[HN Gopher] The Blowtorch Theory: A new model for structure form...
___________________________________________________________________
The Blowtorch Theory: A new model for structure formation in the
universe
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 121 points
Date : 2025-05-28 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theeggandtherock.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theeggandtherock.com)
| moi2388 wrote:
| " It argues that large numbers of extremely early, sustained,
| supermassive black hole jets actively shaped the universe's
| structure in its first few hundred million years"
|
| Isn't the entire problem that there is no known mechanism by
| which these supermassive black holes would form so early with so
| much mass?
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Well, Webb has observed SMBHs earlier than current theory would
| suggest.
|
| But I don't think that's the problem here, it's the
| opportunity:
|
| LCDM was the best model for the cosmic web when we thought that
| SMBHs could not exist so early. But now that we have observed
| that they do, it opens the possibility of other theories for
| the cosmic web, including this one (blow torch) in which the
| early SMBHs take a role in its creation.
| justlikereddit wrote:
| LCDM was the best model for a long while because it gave a
| free mystery variable to generously use as plaster to fill in
| an innumerable amount of yawing cracks.
|
| The convenience provided by the Dark Plaster theory have
| meant that despite innumerable failures in actually detecting
| it have been handwaved off by an equally convenient "it's
| just a bit darker than expected".
| pfdietz wrote:
| A single variable to fill innumerable cracks? How would
| that work? All the cracks just happen to line up so the
| same value of the variable fills each one? Wouldn't that
| mean there's just one crack?
| jesse__ wrote:
| According to the article, the plaster changes properties
| based on the crack it's currently filling, which is the
| whole problem.
| JulianPGough wrote:
| Yes. (See longer version of this "yes" above!)
| JulianPGough wrote:
| Currently, Cold Dark Matter, as used in simulations etc,
| usually has six free parameters. Most simulations of
| structure formation at the level of the universe as a
| whole ONLY model Cold Dark Matter (i.e., they treat
| baryonic matter as a rounding error, and leave it out:
| that's partly understandable, as baryonic matter is much
| harder to model than Cold Dark Matter, and trying to
| model it eats compute.) And when they DO add baryonic
| matter to simulations (usually of smaller-scale structure
| formation), that usually has four free parameters, which
| are also not based on observation, but can be tuned to
| fit. So you can end up with 10 free parameters in the
| simulations.
|
| As von Neumann once said, "With four parameters I can fit
| an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his
| trunk."
|
| At this point, with ten, it's basically CGI.
|
| And the model gets tweaked afresh to suit each new
| observational anomaly. So you can tweak it to fit, say,
| large galaxies, but then it doesn't fit small galaxies.
| (The cusp/core problem.) But that's OK, because you can
| tweak it to fit small galaxies! (But then it won't fit
| large galaxies.) And on it goes.
|
| A key problem is that, after 50 years of tweaking, it
| still didn't predict the rapid, efficient structure
| formation of the early universe as revealed by the James
| Webb Space Telescope.
|
| Three-stage cosmological natural selection (the parent to
| Blowtorch Theory) did.
|
| https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-
| the...
| thicktarget wrote:
| >Cold Dark Matter, as used in simulations etc, usually
| has six free parameters.
|
| That is not correct. LCDM as a cosmology is described by
| 6 parameters mostly for CMB analyses, but this is much
| more than just CDM. These parameters include the amount
| of normal matter, the cosmological constant, the amount
| of dark matter, reionization, the Hubble constant and two
| parameters which describe the initial fluctuations. CDM
| only has one parameter in the model, its density. As you
| can see there aren't many nobs to turn. These parameters
| are also fixed to observational values. And if you think
| you can fit all modern cosmological data with a
| physically-meaningful model and fewer parameters then go
| ahead.
| justlikereddit wrote:
| How about dark dollars that can be freely adjusted up and
| down in density to balance the books, that any and all
| auditors will have to accept as real because it's written
| down to satisfy calculations but can not directly be
| observed?
|
| Charles Ponzi or Bernie Madoff could've had the Nobel
| Prize in economics had they merely used the same
| explanation as the lambda-cdm cosmologist do.
| FredPret wrote:
| Only if you can observe the dark dollars bending the
| trajectories of the bright dollars
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > (And even as this Blowtorch Theory post was being researched
| and written, a paper was published detailing an extraordinary
| blazar - a jet, a blowtorch, pointed straight at the earth from
| over 13 billion years ago, just 750 million years after the Big
| Bang - far earlier than Lambda Cold Dark Matter predicted, but
| slap-bang where the theory outlined here said we would find
| them. See: A blazar in the epoch of reionization, by Eduardo
| Banados et al, Nature, December 17, 2024.)
