Talking Space: Science Finds Supermassive Black Hole That's Super Far Away And Shouldn't Be Able To Exist (but it does!)

The Independent — Scientists just found a very huge, very young supermassive black hole. As far as we know, it shouldn’t be able to exist, and it just might re-write our understanding of the early universe.

It is the most distant black hole ever seen by scientists. And it is so far away that we are seeing something that formed when the universe was only five per cent of its current age – something that scientists say shouldn’t be able to happen.

Our understandings of the formation and beginnings of the universe suggest that a black hole with such a huge mass shouldn’t actually have been able to form, scientists say.

…

“It has an extremely high mass, and yet the universe is so young that this thing shouldn’t exist.

“The universe was just not old enough to make a black hole that big. It’s very puzzling.”

It’s space time folks. Buckle up. Black holes are obviously awesome. If you aren’t a black hole guy then fuck you, get out my blog. I’m not friends with people who don’t love inconceivably massive objects that swallow up anything and everything around including light. I mean imagine you’ve got such pull that fucking light can’t get away. Light! Nothing but respect and admiration for black holes.

So, according to a combination of this sweet class I took in high school, dozens of Netflix documentaries, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the aforereferenced article, black holes are supposed to take FOREVER to form. Scientifically it goes like this: There’s gotta be a heavy ass star that dies and does the thing where it collapses while desperate for energy and sucks everything in and this process continues and compounds upon itself over a long ass time until the mass of the center object becomes huge as fuck to the point that its gravitational pull traps even light and boom, black hole. Easy. However, obviously the universe can’t just whip that shit up overnight, and this new guy’s light took 13 BILLION years to reach earth, meaning it’s at least that old, so… how the fuck did this supermassive guy form in not a super long time?

Hit ‘em Eduardo:

“Gathering all this mass in fewer than 690 million years is an enormous challenge for theories of supermassive black hole growth,” said Eduardo Bañados, the Carnegie scientist who spotted it.

Everybody knows you can’t gather this kinda mass in under 690 million years. