example, it made these predictions in advance of the James Web’s first data: This isn't how any of this works. Actual models predict things by being models, you know, equations and numbers that output more equations and numbers. What you have is vague speculation and hand waving ideas.
  - WhitneyLand 1y ago
    To be fair, predictions are the final gold standard, but not all predictions are equal. The math would allow for the predictions to be precise, quantifiable, and directly falsifiable. As is the predictions qualify as interesting, but there are also weaknesses. Some of it was already predicted by others, some needs more verification, some of the claims were more broad “lots of jets, lots of quasars” so they say less than more precise predictions would.
    - colechristensen 1y ago
      [flagged]

surprisetalk 1y ago

> By contrast, the model I’m exploring actually predicts shit in advance. > Feel free to check: Predictions here. [0] https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-we...

fasteddie31003 1y ago

This is yet another item on the cosmic formation hypothesis conveyor belt. These types of hypotheses have been coming and will continue to come forever. They are non-falsifiable and are just stories. They will only ever be hypotheses. We cannot visit the past to see what exactly happened and test them to consider them theories. Being a strong skeptic means understanding that a hypothesis does not represent deep truths of the universe and should not be used to inform any decision. It's in human nature to need origin stories. Science's current one is the Big Bang. It is only a hypothesis and will never get to the next level of scientific rigor because it's impossible to test. I only believe in falsifiable theories. A good skeptic should realize the differences in scientific rigor and know that this is just a story with no truth behind it.

JulianGough123 1y ago
If it will help, you can check out the predictions this approach was able to make before the James Web space telescope sent back any data. https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the... And how they were validated later by the James Webb. https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supermassive https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supe...
- exe34 1y ago
  Do you have a link to the journal article?
MadcapJake 1y ago
Cosmology, like many sciences, is about learning the scientific truth through the remnants left behind. Just like we can see an early earth by digging, we can see an early universe by zooming. A well reasoned theory in any science should include and test for implications in the past and present. We can't just ignore time if we want a proper understanding of the universe.
pantalaimon 1y ago
> They are non-falsifiable and are just stories. It makes a falsifiable prediction: > What’s novel in my theory is the idea that all the supermassive black holes must form first, by direct collapse – before galaxies form, and indeed before there’s any significant number of stars, or (probably) any stars at all. This emerges directly from the application of Darwinian evolutionary logic to universes. It’s not predicted by any other theory, and if I’m wrong, my theory wobbles badly and a wheel falls off. So the theory is falsifiable. And in the other post > Most of the first generation of stars will, if I am right, contain traces of carbon at formation, because early quasars make it by fusion and distribute it into the clouds to seed star formation. And such stars will therefore be relatively efficient at fusion, element formation, etc. (They will still be very low in carbon, and other elements such as oxygen, relative to later stars; but not completely lacking, as Population III stars are theorised to be.) with more predictions: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-webb-space https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-we...

JulianGough123 1y ago

I’m slightly startled to see my Blowtorch Theory post at number one here. (A friend sent me a screenshot, so I came over to check if he was joking.) I’m happy to answer questions, though I will be dealing with a five-year-old and eating dinner at the same time, which may lead to delayed responses.

lspears 1y ago
Amazing. What caused you to look for a solution without a particle?
- JulianPGough 1y ago
  I watched the search for the Higgs Boson and the search for Cold Dark Matter carry on in parallel for decades. The former was clearly actual science: they had a theoretical particle, they knew what it did, it had a place that made sense in the Standard Model, they had an estimate for the energy range in which they could find it, they built an instrument to look for it, and they found it. The latter... well, it was clearly epicycles. Endlessly tweakable, with six free parameters, not in the Standard Model, a bunch of different guesses as to what it actually was, a bunch of different energies at which it might be found – oh dear, not there, well it must be at a much higher energy then – always on the brink of discovery but never actually discovered... And then, as I began researching my book on cosmological natural selection, I could see that an evolved, fine-tuned universe was going to have startling emergent-looking properties built into its developmental process. Baryonic matter was going to pull off some weird shit, as the interaction of extremely fine-tuned parameters led to highly unlikely-looking outcomes. These would look like inexplicable anomalies, if your fundamental assumption was that we lived in a random and arbitrary one-shot universe. And cold dark matter started to look awfully like the kind of think you would have to invent to save the old paradigm... So as I developed my approach, I assumed dark matter was an error, and did my best to explain everything using fine-tuned parameters, and baryonic matter only.
ordu 1y ago
So, life exists to create more universes? It seems, that you've found the meaning of Life, Universe and possible Everything, and turns out it is not 42?

