James Webb Space Telescope suggests supermassive black holes grew from heavy cosmic 'seeds

[Admin]

The mystery of how early universe supermassive black holes grew so quickly may be solved, with the James Webb Space Telescope finding the first evidence of "heavy seeds."

James Webb Space Telescope suggests supermassive black holes grew from heavy cosmic 'seeds : Read more

 

[skynr13]

The first stars were giant blue stars consisting only of hydrogen and within a few million years went Nova and always made a BH. So isn't it possible that these Quasars came from many of those combining to make one?

 

[Jbwoy79]

The first stars were giant blue stars consisting only of hydrogen and within a few million years went Nova and always made a BH. So isn't it possible that these Quasars came from many of those combining to make one?

Any cosmic merger whether a star, neutron star or blackhole takes a tremendous amount of time to unfold. While it is certainly possible that due to a large number of supernovae events occurring that early black holes had a lot of gas to feed on..But even still to grow to such levels while starting as a single stellar blackhole is simply impossible.

One thing that should be considered is that before reionization the entire universe was many magnitudes hotter and denser. This environment would have allowed much smaller objects to become black holes and even small fluctuations in density pressure would have allowed for event horizons to form. Likewise, once an event horizon had formed during these most early stages..the hot and dense surroundings would have been perfect for feeding these newborn BH’s.

I think the best way to imagine it..is consider a black hole to be like a wet dry vac sucking up its surroundings. After reionization, black holes functioned like a wet-vac would if it were sucking up dust and moisture directly out of air. However, in the earliest stages when it was sufficiently hot and dense..Blackholes would work as if sticking the nozzle directly into water.

 

[skynr13]

i agree with most everything you've said. But I think that what you say in your first paragraph is relating the first millions of years after the BB to now. I really believe that in these first millions of years, things where quite different in terms of star formation and BH creation. With many BH's small and large so close to each other that it didn't take long for them to condense to something very massive. And with the many huge Blue stars contributing to this BH gathering, SMBH's would have become commonplace quite quickly. My main problem with your description is the last sentence in the last two paragraphs contradict themselves, and is like how I see most scientists determinations about things nowadays.

 

[Questioner]

The higher density of the early universe works for black holes, but heat/higher-temperatures I would think runs counter to that. To get hydrogen to pile up enough to build/ignite a star takes specifically cold hydrogen.
I wonder if the early universe had some mechanism for [super-?]cooling matter?

 

[billslugg]

It is not understood how primordial hydrogen clouds could shed heat so fast and collapse quickly enough to account for the observed number of SMBHs as far back as Webb can see.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I do not see why the temperature of the hydrogen gas or plasma really matters with respect to collapse into a black hole. The plasma in the center of stars collapses when the fusion process gets too weak to stop it. The question if really just related to matter density distribution variations in the early universe. And, the Big Bang Theory has the universe starting at a density that would be a black hole to begin with. Actually far more dense than needed. So, why could this not have resulted in some black holes remaining from the postulated "inflation" not being as uniform as the BBT hypothesizes?

The argument against density variations large enough to cause collapse into black holes seems to come from the interpretations of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (TV noise). Maybe we aren't interpreting that correctly?

 

[mdswartz]

My view is that the smbh'es were there before our big bang and survived our big bang, along with their galactic cores, but they were mostly stripped of stars. These galactic remnants became some of the drivers for very early galaxy formation and quasars shortly after our big bang. This is because big bangs are natural occurrences that happen from time to time, and they occur in the greater universe, via a pulverizing explosion of primordial matter from a single hot dark dense state. The primordial matter came from one of the only places in the universe that primordial matter exists, namely, a black hole, as there is no other source.

What was there before our big bang? The universe. Where did the primordial matter come from? A black hole of roughly one big bang of mass. Why were there such big galaxies and quasars shortly after our big bang? Because their starting point was the well-established smbh'es and galactic remnants. Did space expand? No, primordial matter transitioned into regular matter and expanded into open spaces of the universe. Why does our section of the universe appear to be expanding at an increased rate? Because the force of the blast powered expansion of our section of the universe for the first 10 billion years or so, but as our section grew ever outward the force of the blast waned, and gravity from the rest of the universe has now become primary and acts to help pull our section apart in all directions, now faster than the force of the blast alone.

 

[billslugg]

We know the state of the universe at t=780,000 years, it was a bright cloud of hydrogen. We can see it by looking at the CMBR. After that time the hydrogen gas was tranparent. The problem is that contraction of these gas clouds due to their own gravity results in an increase in temperature which causes them to stop contracting. Only when some BTUs are shed can they collapse further. The rate of cooling of large diffuse clouds of hydrogen in not known well. There are many constants to the equations we don't know well. There are many wavelengths given off by atomic and molecular hydrogen, those wavelengths each experience different opacities in trying to get out of the cloud. It's very complex and we don't understand it well. Our current equations have the clouds taking much longer than what we see out there. Unfortunately, at this stage of the universe there are no such clouds to examine close up, we have to look back in time 13 billion years. Need more data.