|
| We don't know how they form but we do now know they exist
| through Webb.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My take on it is that it's been known for a long time (1970s)
| that supermassive black holes couldn't possibly have been
| formed between the big bang and the present, never mind the
| early times that JWST can see into.
|
| Astronomers will make excuses for that and say that they
| didn't really prove that galaxies had black holes in them and
| that they were really massive recently but the tension has
| existed for a long time because people suspected that
| galaxies had huge black holes but there was no path to form
| black holes that big.
|
| I worked for arXiv in the 00's and had a coworker who'd
| gotten a PhD in astrophysics about accretion disks who was
| really bitter about how the poor job prospects in astronomy
| let senior astronomers bully junior astronomers creating a
| false consensus about how accretion disks and other phenomena
| worked. When I first heard about LCDM my first instinct was
| that some bullying was going on. [1]
|
| Observations that the "first billion years" might have taken
| 10 billion years or so have been coming for a while but with
| JWST there is an absolute flood of them.
|
| [1] The cold dark matter doesn't bug me half as much as the
| dark energy. I mean, once you look at anything bigger than a
| star cluster it's obvious that dark matter is there or
| otherwise gravity works differently in a way that is huge for
| objects bigger than a star cluster but doesn't show up in
| precision measurements at all in the solar system.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Yes, basically black holes growing speed is limited since
| when they eat they push away the surrounding matter so
| there isn't enough time. There are also no black holes in
| between normal size and super massive, both nearby or far
| away (in the past because of the speed of light)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is the possibility that black holes larger than the
| usual stellar size black holes could have formed early on
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_collapse_black_hole
|
| but the gap between those and supermassive black holes is
| huge and it is not so probable that 100 or 1000 of those
| would merge in the time available.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| its a cool theory and very appealing to me personally but how
| confident are we about the age of the blazar?
| itishappy wrote:
| This post is suggesting just such a mechanism:
|
| > The second half of this post will outline the parent theory -
| three stage cosmological natural selection - which successfully
| predicted these extremely early supermassive black holes, and
| their jets, plus the associated rapid early galaxy formation,
| in advance of the first James Webb Space Telescope data.
| itishappy wrote:
| I want to correct a misunderstanding I had when reading the
| article the first time:
|
| The mechanism suggested is Direct Collapse Black Hole
| formation, not the "three stage cosmological natural
| selection" model I quoted.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Isn't the entire problem that there is no known mechanism by
| which these supermassive black holes would form so early with
| so much mass?
|
| Direct Collapse[1] models provide candidates for this, no?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_collapse_black_hole
| pixl97 wrote:
| With the size of quasars we're seeing in the early universe,
| direct collapse seems likely.
|
| Of course this begs the next question of how didn't the
| universe just collapse back in on itself!
| JSchneider321 wrote:
| Inflation seems to have been tuned to ensure this didn't
| happen, giving the cosmos time to grow while ensuring it
| didn't grow so quickly that galaxies couldn't form.
|
| Cosmological natural selection provides an explanation for
| this, too.
| absurdo wrote:
| I am going to nitpick this but I've come to expect this kind of
| posting style from medium, substack and others.
|
| It has no coherent thesis, it throws way too many links, it uses
| meta titles that reference memes. The SNR is incredibly low for
| what should be a technical synopsis because the words get in the
| way of information.
|
| What I want to see: I don't care what you call it, "blowtorch" is
| meaningless. Tell me concretely what is it, what does it address,
| and how does the current widely accepted theory fail to account
| for certain things. I don't need detours into minutae so the
| author can have their r/iamverysmart moment. I want to see the
| list of experiments with data points that validate hunches and
| disprove others. We can reduce it down to simpler terms for
| laymen if we start with good information. As it stands, it's
| noise.
| itishappy wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. The first few sections are clear,
| concise, supported by links to observations you expect, and
| cover exactly what you say is missing:
|
| > THE PROBLEM
|
| > THE CURRENT, PASSIVE, ANSWER
|
| > AN ALTERNATIVE, ACTIVE, ANSWER
|
| > A MORE FRUGAL ANSWER
|
| > SUPPORTIVE EVIDENCE
|
| Here's a direct link to that last section:
|
| https://theeggandtherock.com/i/158515951/supportive-evidence
|
| Edit: Alright, as I get further into the article I see more and
| more what you're mentioning...
| absurdo wrote:
| > Edit: Alright, as I get further into the article I see more
| and more what you're mentioning...
|
| I was waiting for this edit but didn't want to be mean about
| it :-)
| itishappy wrote:
| Appreciate your patience! :-)
| JulianGough123 wrote:
| It also made predictions about the early universe, in advance
| of the James Webb space telescope sending back any data:
|
| https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the...
|
| And those predictions were later confirmed by the James Webb:
|
| Https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-
| supermassive
|
| Which is a data point worth pondering.