mellosouls 1y ago

So many private TOEs out there, it's not at all obvious why this one merits special examination here or anywhere else. The guy is calling for funding and support with an evangelistic fervour classically associated with those reluctant to pursue their case through accepted mechanisms of scrutiny and peer review.

wyager 1y ago
"accepted mechanisms of scrutiny and peer review" have produced very little value in physics for 50+ years. We've picked all the low hanging fruit we can reach with that epistemic framework. We should probably expect future developments to happen elsewhere.
- deleted 1y ago
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- JulianPGough 1y ago
  I like you, wyager. Marry me. Yeah, I think cosmology has very slowly walked into a swamp with ΛCDM. And it's having enormous trouble backing out of the swamp, even though the James Webb Space Telescope is screaming at them that they need to. But ΛCDM is now baked into every simulation, and is assumed up front by pretty much every paper in the field. So they're in a very difficult situation. New ideas, and change, will have to come, initially, from outside the field. Which will liberate a lot of very brilliant people who are trapped in the old paradigm.
- jplusequalt 1y ago
  >have produced very little value in physics for 50+ years I guess the entire field of solid state physics and materials science doesn't exist?
  - eximius 1y ago
    In relation to cosmology, that's mostly correct?
  - 1y ago

oscarmoxon 1y ago

Personally, I love this theory. The thought of natural assembly and selection at the level of Black Holes is alluring. Not sure what The Black Mirror Hypothesis (https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/when-you-fall-into-a-black-hole-you https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/when-you-fall-into-a-bl...) would have to say about this, though.

Xmd5a 1y ago
I've been calling out the similarity of works done by Barbour, Turok, Farnes & Petit for a long time, and the last developments by Turok's team vindicate this intuition. It is now very close to Jean-Pierre Petit's Janus model. Curt Jaimungal announced he'd interview him soon. https://januscosmologicalmodel.com https://januscosmologicalmodel.com Petit's models implies negative masses that would sit at the center of the cosmic voids, giving it structure. Someone wrote simulation showcasing this emergent phenomenon a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtcbBpieR5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtcbBpieR5U

motbus3 1y ago

I feel it is more likely for me to be a NPC in someone else's simulation game

sixo 1y ago

The same but without leaning so heavily on Smolin's cosmological-natural-selection would be quite a bit more compelling. It should not be necessary; if it's true then the physics of our universe alone should predict it.

itishappy 1y ago
Agreed, but my interpretation here is that Blowtorch Theory does just that. It just predicts that direct collapse supermassive blackholes determine the large scale structure of the universe using existing physics. The parent theory leans on Cosmological Natural Selection to explain away the anthropic principle, but it's a separate theory not required by Blowtorch Theory. > Blowtorch theory works, and can be explored, independently of its parent theory: however, three-stage cosmological natural selection gives an important and useful framework for more deeply understanding blowtorch theory and its implications.

nyeah 1y ago

Is there some math to go with this?

colechristensen 1y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jplusequalt 1y ago
  I think the ideas are presented in a clear manner, but we're talking cosmology and physics, a theory needs a mathematical model for it to be evaluated

colechristensen 1y ago

[flagged]

deleted 1y ago
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curtisszmania 1y ago