 

[Questioner]

In mechanical refrigeration a sudden drop in pressure reduces the temperature.

Could the instant of inflation have caused a sudden drop of temperature that opened the opportunity for cold matter condensation(s)?

 

[mdswartz]

Black holes aren't infinitely hot, they only hold the heat of the trillions of stars they took in. But the temperature seems infinite because the primordial matter seems infinitely dense. But I'd guess upon transition to regular matter expanding into the open spaces of the greater universe, temperatures revert back to the temperatures of the stars before taken into the black holes, temperatures that support transition to atomic matter.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Heat is not a commodity that stars contain - it is a measure of the energy per unit of mass or volume of the star and it can change as it is compressed or expanded.

The energy that goes into compressing something is what increases its temperature. So, for instance, cold hydrogen gas falling into a black hole becomes more dense and hotter. The gravitational potential energy gets transformed into heat energy (temperature) and kinetic energy (the energy of the velocity of the fall).

 

[billslugg]

Yes, the gravitational energy of a diffuse cloud of gas is converted into heat of compression as the cloud shrinks. It can shrink further only as it can radiate the heat away. We don't know how to calculate that in the case of pure hydrogen clouds. Our equations say it radiates slower than what nature demonstrates. We are back at the drawing boards.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Bill,

The difference in our positions is that you seem to be saying that cold hydrogen needs to condense and compress into black holes in order for there to be any black holes. But, if there were black holes before the hydrogen was cooled enough by the "inflation" of space to condense, then some of it would get drawn into those pre-existing black holes no matter how hot it was. How much depends a lot on the conditions around the black holes.

Because the BBT initially has the whole universe as dense as the black holes we see today, it is really hard to say when and how what we see today came to be. Yes, the theorists have their theoretical explanations. But those explanations are what are (again) not matching new observations.

So, yes , we do need more observational data - so we can make better theories. But, we also need to keep in mind that our existing theories might be way off track from reality. Sometimes I get the impression that people I am talking to about cosmology are religious proponents of the "Big Box Theory", which they refuse to think might have anything outside of it.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, primordial black holes could be responsible for a lot of hydrogen being sucked into them, but they cannot provide for stars. How did stars originate out of hydrogen clouds? We are forced to come up with some way for large cold clouds of hydrogen to self compress and shed heat at a high rate. We currently can't figure that out.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

We see clouds of hydrogen (and now dust and other elements) condensing into stars all around us, today. We just don't see it happening fast enough to fit the current theoretical time line of the BBT.

Because the BBT already involves tuning parameters for variable inflation and expansion rates, and much more "dark matter" than the matter that we can actually detect, I don't think the theoreticians are going to be at much of a loss to "adjust" their theory to fit whatever we are able to see. At worst, they could be forced to introduce yet another tuning parameter.

The BBT is so full of "flexibility" that it probably cannot be disproven. But, I still hope for somebody to come up with a better idea than just trying to justify backward extrapolation of the observed redshifts into a single point universe 13.8 billion years ago.

Even with all of the tuning parameters, I am still seeing inconsistencies in the BBT, such as how can the speed of light be a single value for all observers over all time and still claim that light could traverse the whole universe in its early history rapidly enough to maintain homogeneity? That assumption is as if the meter stick didn't fit in the original universe.

So, still hoping that somebody gets a better idea for a fundamental cosmology theory. But, I probably won't live long enough to see that happen.

 

[billslugg]

We do not see clouds of pure hydrogen collapsing all around us now, as there is no more pure hydrogen. The hydrogen we have now is heavily contaminated by many other elements, all of which allow for much faster shedding of heat. The mystery is around large clouds of pure hydrogen, as existed just after CMBR was created. There simply is no way to measure the coefficients in the laboratory. Very large clouds of pure hydrogen are needed and we don't have them to measure. What we can look at is contaminated, worthless for this purpose.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

It seems strange that we would be so helpless to predict the behavior of pure hydrogen, given that we can measure its properties so well, What don't we understand about how it emits and absorbs radiation? And, why can't we just measure whatever it is we don't think we understand? And, what are we lacking in computing power to put that knowledge into simulations of our postulated conditions for the early universe? I would expect it to be harder to do the math for a mixture of elements than for pure hydrogen.

Anyway, all the theorists need to do is to hypothesize some new behaviors for "dark matter" and they can probably "explain" anything. This isn't the first time that the BBT has had to figure out how to get around predictions of known physics. It fundamentally violates Relativity Theory by postulating "inflation" for instance. With no constraints on the assumptions, anything can be modeled.