| JSchneider321 wrote:
| This doesn't feel like a good faith engagement with the ideas
| presented in the theory.
|
| > It has no coherent thesis
|
| It's literally in the subtitle: How early, sustained,
| supermassive black hole jets carved out cosmic voids, shaped
| filaments, and generated magnetic fields
|
| > it throws way too many links
|
| It cites its sources and provides links to the referenced
| research or other writings on the subjects. I suspect if it
| didn't do this, that might be a criticism as well?
|
| > it uses meta titles that reference memes
|
| Alternatively, it could've been written in the jargon of a
| specific subfield of science that very few people understand,
| but that doesn't seem like the most effective way of sharing
| ideas across broad audiences.
|
| Everything you've asked for in the last paragraph is provided
| in the article you're discrediting, which makes it clear you
| didn't read it. Ostensibly, this is because the "words get in
| the way of information," but I'm not sure how the ideas being
| explored here could be expressed using only pictures and
| mathematical formulas.
|
| Perhaps you could explain why you feel alternatives to the
| "widely accepted" theory that fails to accurately model
| cosmology as we're observing it aren't worth being explored? Or
| maybe what specific format those ideas should be expressed that
| don't involve too many words for people to have to read?
| jplusequalt wrote:
| >aren't worth being explored
|
| There is no math in this article. In the fields of physics,
| how else do you explore an idea other than building models to
| test if those ideas hold any water?
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| There's no math.
|
| Modern cosmology requires simulations, simulations require
| mathematical models.
|
| It's well researched and points out legitimate shortcomings in
| current theories.
|
| But without the math you don't know if everything is really
| adding up and we're kind of left with cool story bro.
| JulianGough123 wrote:
| I understand your critique. But it proposes a sequencing of
| events which is novel, and testable.
|
| For example, it made these predictions in advance of the James
| Web's first data:
|
| https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the...
|
| And these were later validated by the James Webb:
|
| https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supe...
| colechristensen wrote:
| >For example, it made these predictions in advance of the
| James Web's first data:
|
| This isn't how any of this works. Actual models predict
| things by being models, you know, equations and numbers that
| output more equations and numbers.
|
| What you have is vague speculation and hand waving ideas.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| To be fair, predictions are the final gold standard, but
| not all predictions are equal.
|
| The math would allow for the predictions to be precise,
| quantifiable, and directly falsifiable.
|
| As is the predictions qualify as interesting, but there are
| also weaknesses. Some of it was already predicted by
| others, some needs more verification, some of the claims
| were more broad "lots of jets, lots of quasars" so they say
| less than more precise predictions would.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >predictions are the final gold standard
|
| Uh... no having a model with quantifiable predictions is
| the minimum. This is just nothing. Like possibly up to
| the standard of a physicist speculating after a third
| drink with colleagues after a conference, and that's
| being generous.
|
| This is like a dude with an idea for a new social network
| trying to do an IPO with only a pitch deck and zero work.
| JSchneider321 wrote:
| You're clearly either misrepresenting the author
| intentionally or out of good old fashioned ignorance.
| Gough is very well-educated and the ideas are carefully
| considered and are just an extension of Dr. Lee Smolin's
| CNS theory, which is itself based on sound science.
|
| If you didn't finish reading the article, I really
| recommend you go back and give it another go. If you
| don't get caught up in trying to explain the mechanisms
| (which may be limited given our current limited
| understanding, ESPECIALLY of quantum gravity), I think
| you'll have to see that there's something there.
|
| I mean for fuck's sake, y'all sound like religious
| zealots arguing against evolution.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| No?
|
| Im not sure what you're disagreeing with. It seems like
| selective quoting to sidestep my point about quality of
| predictions and pivot to ridiculing the original theory
| which I actually was originally critical of.
|
| I don't feel any need to shame the author. There's
| clearly a good faith effort to contribute and I think the
| most constructive feedback is to suggest how it could be
| stronger.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Predictions - quantifiable predictions based on
| mathematical models - are not the final gold standard,
| they are the admission for entry.
|
| Perhaps if you are an established physicist with a
| history of significant contributions then your vague
| predictions might hold some interest, but the author
| studied English and philosophy and has a career to match,
| and it is clear from reading that they have no actual
| experience developing physics theory.
| JSchneider321 wrote:
| Oh man, if you like math, you should check out this paper by
| Gardner and Conlon:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.21446 where
| they did the math for CNS. I'll admit, it's beyond me.
|
| There's also this research (cited by the author of Blowtorch
| Theory, if I'm not mistaken) supporting direct-collapse SMBH in
| the early cosmos here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.04042
| surprisetalk wrote:
| _> By contrast, the model I'm exploring actually predicts shit in
| advance._
|
| _> Feel free to check: Predictions here._
|
| [0] https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-
| we...