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aradox66 1y ago

There is no shortage of cranks generating novel cosmological theories, but this writer doesn't seem to be one of them. He's interested in predictive power! I think it's fascinating and enjoy this theory a lot, but the epistemics strike me a little funny. The mechanism itself can't be tested. If this mechanism exists, these observations would tend to be expected from a random sample of possible universes. There's absolutely no way to evaluate how "representative" our n=1 observation is. I'm not yet convinced this kind of approach is valid, although I'm almost certain there's nothing better at a certain scale. empiricism is useless if you need a galaxy-scale particle accelerator.

growlNark 1y ago
> empiricism is useless if you need a galaxy-scale particle accelerator. I would say it's just not available more than that it's useless—albeit, only not available in theory.
eskatonic 1y ago
The Xeelee would like a word.

culebron21 1y ago

The dark matter and energy and other dark things, at least as described in the article, resemble the numerous epicycles that were needed for geocentric and cycle-based model of planet movements. They did fix trajectories to some extent, but made no sense.

Mr_Eri_Atlov 1y ago

What a fascinating concept! I look forward to these predictions being evaluated in the future with additional data. It's certainly an elegant idea.

thicktarget 1y ago

Let me start by saying there are a lot of false claims in the dark matter section. It's also filled with self contradiction, announcing that DM as wrong, and later pronouncing LCDM as unfalsifiable. The pillars of modem cosmology are the ability to quantitatively describe and predict large-scale structure, the expansion history of the universe, the CMB and primordial nucleosynthesis. Can this "model" calculate any of those things? No. What the author has here is some ideas, not a model. To demonstrate you can even reproduce the Cosmic Web you have to actually run some calculations, or simulations. How do you know AGN bubbles produce a universe that looks anything like ours? The author dismisses simulations as "not science", while paradoxically using them as the only representation of the cosmic web in the article. These simulations have a lot of value, they demonstrate that standard cosmology and normal gravity has no problem forming voids and filaments. These simulations have been compared to countless new observations, which this model cannot because it's purely qualitative. The article says these simulations are worthless because they don't work from first principles, this is a practical limitation that you cannot simulate galaxies down to the resolution of atoms on any existing computer. You have to make some simplifications. The structure of the cosmic web is seen in all of them, even going back to very early simulations, it doesn't depend on these assumptions. And at the end of the article we go back to the problem of dark matter, and find out the author has no explanation for rotation curves or other classical tests of DM. So despite bashing DM cosmology, this model explains none of the pillars of evidence for dark matter. At some point in developing an idea like this you need to actually start applying physics, either with calculations or simulations. Every new hypothesis is perfect before it has been subjected to rigor and analysis.

itishappy 1y ago
I agree with most of what you've said here, particularly the following line which I'm copying for emphasis because I think it's incredibly important. > These simulations have a lot of value, they demonstrate that standard cosmology and normal gravity has no problem forming voids and filaments. That being said, I think the author intends for this article to be more of a call to action than an actual result. Simulations aren't cheap, somebody needs to actually do the work. The point that there aren't any simulations without dark matter is an important one too.

eximius 1y ago

Is there anything inherently requiring the three stage cosmological theory to bring about the Blowtorch theory? I find the Blowtorch theory very compelling - but the cosmological/evolution argument seems qualitatively... less scientific, or at least less physics-related. It is very interesting! But, I think its association would damage the pair. Anything stopping Blowtorch theory from standing on it's own?

JSchneider321 1y ago
I believe Gough has expressed properly that you're welcome to consider Blowtorch Theory and ignore CNS entirely and it still works as an astrophysical model. Honestly, the longer process of reading the series of articles on the substack where Gough explains how we got the model of the cosmos we currently have helps to explain some of the strange mismatches we've had to deal with throughout history, and CNS (developed originally by the brilliant physicist Lee Smolin) offers explanatory power using no new physics, no exotic matter, and applies the process of natural selection (which is the only observed way we've identified increasingly complixifying self-organizing systems) to the cosmos, and it works shockingly well. I felt the same way when I first read the theory, and the idea of being inside a black hole sounded silly. But the more I read, the less crazy it sounded, and I'm at the point now where it feels crazier to ignore all this evidence.