 

[billslugg]

Primordial hydrogen has four emission lines, but there are small amounts of helium and lithium in there too. Each has many lines. There is also the background CMBR which is a black body radiation, of all wavelengths. All coefficients change with different pressures. The temperature of the gas affects them. All of the interactions need to be considered.
We cannot measure the coefficients accurately enough because there are no large clouds of such around. They disappeared 13 billion years ago. Lab samples are too small. Maybe with more advanced computers we will be able to figure it out from first principles.

 

[Atlan0001]

Primordial hydrogen has four emission lines, but there are small amounts of helium and lithium in there too. Each has many lines. There is also the background CMBR which is a black body radiation, of all wavelengths. All coefficients change with different pressures. The temperature of the gas affects them. All of the interactions need to be considered.
We cannot measure the coefficients accurately enough because there are no large clouds of such around. They disappeared 13 billion years ago. Lab samples are too small. Maybe with more advanced computers we will be able to figure it out from first principles.

"They disappeared 13 billion years ago." I'm going to ask you this along a line I push, Bill, I know you've followed from me: They disappeared along a SPACETIME past histories line (t=+1 (+n)) of 13 billion years but are they still out there along a SPACETIME future histories line (t=-1 (-n)) of 13 billion years? One that is relative to a concurrent entangled (t=0) REALTIME as I see it to be (t=0 being the time concentric circling point).

An "I don't know" is a quite acceptable answer, Bill. There are some physicists even who in their writings, I've come across before, appear to be telling us the SPACETIME future histories line doesn't even exist. As a matter of fact, that nothing I've described above exists until it is observed 13 billion years beginning from NOW (t=0)!

 

[billslugg]

Much of the problem lies in the fact that the collapsing we are talking about occurred during the period 380,000-700 million years ago. We cannot see anything in that period of time. Telescopes operating at longer wavelengths than Webb will be needed.
All we know is a giant cloud of hydrogen at t=380,000 years disappeared and showed up as SMBHs 700 million years later. What happened in between went too fast for our current models. This is a big mystery.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

How is the CMBR we see today "dated" to 380,000 years after the Big Bang?

 

[billslugg]

They look with radio telescopes and get a signal all over the sky at 2 mm wavelength, corresponding to a temperature of 3 Kelvins. They know this is given off by hot hydrogen and they know where the strongest line is. By calculating backwards using that amount of doppler shift they can tell it occurred at 380,000 years after the BB.

Once the universe was 700 million years old it had cooled to the point where the radiation was at shorter wavelengths, about 20 microns, where our infrared telescopes can pick it up.

The gap in between is not currently accessible to our instruments.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Well, let's look at the word "know" in that explanation.

First, it is assumed that the cosmic microwave background radiation is black body radiation that has been stretched by cosmic expansion.

It is assumed that the "black body' that emitted that radiation is only hot hydrogen gas/plasma condensing to monatomic hydrogen and hydrogen-hydrogen molecules.

And, it is assumed that the rate of cosmic inflation is the Hubble Constant, which now doesn't seem to be a constant.

So, if we can't really calculate how pure hydrogen gas would condense and collapse to make stars in the "early universe", how do we really know what the CMBR would look like from first principles? Isn't this potentially a lot of confirmation bias by folks with at theory who want to support that theory with the discovery of the CMBR?

The problem is that the farther back we can look, the more the theoretical time line does not seem to be matched by the new observations. So, it seems rational to question the time line in the theory. But, the tendency of the theorists is to stick with the time line and propose "new physics", instead. Which raises red flags for the theory in the minds of those of us whose minds are not already committed to the BBT as the only possible "truth".

The advancement of science requires people who can "think outside the box", even in cases where the correct solution is eventually found to lie inside the box. To me, the BBT is being given too much respect as the box containing the truth, somehow.

 

[Atlan0001]

Think of a massively piled infinitely varied pyramid of all time, all times, closing in on / closing up to . . . rising longitudinally toward . . . a point-period "superposition" apex of single time "Cosmic All" centrality. Both Einstein's and Hawking's (in differing views), and mine's, t=0. The constant of primordial soup, primal force, fundamental 'Life Force' "animation" force analogous to the Tolkien, "One ring to rule them all!"

There are new universes (u), new galaxies, aborning out there. There are new stars aborning out there with new Earth-like worlds aborning around them. There is new life sparking in new mudholes in and on new worlds. There are dinosaurs, kin to our own hundreds and tens of millions of years ago, roaming worlds somewhere out there, some of them evolved far beyond ours for not having been been largely annihilated. There is mammalian life developing out there, reptilian life, all kinds of flora and fauna developing out there, and maybe some forms of life we believe to be impossible of life, as we know life. "Many worlds," many stars, many galaxies (as in Star Wars, "In a galaxy far, far, away...."), many horizons of universe and universes (u), many quanta discreet in quanta, many spaces, many "times," piled up in that pyramidical cosmopolis, that "Cosmic All," "Infinite MULTIVERSE Universe (U)."