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| This is yet another item on the cosmic formation hypothesis
| conveyor belt. These types of hypotheses have been coming and
| will continue to come forever. They are non-falsifiable and are
| just stories. They will only ever be hypotheses. We cannot visit
| the past to see what exactly happened and test them to consider
| them theories. Being a strong skeptic means understanding that a
| hypothesis does not represent deep truths of the universe and
| should not be used to inform any decision.
|
| It's in human nature to need origin stories. Science's current
| one is the Big Bang. It is only a hypothesis and will never get
| to the next level of scientific rigor because it's impossible to
| test. I only believe in falsifiable theories. A good skeptic
| should realize the differences in scientific rigor and know that
| this is just a story with no truth behind it.
| JulianGough123 wrote:
| If it will help, you can check out the predictions this
| approach was able to make before the James Web space telescope
| sent back any data.
|
| https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-the...
|
| And how they were validated later by the James Webb.
|
| https://theeggandtherock.com/p/killer-new-evidence-that-supe...
| exe34 wrote:
| Do you have a link to the journal article?
| MadcapJake wrote:
| Cosmology, like many sciences, is about learning the scientific
| truth through the remnants left behind. Just like we can see an
| early earth by digging, we can see an early universe by
| zooming.
|
| A well reasoned theory in any science should include and test
| for implications in the past and present. We can't just ignore
| time if we want a proper understanding of the universe.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| > They are non-falsifiable and are just stories.
|
| It makes a falsifiable prediction:
|
| > What's novel in my theory is the idea that all the
| supermassive black holes must form first, by direct collapse -
| before galaxies form, and indeed before there's any significant
| number of stars, or (probably) any stars at all. This emerges
| directly from the application of Darwinian evolutionary logic
| to universes. It's not predicted by any other theory, and if
| I'm wrong, my theory wobbles badly and a wheel falls off. So
| the theory is falsifiable.
|
| And in the other post
|
| > Most of the first generation of stars will, if I am right,
| contain traces of carbon at formation, because early quasars
| make it by fusion and distribute it into the clouds to seed
| star formation. And such stars will therefore be relatively
| efficient at fusion, element formation, etc. (They will still
| be very low in carbon, and other elements such as oxygen,
| relative to later stars; but not completely lacking, as
| Population III stars are theorised to be.)
|
| with more predictions:
| https://theeggandtherock.com/p/predictions-what-the-james-we...
| sesm wrote:
| > What's novel in my theory is the idea that all the
| supermassive black holes must form first, by direct collapse
| - before galaxies
|
| That's not novel. In quantum cosmology there are theories
| where primordial black holes appeared as fluctuations of some
| quantum field. In cyclical universe models primordial black
| holes are leftovers from previous cycle.
| minitoar wrote:
| Are primordial black holes supermassive?
| Kbelicius wrote:
| Don't know anything about the topic but saw you downvoted
| for asking a question so went down the rabbit hole. Turns
| out that no, primordial black holes aren't supermassive.
| In fact one could call them superlight since they could
| be the size of an atom.
| minitoar wrote:
| Yeah I think I was downvoted because that's fairly well
| known in cosmology and is a refutation of the parent
| comment.
| cozyman wrote:
| You're smart to be skeptical, read Thomas Aquinas he gives real
| proofs for his beliefs and demonstrated that there has to be a
| Prime Mover. God bless you.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Currently the most enduring theory of galactic formation is how
| some kids showed up on Charn and rang a bell, awakening the
| White Witch; then they all witness a lion singing in the dark
| until it's not so dark anymore.
|
| This theory has been widely accepted in the English speaking
| world for 70 years, and provided a model for expanding the
| theory sixfold. However a competing theory was introduced there
| at Oxford, which was more complex and had something to do with
| Illuvitar.
|
| Novelty and Theory are mutually exclusive to scientists.
| Likewise with Obscurity. Now a lack of empiricism and even less
| falsifiablilty has never stopped them. Paleontologists love to
| play Mad Libs with sedimentary layers and connect the dots with
| mythical lost worlds.
|
| If scientists want to weave myths to share with one another and
| entertain 8-year-old STEM aspirants, that's fine, but we've
| boldly gone where Theories and Scientific Facts fear to tread.
| JulianGough123 wrote:
| I'm slightly startled to see my Blowtorch Theory post at number
| one here. (A friend sent me a screenshot, so I came over to check
| if he was joking.)
|
| I'm happy to answer questions, though I will be dealing with a
| five-year-old and eating dinner at the same time, which may lead
| to delayed responses.
| lspears wrote:
| Amazing. What caused you to look for a solution without a
| particle?
| JulianPGough wrote:
| I watched the search for the Higgs Boson and the search for
| Cold Dark Matter carry on in parallel for decades.
