> 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.

[0]: https://theeggandtherock.com/p/the-blowtorch-theory-a-new-mo...

> 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.

Primordial black holes seem likely since many models predict them. They’re not a fringe idea.

They are also a dark matter candidate, though this is more controversial. The ones we are seeing here would be huge ones but their masses could range the spectrum. Smaller ones would have evaporated already but there could be tons of asteroid, moon, and planetary mass ones around.

At least some dark matter may be black holes the size of a hydrogen atom with the mass of an asteroid, and similar objects. These would be incredibly hard to detect. The only way would be their gravitational effects on other bodies or weak anomalous radiation bursts when they rarely encounter matter.

They’re also awesome and weird. One could, for example, shoot right through the Earth. If it was small nothing might happen. Larger ones might cause seismic events or perhaps Tunguska type events due to induced fusion in the atmosphere. What was Tunguska anyway?

The most exciting thing is that if small mass PBHs exist and are common enough, we could find one someday in our solar system, maybe captured as a moon or in an asteroid belt. That would be close enough to send a probe to go look at it and do experiments with it. Being able to directly examine a black hole could be the thing that lets us “finish” physics. It would let us see conditions far beyond anything any imaginable terrestrial accelerator could ever produce.

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…

Was it wrong, or based on incomplete data?

Thanks , very helpful.

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.

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.

The Universe, modestly redacting its genitals from view since 0 + 1 Planck times.

A white hole is a completely different object, the opposite of a black hole, not a baked singularity. A white hole is an area of spacetime that no mass/energy (even light) can ever reach - versus a black hole which no mass/energy can escape.

However, my understanding of what a naked singularity means is still in conflict with the article. I understood a naked singularity to be a black hole that is larger than its event horizon, such that it's possible to reach the singularity and then come back from it.

It is the most direct measurement that astronomers have. That said, I do agree that the word "directly" should not have been in that sentence.

Even scales measure indirectly.

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.

"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?

"Face the fact"? These scientists are very excited to find a whole new era of the universe that they don't understand:

> QSO1 and the rest of the little red dots “tell us we don’t know anything,” said John Regan, a theorist at Maynooth University in Ireland. “It has been really exciting and very electrifying for the field.”

This is pure candy to a scientist. "Holy crap, we have no idea what this object is or how it formed" was always the hoped-for outcome for the JWST. Nobody wanted to see more of the same, especially not for the price.

We don't actually think about our theories that way. Any apparent certainty is just an illusion.

I don't even know where to begin.

JWST didn't just "happen". It was conceptualized, designed, built and launched by the very scientists who wanted to test and improve their theories. No serious scientist thinks that their theories are perfect or that they have all the answers. Quite the opposite, usually. They're constantly challenging each other and themselves with the common goal of approximating reality with their models better and better. Science would never have come as far as it did if it were any different.

Where does this sheer ignorance come from? Clearly you've never worked with scientists in any capacity.

Who do you think specified, designed and built jwst? conspiracy theorists?