back to article COSMIC FATTY from the DAWN of TIME simply can't exist – astroboffins

Researchers from Australia and China have turned up an unfeasibly large black hole that almost dates back to the beginning of time. At 12 billion times the Sun's mass, and in a quasar that was a million billion times as energetic as the Sun, it's not actually the largest black hole ever spotted. However, its redshift indicates …

  1. ravenviz Silver badge
    Devil

    Unfeasibly large

    It's Buster Gonad's missing third testicle.

  2. Little Mouse

    It's like, how much more red-shifted could this black hole be? And the answer is None. None more red.

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      So it's a red hole!

      Cosmic enormo-pucker, perhaps.

      1. Message From A Self-Destructing Turnip

        Re: So it's a red hole!

        Is that some sort of oversize marital aid?

        1. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

          Re: So it's a red hole!

          No, rather the result of overusing one.

  3. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    It's this kind of discovery that keeps science interesting. You think you understand something, then someone comes along and provides an example which pours cold water on your hot theory. Frustrating? You bet. But it gets the ol' grey matter going - and that's what gets the boffins out of bed in the morning.

  4. DNTP
    Joke

    How it got big and bloated real quick

    Lenovo and HP teamed up to install adware and printer drivers on it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How it got big and bloated real quick

      Lenovo and HP teamed up to install adware and printer drivers on it.

      I have wondered if HP printer drivers are so slow to install because they warp space around them and cause time dilation.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: How it got big and bloated real quick

        Lenovo and HP teamed up to install adware and printer drivers on it.

        A billion years is rather short for an HP printer driver installation.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It makes sense since God created it

    The Lord God almighty is capable of creating anything. This is perfectly understandable if one trusts in the Lord and reads the Bible to see its truth.

    The timing is off however since the Universe is only 6000 years old.

    1. P. Lee

      Re: It makes sense since God created it

      The much vaunted physics-based red-shift data doesn't seem support the big bang theory either. That was the point of the article, wasn't it?

      So, we have two ideas, neither of which conform to the science as we know it. Red-shift might be wrong for some reason, the instruments might be defective, the instruments might not be measuring what we think they are measuring, our understanding of the formation of black holes might be wrong, or our faith in the big-bang ex nihilo might be wrong, as it does, by definition break the laws of physics, which is what we use to study it. I'm sure there are other things which could also be wrong.

      Hubris was the first mistake.

  6. Mike Norrish NZ

    With bonus portal to the antimatter world in the center...

    Gotta love that Gallifreyan engineering :)

  7. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    I know what it is!

    It's a hole left by the Big Bang!

    When something goes bang there is always a hole left afterwards.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I know what it is!

      Don't go mixing big bang and antibang together or you get nothing.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time's running out for the standard model...

  9. BongoJoe
    IT Angle

    Naming Convention

    Who's to blame for this one?

    1. tony2heads
      Boffin

      Re: Naming Convention

      4 letters are the survey name (SDSS)

      J is for the coordinate system (Julian, epoch 2000.0)

      digits are

      Right Ascension (East-West part)

      + or - sign

      Declination (North-South part, negative is South)

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Naming Convention

      SDSSJ010013.021280225.8 (SDSS J0100+2802 in short)

      Though "Bruce" would be even shorter.

      Mind if we call it "Bruce" to keep it clear?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Naming Convention

        "Mind if we call it "Bruce" to keep it clear?"

        So long as we name them all Bruce to save confusion. Well except for the Sheilas of course.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Checks Bible, looks up Genesis...

    No.

    No mention of anything even remotely scientific.

    And no mention of black holes either.

    Maybe that's where the unicorns are hiding...

    1. ravenviz Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Checks Bible, looks up Genesis...

      Mentions holes though: Genesis 2.2:

      "God blessed the seventh day and made it holy"

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Checks Bible, looks up Genesis...

        The best bit is that god creates plants on day three, but then retrofits the Sun on day four...

        Who of us here hasn't made a similar mistake in a DIY project?

        1. BenR

          Re: Checks Bible, looks up Genesis...

          Well, you always leave the tricky jobs until last... gives you time to have a think.

        2. ravenviz Silver badge
          Angel

          Re: Checks Bible, looks up Genesis...