|
| The former was clearly actual science: they had a theoretical
| particle, they knew what it did, it had a place that made
| sense in the Standard Model, they had an estimate for the
| energy range in which they could find it, they built an
| instrument to look for it, and they found it.
|
| The latter... well, it was clearly epicycles. Endlessly
| tweakable, with six free parameters, not in the Standard
| Model, a bunch of different guesses as to what it actually
| was, a bunch of different energies at which it might be found
| - oh dear, not there, well it must be at a much higher energy
| then - always on the brink of discovery but never actually
| discovered...
|
| And then, as I began researching my book on cosmological
| natural selection, I could see that an evolved, fine-tuned
| universe was going to have startling emergent-looking
| properties built into its developmental process. Baryonic
| matter was going to pull off some weird shit, as the
| interaction of extremely fine-tuned parameters led to highly
| unlikely-looking outcomes. These would look like inexplicable
| anomalies, if your fundamental assumption was that we lived
| in a random and arbitrary one-shot universe.
|
| And cold dark matter started to look awfully like the kind of
| think you would have to invent to save the old paradigm...
|
| So as I developed my approach, I assumed dark matter was an
| error, and did my best to explain everything using fine-tuned
| parameters, and baryonic matter only.
| ordu wrote:
| So, life exists to create more universes? It seems, that you've
| found the meaning of Life, Universe and possible Everything,
| and turns out it is not 42?
| JSchneider321 wrote:
| I know you're joking, but I was laid off in September and had
| a bunch of thinking and reading time. I worked my way back to
| cosmology and philosophy and found myself in a bit of crisis
| until I discovered, by chance, Julian Gough's post on
| Blowtorch Theory.
|
| I immediately felt I was onto something, and have since read
| Dr. Lee Smolin's The Life of the Cosmos and found it to be as
| enlightening (if considerably less accessible) and profound.
| And there absolutely is an implication, explored much deeper
| by Gough than Smolin (but Smolin is a physicist, so forgive
| him that), that life fits into the universe not as some
| random and unlikely accident, but as a natural consequence of
| the process that we see playing out around us at every level
| we're capable of looking.
|
| But look at how strongly people react when you suggest that
| science, philosophy, and spirituality can all exist
| harmoniously given the right perspective. Who would dare to
| suggest any sort of meaning in such an environment but a
| writer?
| nathan_compton wrote:
| As a person with a doctorate in physics who basically
| totally believes that life has no fundamental meaning at
| all and that most humans are cursed to believe it does
| despite it being ultimately harmful to them (from my point
| of view, I hope that is obvious), I think your take is
| wrong in a lot of ways.
|
| As far as I can tell very, very few people, scientists or
| otherwise, feel the way I do about the meaninglessness of
| the universe. As you might imagine, I know a lot of
| scientists and I don't think any of them are even soft core
| nihilists, so your characterization of the reaction of
| people to some kind of mush of science and philosophy and
| spirituality seems wrong to me. From my point of view,
| everyone loves that kind of bullshit. They can't get
| enough.
| varunneal wrote:
| isn't this survivorship bias? e.g. people who genuinely
| feel highly nihilistic, that there is no order,
| structure, meaning, etc. are very unlikely to be
| successful--and also unlikely to continue choosing to be
| alive
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Just one more thing you teleologists tell yourselves. I'm
| alive and successful, I just don't delude myself about
| the universe giving a shit about it.
|
| It may be that people need to believe nonsense about the
| cosmos in order to "maximize productivity" but I do not
| think that is the case.
| all2 wrote:
| I see two different assertions
|
| 1. The universe doesn't care about you
|
| 2. Life has no inherent meaning
|
| Do you mean to conflate these two? Do you find them
| merely agreeable, or do these propositions depend on each
| other?
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I think they are both true and closely related. Typically
| and colloquially, when people talk about meaning they are
| talking about some state of affairs about what is good or
| bad with respect to the universe (if the universe
| includes things like God, a world of forms, ideas of
| perfection, etc).
|
| I think its very reasonable to believe that the universe
| does not have any of those properties and that life is
| random and has no inherent or universal meaning.
|
| I guess there could be some kind of subjective meaning
| but I don't really see the utility of that idea.
| pixl97 wrote:
| That doesn't make you nihilistic, more of an absurdist.
| jajko wrote:
| You overestimate (on purpose for the sake of argument I
| believe) how much many rational folks dislike spirituality
| on its own.
|
| Rejecting something we have no way of knowing this or that
| way is certainly not smart, usually its not more than
| emotional kneejerk reaction. Einstein too had a very
| pragmatic approach to all this.
|
| For me personally its an irrelevant topic, acting morally
| in life should be a basic moral imperative and not caused
| by fear of some almighty deity that will judge me later,
| thats a childish view on life and moral values.