myko 1y ago

Dark matter exists, it is a thing–that thing is a set of observations of the universe. It isn't an understood phenomena but suggesting dark matter does not exist is nonsense, the observations exist–and contradict our understanding of the universe–the question is why they do. Lambda Cold Dark Matter might not be the answer, but it is important not to conflate that with dark matter generally.

eximius 1y ago

There is so much anger in this thread because someone is making qualitative predictions instead of quantitative predictions (except there are some statistical predictions, albeit based around correlations to existing observational phenomenon, but that seems valid to me?). In some ways, it is a symptom of the success of science so far that we consider that the baseline for credibility. If the predictive observations from this theory hold true, then it's possible a mathematical framework can be developed for it.

oh_my_goodness 1y ago
I consider it underhanded to label reasonable disagreement as "anger."
- eximius 1y ago
  Those are not the comments I'm talking about. There are some in this thread that are derisive due to its focus on qualitative theory and predictions instead of a mathematical foundation.
  - nyeah 1y ago
    I can't quite see why complaints about the lack of quantitative support are unreasonable. They sound reasonable to me. In fact there seems to be a very broad consensus that the article lacks supporting numbers.
- culebron21 1y ago
  Apart from reasonable disagreement, there's a lot of downvotes and flagged posts here.
  - nyeah 1y ago
    I agree that reasonable dissenting posts have been flagged here. If that's what you're saying?
    - 1y ago

fpoling 1y ago

It is a very interesting idea that cosmologist were wrong to ignore electromagnetic forces when most of the matter in early universe were plasma. On the other hand the notion of evolution implies the existence of global time ordering. Yet black holes makes this impossible. So I am very skeptical about any theory that tries to bring the notion of evolution to the universe. Also the notion that there can be another universe with different physical constants is even worse than the ever changing notion of dark matter. At least the latter gives a plausible mechanism about why that matter does not interact with normal matter while the notion of changing constants does not even attempt to provide a mechanism.

mickey475778 1y ago

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bglazer 1y ago
Stop posting llm slop

scotty79 1y ago

I think the truth is even one step further away from current models in exactly this direction. Blowtorch Theory posits that supermassive black holes formed very early, before the stars. I believe they didn't just form early, but that they were always there and the smoothness of the CMB doesn't come from natural isotropy of 'creation'. In my opinion it's so smooth because on the way to us the light was thoroughly mixed by the chaotic gravity (and now possibly electromagnetism) of all the supermassive black holes of the observable universe and the 'dust' swirling between them that were at the time that CMB light originated, crammed into a bubble of the size of merely 100 mln light-years. The relationship between CMB and supermassive blackholes exists but it's the other way around. It's not CMB that spawned black holes. It's black holes that generated the smoothness of CMB. The smoothness comes from overlapping gravitational lensing of trillion galaxies in concentrations ranging form 100 mln light years to 13 bln and acting for 13 bln years. In my idea "Where did the supermassive black holes came from?" is the same kind of question like "Where did the universe came from?" The fact that in current Big Bang model we can imagine simple, mathematical origins (point like beginning of spacetime) doesn't make it more likely to be true. There's no doubt that Big Bang was a very energetic event, but you could get very energetic events without invoking creation. Just imagine two very dense black hole clusters, slamming into each other at relativistic speeds, each consisting of trillions (or more) of supermassive black holes. What's great about this Blowtorch Theory is that it connects things we can actually observe, large scale structure of the universe, with the activity of those very early supermassive black holes (wherever they came from) in a measurable way thus potentially providing evidence of their very early existence. I hope it catches on because it's huge step in the right direction.

kristel100 1y ago

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3abiton 1y ago

I can't wait for the modified gravity folks to pitch in on this.

iainmerrick 1y ago

This cosmology strongly reminds me of the last section of Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker, which vividly describes a god creating a succession of universes, gradually selecting for and evolving towards consciousness. That book also has solar blowtorches! Although in a different context, not as the mechanism for generating structure in the early universe.