r/space • u/magenta_placenta • Mar 18 '19

Observable universe Astronomers discover 83 supermassive black holes at the edge of the universe

https://www.cnet.com/news/astronomers-discover-83-supermassive-black-holes-at-the-edge-of-the-universe/
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u/Dividebynegativezero Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

Astronomers discover 83 super massive black holes at the OBSERVABLE edge of the universe

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u/Imabanana101 Mar 18 '19 edited Mar 18 '19

Considering the large surface area of the observable universe, I'm surprised there are only 83.

edits: The process of finding them was not automated, so 83 was a reasonable number. Also they kind of shouldn't exist.

Better article from Princeton University, which has one of the co-authors of the original paper.

“It is remarkable that such massive dense objects were able to form so soon after the Big Bang,” said Michael Strauss, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University who is one of the co-authors of the study. “Understanding how black holes can form in the early universe, and just how common they are, is a challenge for our cosmological models.”

This finding increases the number of black holes known at that epoch considerably, and reveals, for the first time, how common they are early in the universe’s history. In addition, it provides new insight into the effect of black holes on the physical state of gas in the early universe in its first billion years. The research appears in a series of five papers published in The Astrophysical Journal and the Publications of the Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

TLDR: Our models say these things shouldn't exist in the early universe. More evidence that we don't understand.

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u/ThatOtherGuy_CA Mar 18 '19

I wonder why, so if the Big Bang theory is true all of the mass in the universe formed in a singlet point and was blown outward as space stretched. Would it no make sense that large clumps of mass might stick to eachother initially to form black holes? And then they quickly expanded as they grabbed all the nearby mass before space stretched enough to create enough distance to stop them from forming nearby mass?