|
| Its the organized, hierarchical power and control
| structures that humans created (often) millenia ago around
| every single religion and spiritual movement, with ossified
| views on what is moral and what is not, and enforcing that
| specific view on rest of mankind in some sort of bizzare
| moral superiority (inferiority?) complex that many many
| smart folks struggle with.
|
| Tells you how deeply flawed humans are at their deepest
| core, and absolutely nothing about ie existence of god(s).
| I personally know a small army of people who are properly
| disgusted with reality of catholicism for example, to the
| point they internally fully rejected it, and only keep a
| small charade for older bits of family or community on few
| days a year. The sad part is, they often, out of fear of
| rejection from families and their current social circles,
| push their own kids on a path of very early indoctrination
| they themselves dont believe anymore at all, instead of
| giving them freedom of self-determination later in life
| when they could actually make decisions for themselves. And
| this is one of the biggest, if not _the_ biggest item on
| plates of each of us we have to figure out ourselves.
|
| Sometimes such folks cant shed that indoctrination
| themselves, and come up with their own version of religion
| they started with, ignoring some aspects and expanding
| others... so much for immutable, universal truth.
|
| Tragedy of commons and all. Think how many folks like that
| you know around you, and multiply by X since shame of being
| different is one of main drives of societies of humans
| since forever, and thus a closely guarded secret.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| > Rejecting something we have no way of knowing this or
| that way is certainly not smart
|
| If we have no way of knowing one way or another then we
| should studiously have _no_ opinion about it whatsoever.
| But I think people both vastly over estimate and vastly
| underestimate what we know about with respect to things
| they might form opinions about.
| ordu wrote:
| _> I know you 're joking_
|
| Well... I am, and I'm not. I like the idea, and I like it
| even more than 42. 42 is an incomprehensible answer, while
| life creating black holes which create life are much more
| interesting. It spawns new thoughts. Like it seems we are
| doomed to create black holes. I wonder how it will go. Will
| our descendants start a war using black holes instead of
| bullets? Or maybe it will be a software bug, that will
| manifest itself all at once in gazillions of machines
| turning them into devices spewing 3 black holes each
| second? Something like that seems to be the most plausible
| scenario, judging by the history of humankind.
| nyeah wrote:
| It's a very enjoyable read.
|
| Have you considered adding a little note or link near the
| beginning of the article, indicating how you know these jets
| and so forth will do the work you need them to do? (Or, if
| you're not sure they will, laying out that uncertainty
| clearly?)
|
| Apologies if this list is on there and I missed it.
| culebron21 wrote:
| I didn't manage to get through all of the text, but it's the
| most interesting thing on science I've read in quite a while.
| Orders of magnitude more informative than any pop science news,
| and readable unlike journal papers.
|
| I think the only thing missing is to mention epicycles of solar
| system models.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Fascinating stuff! What seems a bit far fetched is that idea
| that black holes create new universes and in doing so somehow
| transfer some cosmological constants over.
|
| Is there anything that supports this? That is what the whole
| 'evolutionary universe' theory hinges on in the end. It
| certainly is a convenient explanation for the anthropic
| principle, but if any black hole however small it may be
| creates a universe - where do these universes _go_?
|
| The early direct collapse black holes responsible for the
| formation of galaxies and structure of the universe are
| certainly more easily digestible.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Does it really matter though? There's the scientific part
| probably worth exploring and the philosophical and engagement
| part which will spark the imagination of sponsors. The first
| part can be verified in the foreseeable future. The second
| part may become falsifiable at rather unimaginable time
| scale, probably requiring an artificial black hole for
| experimentation and Kardashev Type II level of technology.
| bre1010 wrote:
| I really enjoyed this essay. I'm just a cosmology
| bystander/hobbyist, but your takedown of the dark matter
| hypotheses was very appealing to me. I was shocked when I got
| to the section where you talk about all these macro-scale
| simulations using _only_ dark matter. It 's like an ouroboros
| of cosmological theories eating themselves, totally
| disconnected from reality. And relates to one of my favorite
| quotes that "simulations are doomed to succeed". I don't
| understand physics well enough to really understand black hole
| jets, but it feels like an elegant theory and I hope you're
| able to take it somewhere.
|
| This was my first time hearing about the idea of universes
| producing children inside of black holes that may have slightly
| different physical properties. This is also really cool and
| interesting, but clearly a different level of theoretical
| compared to your first half about the black hole jets. I
| haven't had time to delve into any of your links, but it seems
| like you skipped over explaining how a universe would form
| inside a black hole in the first place. I saw in the comments
| on substack that someone pointed out the concept of "black hole
| electrons" and it's like, yeah, if we don't know what's going
| on inside black holes, then why couldn't they be their own
| universes? And if that's the case for black holes, then why not
| also electrons, or protons, or any other sufficiently dense and
| mysterious object? But then again why would we suppose that
| another universe _would_ necessarily form inside those things?
