Scientists Excited By Discovery of an Impossibly Large Black Hole (theatlantic.com) 41
In 2017 several scientists co-signed a wager at the Aspen Center for Physics that a black hole wouldn't be discovered between 55 and 130 solar masses.
They may have lost, reports the Atlantic: Black-hole physicists have been excitedly discussing reports that the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors recently picked up the signal of an unexpectedly enormous black hole, one with a mass that was thought to be physically impossible. "The prediction is no black holes, not even a few" in this mass range, wrote Stan Woosley, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, in an email. "But of course we know nature often finds a way...."
Whereas most of the colliding black holes that wiggle LIGO's and Virgo's instruments probably originated as pairs of isolated stars (binary star systems being common in the cosmos), MIT's Carl Rodriguez and his co-signers argued that a fraction of the detected collisions occur in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters. The black holes swing around in one another's gravity, and sometimes they catch one another and merge, like big fish swallowing smaller ones in a pond. Inside a globular cluster, a 50-solar-mass black hole could merge with a 30-solar-mass one, for instance, and then the resulting giant could merge again. This second-generation merger is what LIGO/Virgo might have detected -- "a lucky catch of the big fish in the pond.
They may have lost, reports the Atlantic: Black-hole physicists have been excitedly discussing reports that the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors recently picked up the signal of an unexpectedly enormous black hole, one with a mass that was thought to be physically impossible. "The prediction is no black holes, not even a few" in this mass range, wrote Stan Woosley, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, in an email. "But of course we know nature often finds a way...."
Whereas most of the colliding black holes that wiggle LIGO's and Virgo's instruments probably originated as pairs of isolated stars (binary star systems being common in the cosmos), MIT's Carl Rodriguez and his co-signers argued that a fraction of the detected collisions occur in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters. The black holes swing around in one another's gravity, and sometimes they catch one another and merge, like big fish swallowing smaller ones in a pond. Inside a globular cluster, a 50-solar-mass black hole could merge with a 30-solar-mass one, for instance, and then the resulting giant could merge again. This second-generation merger is what LIGO/Virgo might have detected -- "a lucky catch of the big fish in the pond.
What’s with the bad wording lately? (Score:5, Informative)
The wording of the title implies that this black hole is too big to exist - but we all know that black holes can get way, WAY bigger than that.
What’s actually going on here is - current theories regarding how black holes form do not provide a mechanism for the formation of black holes with mass roughly between 50 and 130 solar masses. They can be bigger than that, and they can be smaller than that - but there’s no theoretical explanation for how a black hole within that range can form.
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I don't recall that? You have an example in mind?
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The Impossible Planet [wikipedia.org]
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I recall seeing that one. Didn't remember the name. I remembered "The Satan Pit" though (it is a story in two episodes)
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Now that I think of it, it's not because of the bad wording but 'impossibly large' has a certain doctor who-ishness about it.
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Don't try to pin this one on the Daleks!
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What happens if one is 49.999999 and a gnat's cock solar masses - and then swallows something like the sun?
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What happens if one is 49.999999 and a gnat's cock solar masses - and then swallows something like the sun?
I don't know, but if it were possible you could ask TON 618 at somewhere around 66 billion solar masses, it would know. Of course, it's over 10 billion light years away as well.
https://youtu.be/dx53GHSHrSA [youtu.be]
As far as any "near" (LOL) us, there's Holmberg 15A which is pretty impressive.
https://youtu.be/KQcLRMuqkvQ [youtu.be]
Our understanding of super-massive black holes and other super-massive objects is still very much a work in progress. There's the fact that due to how long light takes to reach us, the observable univ
Re:What’s with the bad wording lately? (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is what the title made me think (Score:5, Funny)
Scientist 1: We discovered an impossibly large black hole!
Scientist 2: We're all going to die!
Scientist 3: This is exciting, isn't it?
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You keep setting me up, Slashdot... (Score:1)
And he said, "The man is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear."
Maybe a co-incidence. Not a coincidence, a co-incidence.
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He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty.
Wouldn't that just exert selective pressure on the fish to grow slowly, reproduce early, and remain small?
Sure, you have a big fish to eat today, but generations to come will have fewer and fewer if you engage in unsustainable fishing practices.
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The scale of a select few eating whatever they like isn't going to stop the ecosystem.
In any case, the large fish doesn't have fins, or scales. And it isn't in our ecosystem.
scientists are twats (Score:2)
Pluto's not a planet, and now this.
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Whether or not the object we call Pluto is a full-sized planet or a "dwarf planet" does not change the etymology of the name "Pluto" [wikipedia.org]
uh... (Score:2)
don't you mean an "impossibly medium" black hole?
Why science and attitude of scientists is great (Score:5, Informative)
This is another good example of what's great about science and the culture of science. Responding to finding something that seemed impossible not with worry or denial, but "Hey! That's cool!"