          The sun was already there in Day 3 as the beta release of night time.

    2. mosw

      Re: Checks Bible, looks up Genesis...

      "Maybe that's where the unicorns are hiding..."

      Or at least the anti-matter.

  11. Olius

    The Big Bang Blackhole?

    Rather than this being a completely unexplained/unexplainable black hole formed at the same time as the big bang, is it not much more likely that the big bang came from a black hole and this is the remains of it?

    Black holes eject matter, we know this. If the big bang was a fast ejection of matter from a black hole that was many trillions the size of this one, and the rate of ejection is in some way proportional to its size, isn't it feasible that this black hole would still exist today, and just be a hell of a lot smaller?

    Can anyone with more understanding of physics than me (99.9999999999% of the world, lol) tell me what would be wrong with this idea?

    1. Wilseus

      Re: The Big Bang Blackhole?

      "If the big bang was a fast ejection of matter from a black hole that was many trillions the size of this one, and the rate of ejection is in some way proportional to its size, isn't it feasible that this black hole would still exist today, and just be a hell of a lot smaller?"

      Nice idea, but no. In actual fact, the energy radiated by a black hole is inversely proportional to its size. While a black hole of the mass of, say, a mountain would probably shine brightly (if such primordial black holes even exist,) a huge one such as the one in this article would hardly emit any energy at all. I haven't done the sums (and the maths is probably beyond me) but I'm pretty sure that even a stellar-mass black hole that has existed for the entire age of the universe would not have shrunk appreciably. In fact it'll have grown due to swallowing up various particles that have come its way.

      1. Olius

        Re: The Big Bang Blackhole?

        Sorry I didn't come back to the thread and see this - Thanks, Wilseus, great explanation.

    2. illiad

      Re: The Big Bang Blackhole?

      another theory is that the black hole is large enough to lead to another dimension, making a big bang there...

  12. Andy The Hat Silver badge

    Big bang black hole

    Black holes slowly evaporate via Hawking radiation which is basically invisible but stuff falling into black holes liberates huge quantities of energy (equivalent to more than 10 freshly toasted pop-tarts).

    How gravity could suddenly stop such that a super-enormo-black-hole becomes a not-a-black-hole (ie the big bang) in less than 10^-36 seconds is somewhat theoretical. Even more theoretical would be how a black hole could 'bang' in such a cataclysmic manner (*) but still leave a black hole 'from which nothing can escape' ...

    (*) is "cataclysmic" the correct term for creation of 'something' from 'nothing'?

    1. Bunbury

      Re: Big bang black hole

      The thrust of the article is a bit odd isn't it? "how can such an enormous accumulated mass have formed less than a billion years after the entire universe containing mass exploded?" It kind of assumes that the matter in this one came out of the first and then fell back together again. Since the further back in time we go the more ragged our models become it may well be that this BH formed via a different process to the one that occurs today.

    2. Ian Michael Gumby

      Re: Big bang black hole

      There's a large deposit of dark matter in the black hole?

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Big bang black hole

      "but stuff falling into black holes liberates huge quantities of energy"

      It's worth noting that black holes tend to eat less than 3% of the matter falling from the accretion disk towards the event horizon with the rest fired off as jets from each pole.

      They're messier eaters than Cookie Monster.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Leftovers

    It was either leftover from the previous universe or is the remains of the previous Universe. There sorted.. Mines the Real Ale

  14. PhxMarker

    Black (W)holes came BEFORE matter in the observable Universe

    Black (W)holes came BEFORE matter in the observable Universe.

    Nassim Haramein and team's theory have predicted all of this and much much more for decades.

    http://www.hiup.org/publications

  15. Bob Enyart

    Googling: Evidence Against the Big Bang

    If you google: big bang predictions, or evidence against the big bang, you can find a massive list of astronomy discoveries which overly contradict the predictions of the big bang. This supermassive black hole that shouldn't be there has good company, like with the super-distant "mature" galaxies that shouldn't exist; the super-distant galaxy clustering that shouldn't exist, and the galaxy superclusters, all of which shouldn't exist, if the big bang theory were true, but do. (Along with A LOT of additional similar hard scientific evidence.)

  16. The last doughnut
    Thumb Up

    Ja it seems some of our theories may not be fully correct ja

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