| I 'm curious if you could expand on what you think the
| mechanism would be for universe formation, as well as what you
| think the mechanism would be for variation/heredity in the
| child universes.
| layer8 wrote:
| I think you should rework the style of the article to remove
| the "dissing" of the work that established LCDM. It is doing
| the article a disservice, making it sound unprofessional and
| crackpot-y. If the Blowtorch Theory has merit, it will stand on
| its own.
| JulianPGough wrote:
| I do understand why you are critical of my decision to attack
| LCDM and the work that led to it. I can see your point of
| view, and indeed I wrestled with that decision. I do realise
| that a lot of people will be alienated by the "dissing" of
| LCDM, who would otherwise be attracted to Blowtorch Theory.
|
| But I feel that there are genuine problems with LCDM that are
| making it hard for the field of cosmology to understand what
| it is seeing in the early universe, and I hope that my
| careful description of what I believe has gone wrong over the
| past few decades might have value for the field.
|
| It's simply impossible to ignore the enormous dark matter
| elephant in the room, especially given that LCDM so
| comprehensively failed to predict what we are now seeing in
| the early universe. As I mention in my post, the extended
| version of cosmological natural selection that Blowtorch
| Theory emerges from DID predict exactly what we are seeing
| now. Here are those predictions, if you want to check them
| out:
|
| https://theeggandtherock.substack.com/p/predictions-what-
| the...
|
| In that context, it makes no sense to avoid mentioning LCDM's
| recent failures: and if I'm going to do that, I feel I should
| offer my full diagnosis of what went wrong.
|
| But I have every respect for your position, and I understand
| it will be distasteful and offputting to many.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's perfectly fine to point out issues with LCDM, how it
| seems to be inconsistent with certain recent observations,
| and how the Blowtorch Theory addresses them. That can be
| done in a neutral, professional, matter-of-fact tone. It's
| not okay to belittle the scientists who developed LCDM by
| implying that they should have known better than allegedly
| deluding themselves into a misguided theory.
| mellosouls wrote:
| So many private TOEs out there, it's not at all obvious why this
| one merits special examination here or anywhere else.
|
| The guy is calling for funding and support with an evangelistic
| fervour classically associated with those reluctant to pursue
| their case through accepted mechanisms of scrutiny and peer
| review.
| wyager wrote:
| "accepted mechanisms of scrutiny and peer review" have produced
| very little value in physics for 50+ years. We've picked all
| the low hanging fruit we can reach with that epistemic
| framework. We should probably expect future developments to
| happen elsewhere.
| JulianPGough wrote:
| I like you, wyager. Marry me.
|
| Yeah, I think cosmology has very slowly walked into a swamp
| with LCDM. And it's having enormous trouble backing out of
| the swamp, even though the James Webb Space Telescope is
| screaming at them that they need to. But LCDM is now baked
| into every simulation, and is assumed up front by pretty much
| every paper in the field. So they're in a very difficult
| situation. New ideas, and change, will have to come,
| initially, from outside the field. Which will liberate a lot
| of very brilliant people who are trapped in the old paradigm.
| jplusequalt wrote:
| >have produced very little value in physics for 50+ years
|
| I guess the entire field of solid state physics and materials
| science doesn't exist?
| oscarmoxon wrote:
| Personally, I love this theory. The thought of natural assembly
| and selection at the level of Black Holes is alluring. Not sure
| what The Black Mirror Hypothesis
| (https://curtjaimungal.substack.com/p/when-you-fall-into-a-bl...)
| would have to say about this, though.
| Xmd5a wrote:
| I've been calling out the similarity of works done by Barbour,
| Turok, Farnes & Petit for a long time, and the last
| developments by Turok's team vindicate this intuition. It is
| now very close to Jean-Pierre Petit's Janus model. Curt
| Jaimungal announced he'd interview him soon.
|
| https://januscosmologicalmodel.com
|
| Petit's models implies negative masses that would sit at the
| center of the cosmic voids, giving it structure.
|
| Someone wrote simulation showcasing this emergent phenomenon a
| few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtcbBpieR5U
| motbus3 wrote:
| I feel it is more likely for me to be a NPC in someone else's
| simulation game
| sixo wrote:
| The same but without leaning so heavily on Smolin's cosmological-
| natural-selection would be quite a bit more compelling. It should
| not be necessary; if it's true then the physics of our universe
| alone should predict it.
| itishappy wrote:
| Agreed, but my interpretation here is that Blowtorch Theory
| does just that. It just predicts that direct collapse
| supermassive blackholes determine the large scale structure of
| the universe using existing physics.