Since summary doesn't discuss why this was something they thought, I'd had to go and read TFA. According to that article, stars in this range actually won't be likely to form black holes. The very biggest are expected to engage in pair-instability supernova https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair-instability_supernova [wikipedia.org], a sort of supernova which completely destroys the star and spreads things out rather than crunching the core in. Thus, in this mid range, black holes shouldn't form directly. These black holes were likely formed by smaller black holes merging to produce black holes in this rage.
Re:Why science and attitude of scientists is great (Score:4, Informative)
"That's cool" is only the response if the new finding is totally academically certified, through channels now known to be corrupt, by tenured people, usually with large government funding (I know no exceptions) - no "amateurs" may apply, even if later proven correct, they are told to go stuff it.
There may be problems, but they aren't nearly as severe as you phrase it. The fact is that the vast majority of "amateur" ideas aren't rejected based on who they came from but on the quality of the ideas, and when there are good ideas, people pay attention. Let's look at some examples from math. Recently, a series of advances were made concerning superpermutations. One of those advances came from an anonymous poster on 4Chan, another part came from scifi writer Greg Egan (who granted does have some official math and physics background), and another part came from an anonymous Youtube commentator. No, seriously https://www.quantamagazine.org/sci-fi-writer-greg-egan-and-anonymous-math-whiz-advance-permutation-problem-20181105/ [quantamagazine.org]. Or very recently, Aubrey de Grey, known primarily for being a guy who advocates for transhumanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey [wikipedia.org] did major work on the Hadwiger-Nelson problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadwiger%E2%80%93Nelson_problem [wikipedia.org]. In both these cases, the mathematical community quickly realized the import of the work in question. So, the need to get work "academically certified" is a much smaller barrier than your comment implies, assuming the work is actually worthwhile.
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I think you are describing a small subset of science.
The investment in verifying the claim is low in this case. The weight of reputation is also low in mathematics. The proof is already present and only needs to be evaluated.
Trust/reputation becomes important when of confirming the claim requires considerable investment. When you have to choose what to invest time and resources in , because the proof is incomplete, because it takes a lot o ftime to thoroughly verify the proof, because it's about directions
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Actually, for the math paper by 4chan, a couple of professors had to formalize the proof and write the paper. They listed Anon as the lead author. A lot of work on their part, but then they also get some publishing credit.
The main thing is: they took the idea of this anonymous author seriously enough to give it real consideration, in order to discover that it worked.
You seem to be talking about funding for e.g. experimental physics, which is a different world, but theoretical physics is much like math, wh
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I am not just thinking about experimental physics. I'm simply using an investment model for any type of research at any scale: you make guesses about interesting research, you decide to do a certain amount of effort, after a while you may have a return on that investment or you have to decide whether to invest more. The return on investment can take different forms, whether it be old style community physics or modern businesslike research. This model even applies when reading stuff: you decide whether to in
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More than a generation of string theory with no return on investment at all. I think your model has been falsified.
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You're using a very narrow interpretation of return on investment. A publication which gets some appreciation from peers is enough.
There is some tension if you want to treat string theory as good science, because then it just feels like wasted effort to some while others consider it valuable.
There is this concept of falsifiability which should be used for science but that misses a major factor : What is important for good science is not that there is a feedback mechanism in principle but that it's fast, tes
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Mathematics is a high competence/confidence area. You can have a kind of 'imaginary measure' for that: if some big names say A , do you have to confidence to go through the matter and conclude it is B, and do so openly. That is a very healthy environment.
Your counterexample of law is very interesting.
I'm struggling to get a good set of parameters to describe different systems and the best approach for each. It's like making guidelines
"for this type of system group level score should be kept between 3 and 6
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You can say I have a pretty broad and abstract idea of groupthink though.
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But this is ok. Reputation is important. We can not spend all the money testing all random ideas from the internet. We would not get anywhere when we would take everybody's idea seriously in exactly the same way regardless of their previous work. The important thing to understand is that there is no large science conspiracy to keep certain people or ideas out. If you do good and honest work one can build a strong reputation in a couple of years. And this is how it should be.
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That is an important observation , that it is ok to make use of reputation. But you also have to know how reputation systems work, and that they lead to a whole spectrum of group think (hysteresis in beliefs). Climate science has a considerable level of group think, where research confirming warming is trusted and opposite research is getting a hard time. Reporting on climate science of course has group think which is magnitudes higher.
One can claim of course that the group think is justified: once there is
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So how do you get black holes bigger than 130 solar masses
I think the SMBH's were formed very early in the universe, but I haven't heard hpw.
What? They finally met your mom? (Score:2)
Someone had to say it...
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Oh no, your mom is *very* well known to scientists. If you know what I mean!
Why the top end? (Score:2)
Where does the 130 come from? Apart from the current observation, were they thinking that two 50 solar mass black holes couldn't combine to create a 100 SM one? A 54 SM one could only combine with one of 77+ SM? It doesn't make sense.
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" were they thinking that two 50 solar mass black holes couldn't combine to create a 100 SM one?"
I think you would lose maybe 5 SM during the merger (emitted as gravity waves that we pick up on the LIGO )
But I don't know where the 130 figure comes from - maybe they dpotted one of that size already.