Big ,bigger, biggest awesomeness start to 2023

[Kornee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeWyp2vXxqA
It's irrelevant to the dynamics involved whether one posits 'actual BHs' vs 'BH mimickers'.
The oft used latter term actually equivalent to saying a horse is a 'hornless unicorn mimicker'.

[confused2]

Interesting.
Am I the only one thinking the 'cosmic expansion' must have been faster than stuff could form dense clouds otherwise everything would have ended up [back?] in one blob?

[Kornee]

The fine tuning issue is often ignored or trivialized: https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...on-summer/

[C C]

WEBB eventually finds evidence of BHS existing circa 13 billion years ago, and dark matter halos exist as a necessary enabler? Or does the "gravity just needs updating" camp try to bear-wrestle BHS formation, too? "We got alt(s) for how some galaxies could still form and behave as they do without DM, so spitting out BHS sans DM no problem!" (Icon of Superman in muscle-flexing pose while suspended in sky.)

Quasi-star (also called black hole star)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-star
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VIDEO EXCERPT (2:41 mark): A few hundred million years after the Big Bang [latter 13.787±0.020 BYA], when the universe was much smaller, all the matter in existence was much more concentrated. The universe was much denser and hotter.

Dark matter was a dominant player, forming giant structures called dark matter halos. These dark matter halos were so massive that they pulled in and concentrated unthinkably gigantic amounts of hydrogen gas, becoming the birthplaces of the first stars and galaxies. 

Epic clouds of hydrogen formed, some as massive as 100 million Suns, more than the mass of small galaxies. In this unique environment, that will  never exist again, the enormous gravitational pull of the dark matter halos drew gas into its center and created extremely massive stars. As we said before, when a star is born it blows away the gas cloud that created it – but these titanic gas clouds in the early universe were so large and massive that even after their birth, more and more gas piled on the newborn star, making it grow to unbelievable proportions.

The young star is forced to grow and grow and grow, getting more and more massive, until in some cases, it reaches up to ten million times the mass of our sun. Crushed by gravity, its core gets hotter and hotter, desperately pushing outward,  trying to blow itself apart – but to no avail. There is too much mass and too much pressure. The balance is impossible to uphold.

Like a supernova on fast forward, the core gets crushed into a black hole. Normally that would be the end – today’s stars go supernova, a black hole forms and things calm down. But in this case, the star survives its own death.

A tremendous explosion rocks  the star from the inside, but it is not enough – the star is so large and massive that not even a supernova can destroy it – but now it has a black hole for a heart. It is tiny, a few tens of kilometers, in the center of a thing the size of the solar system. The monster grows...

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The case for dark matter has strengthened
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/dark-matter-evidence/

INTRO: The history of science is full of debates between opposing factions. Even today, astronomers debate big ideas — such as different models describing the motion of stars and galaxies, ranging from unseen dark matter to the claim that our understanding of the laws of physics is wrong. Each side points to different evidence that supports their position. Now, a new paper published in Nature Astronomy claims to debunk a key observation and, in so doing, strengthens the case that the Universe is full of unseen matter.

Modern astronomy makes an extraordinary claim. While powerful observatories, like the Hubble Space Telescope and the newer James Webb Space Telescope, can see billions of stars and galaxies, those breathtaking pictures are just a small fraction of the matter in the Universe. In addition to the glowing stars and invisible clouds of gas that exist in the space between them, most astrophysicists believe that the cosmos is filled with a substance called dark matter that neither emits, nor absorbs, light.

It should not come as a surprise, then, that dark matter has not been detected directly; it only can be observed by its gravitational effect on visible matter. According to the theory, dark matter is about five times more plentiful than ordinary matter... (MORE - details)