|
| The parent theory leans on Cosmological Natural Selection to
| explain away the anthropic principle, but it's a separate
| theory not required by Blowtorch Theory.
|
| > Blowtorch theory works, and can be explored, independently of
| its parent theory: however, three-stage cosmological natural
| selection gives an important and useful framework for more
| deeply understanding blowtorch theory and its implications.
| nyeah wrote:
| Is there some math to go with this?
| colechristensen wrote:
| No.
| jplusequalt wrote:
| I think the ideas are presented in a clear manner, but we're
| talking cosmology and physics, a theory needs a mathematical
| model for it to be evaluated
| aradox66 wrote:
| There is no shortage of cranks generating novel cosmological
| theories, but this writer doesn't seem to be one of them. He's
| interested in predictive power!
|
| I think it's fascinating and enjoy this theory a lot, but the
| epistemics strike me a little funny. The mechanism itself can't
| be tested. If this mechanism exists, these observations would
| tend to be expected from a random sample of possible universes.
| There's absolutely no way to evaluate how "representative" our
| n=1 observation is.
|
| I'm not yet convinced this kind of approach is valid, although
| I'm almost certain there's nothing better at a certain scale.
| empiricism is useless if you need a galaxy-scale particle
| accelerator.
| growlNark wrote:
| > empiricism is useless if you need a galaxy-scale particle
| accelerator.
|
| I would say it's just not available more than that it's useless
| --albeit, only not available _in theory_.
| eskatonic wrote:
| The Xeelee would like a word.
| culebron21 wrote:
| The dark matter and energy and other dark things, at least as
| described in the article, resemble the numerous epicycles that
| were needed for geocentric and cycle-based model of planet
| movements. They did fix trajectories to some extent, but made no
| sense.
| Mr_Eri_Atlov wrote:
| What a fascinating concept! I look forward to these predictions
| being evaluated in the future with additional data. It's
| certainly an elegant idea.
| thicktarget wrote:
| Let me start by saying there are a lot of false claims in the
| dark matter section. It's also filled with self contradiction,
| announcing that DM as wrong, and later pronouncing LCDM as
| unfalsifiable. The pillars of modem cosmology are the ability to
| quantitatively describe and predict large-scale structure, the
| expansion history of the universe, the CMB and primordial
| nucleosynthesis. Can this "model" calculate any of those things?
| No. What the author has here is some ideas, not a model.
|
| To demonstrate you can even reproduce the Cosmic Web you have to
| actually run some calculations, or simulations. How do you know
| AGN bubbles produce a universe that looks anything like ours? The
| author dismisses simulations as "not science", while
| paradoxically using them as the only representation of the cosmic
| web in the article. These simulations have a lot of value, they
| demonstrate that standard cosmology and normal gravity has no
| problem forming voids and filaments. These simulations have been
| compared to countless new observations, which this model cannot
| because it's purely qualitative. The article says these
| simulations are worthless because they don't work from first
| principles, this is a practical limitation that you cannot
| simulate galaxies down to the resolution of atoms on any existing
| computer. You have to make some simplifications. The structure of
| the cosmic web is seen in all of them, even going back to very
| early simulations, it doesn't depend on these assumptions.
|
| And at the end of the article we go back to the problem of dark
| matter, and find out the author has no explanation for rotation
| curves or other classical tests of DM. So despite bashing DM
| cosmology, this model explains none of the pillars of evidence
| for dark matter. At some point in developing an idea like this
| you need to actually start applying physics, either with
| calculations or simulations. Every new hypothesis is perfect
| before it has been subjected to rigor and analysis.
| itishappy wrote:
| I agree with most of what you've said here, particularly the
| following line which I'm copying for emphasis because I think
| it's incredibly important.
|
| > These simulations have a lot of value, they demonstrate that
| standard cosmology and normal gravity has no problem forming
| voids and filaments.
|
| That being said, I think the author intends for this article to
| be more of a call to action than an actual result. Simulations
| aren't cheap, somebody needs to actually do the work. The point
| that there aren't any simulations without dark matter is an
| important one too.
| thicktarget wrote:
| One can do simple simulations on a laptop which show the
| cosmic web. It's not really an excuse for not having tried.
| There are lots of claims in the article which need to be
| justified, and in science that comes before making big
| claims.
|
| https://alvinng4.github.io/grav_sim/examples/cosmic_structur.
| ..
|
| These simulations take their simple initial conditions from
| the Cosmic Microwave Background fluctuations, but models
| without dark matter fail to match the observed CMB. There are
| no major baryon-only simulations because cosmology doesn't
| work without DM, and you have nothing to start from. You need
| a quantitative model which works on some level to even begin,
| people have tried with modified gravity models.
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