Forbidden black holes and ancient stars hide in these 'tiny red dots' (image)

[Admin]

The James Webb Space Telescope found "tiny red dots" in the early universe representing overgrown supermassive black holes and stars that are impossibly old for the infant cosmos.

Forbidden black holes and ancient stars hide in these 'tiny red dots' (image) : Read more

 

[skynr13]

In this perspective of the early universe, having another Sun within our Solar System is highly plausible even now. Since the early Universe had incredible amounts of hydrogen, then imagine if Jupiter (a failed star) had such an enormous amount of Hydrogen while it was being birthed. That would make possible another Sun in our Solar System easily. As for having a BH near to Earth as 26 LY's, I will leave that up to the comments, because I think in not too much time our entire Solar System would be sucked into infinitum!!

 

[Unclear Engineer]

For Jupiter to become a second sun in our solar system, it would need to have at least 75 times the mass it really has - and then it would only be a red dwarf star, nowhere near as bright as the Sun. But, the additional mass in the orbit of Jupiter would probably make substantial changes to the orbits of the inner planets, including the Earth. It is not clear what that would do to Earth's climate and thus its habitability. There are planets that circle pairs of stars, and there are planets that circle only one star of binary star systems. But, we have not determined if any of those have life on them.

Regarding the black hole that is "26 light years away from Earth", do you mean the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy? That is 26 thousand light years away. The closest known black hole to Earth is Gaia-BH1, located 1,560 light-years away. But, even at 26 light years away, Gaia-BH1 would not "suck Earth in" because we would still not be even in bound orbits with each other.

 

[skynr13]

According to 'ask a mathematician', Jupiter needs to be a hundred times more massive and 20% bigger to become like a regular Sun, and my remark was only conjecture anyway, regardless of there being planets in between. But with hydrogen so available in the early Universe, it still seems possible to pack on that extra mass and size. Now I guess something you missed in the article was the distance to the central BH in this condensed galaxy was comparable to our central BH being 26 light years away from Earth. And although the accretion disk of Sag A* only spans a region a few times the diameter of our solar system, which is about one LY, I think it would still be possible for it to really mess things up for the Earthlings that live here.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

In other circumstances, it is certainly possible for 2 stars to form close enough together to be similar to what our solar system would be like if Jupiter had become as massive as the Sun. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't happen. In our solar system, it didn't happen.

Regarding the "26 light years to a black hole": now I understand what you were alluding to, but it is only a scale comparison. The black holes in those distant galaxies are even bigger than the one in our galaxy, and they are active, while ours is not so active. So, much more effect from being close to one of them than being close to our galactic center. And, the density of stars around those black holes is much higher than in our galaxy, so, as the article states, "Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years away) would be within the solar system" if the Milky Way was shrunk by a factor of 1000. And that would put Earth only 93 thousand miles from our Sun, inside Mercury's real orbit. The climate on Earth would be nothing like it really is, now. So, yes, all of those factors would mess up the chances for life here on Earth.

But, all of that happened 13.4 billion years ago. Who knows what those galaxies are like today, other than it seems unlikely that their black holes could have become smaller over time, and they were already huge.

 

[Torbjorn Larsson]

The other way to state the early large supermassive black holes is to describe their subsequent growth as “shockingly normal”. [Universe Today, JUNE 29, 2024 BY CAROLYN COLLINS PETERSEN, Earliest Supermassive Black Holes Were “Shockingly Normal”] And early star clusters were more packed than the modern, relaxed versions we are surrounded by.

Luckily the problematic direct collapse “heavy seed” supermassive black hole formation route – which doesn’t fit the cosmic background radiation homogeneity – is now found to be much less likely than conventional star mergers in globular clusters. “The formation of these seeds is 100,000 times more likely than heavy seeds produced via direct collapse and are therefore more likely to explain the overall MBH population.” [“The seeds that formed the garden of massive black holes”, Pranav Satheesh, Jun 14, 2024, Astrobites].

The seeds of globular clusters have now themselves been seen with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in the galaxy Cosmic Gems arc [“Star clusters observed within a galaxy in the early Universe” June 24, 2024, Stockholm University].

As for early star formation rates, one shouldn’t forget that up to 2017 the problem was that galaxy simulations predicted a natural hundred times faster star formation than was observed. [“Galaxy simulations are at last matching reality—and producing surprising insights into cosmic evolution”, 30 MAY 2018BYADRIAN CHO, Science.] Maybe early galaxy conditions allowed for that rate.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I am hoping that Webb can reach even further back in time to actually see some of these things that we are having a hard time predicting in advance.

If it is correct that the stars and black holes did not form until after the hydrogen atoms formed and released the CMBR, then we should be able to see the formation process, although it might require some different sensors for the longer wavelengths of electromagnetic waves.

That is the real test of the BBT backstory as it is now conceptualized. If out telescopes can keep finding stars and black holes back to the time of the CMBR, then that would raise the question about what the CMBR really is. Yes, it is not inconceivable that stars could form out of plasma, or that black hole "seeds" could have been present while the universe's baryonic matter was still in a plasma state. But, it would then become hard to explain how the CMBR is not more non-uniform than we observe.

 

[skynr13]

In other circumstances, it is certainly possible for 2 stars to form close enough together to be similar to what our solar system would be like if Jupiter had become as massive as the Sun. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't happen. In our solar system, it didn't happen.

Regarding the "26 light years to a black hole": now I understand what you were alluding to, but it is only a scale comparison. The black holes in those distant galaxies are even bigger than the one in our galaxy, and they are active, while ours is not so active. So, much more effect from being close to one of them than being close to our galactic center. And, the density of stars around those black holes is much higher than in our galaxy, so, as the article states, "Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years away) would be within the solar system" if the Milky Way was shrunk by a factor of 1000. And that would put Earth only 93 thousand miles from our Sun, inside Mercury's real orbit. The climate on Earth would be nothing like it really is, now. So, yes, all of those factors would mess up the chances for life here on Earth.

But, all of that happened 13.4 billion years ago. Who knows what those galaxies are like today, other than it seems unlikely that their black holes could have become smaller over time, and they were already huge.

So, what I derive from this is that the first stars were mostly Blue Giants with sizes 5-10 times our Sun, almost pure hydrogen and so closely packed together it would seem 2 or 3 would fit inside our Solar System. I think this would mean they would be almost touching and accretion from one to another would've been insane, - let alone that forced upon them by the BH at there center. Blue Giants usually always become Nova and reduce themselves to a BH. So, it seems this would eventually become the entire Galaxies fate. With activity like this occurring in the early Universe, it seems funny that Scientists don't understand how early BH's got so big, so quick!
I am for sure glad this didn't happen everywhere in the early Universe and my hopes are that this is mostly isolated to fewer areas, otherwise I suppose we would all have met our fate long ago in some BH. But there is always the chance that one or more BH's grew so large that it might become as big as our whole Galaxy. Then one day what will we do when it comes moseying our way?