JWST just found a 50‑million‑solar‑mass black hole 750 million years after the Big Bang, with no galaxy around it. That’s not supposed to happen under the standard “stars → galaxies → black holes” model.
It’s pure hydrogen, so it formed before nearby stars had time to seed heavier elements. That leaves a few options: primordial black hole from the Big Bang, direct collapse of a gas cloud, or a galaxy that formed and disappeared.
There are ~300 similar “little red dots” in JWST data. If most are black holes, the early universe was building them in parallel with — or before — galaxies. Either way, the neat timeline in textbooks is wrong.
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.
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.
Arguably, it makes no difference at all as to what's inside (apart from the inference that the early universe had lots of singularity seeking ponies and little green men)
Maybe, lazy or tired light, and everything shifts towards specific spectral lines or frequencies/wavelengths at distant observation.
Attenuates? Asymptotes to the hydrogen line?
If light got tired it would make ordinary chemistry impossible. You wouldn't see spectra because atoms themselves would work differently (and probably not at all).
The fact that we can tell that it's hydrogen makes it extremely unlikely that light behaved differently there.
If you draw conclusions from incomplete data, they tend to be wrong. Even Prof. van Dusen and Sherlock Holmes knew that. So if there were any difference, it would be sheer luck.
It’s pure hydrogen, so it formed before nearby stars had time to seed heavier elements. That leaves a few options: primordial black hole from the Big Bang, direct collapse of a gas cloud, or a galaxy that formed and disappeared.
There are ~300 similar “little red dots” in JWST data. If most are black holes, the early universe was building them in parallel with — or before — galaxies. Either way, the neat timeline in textbooks is wrong.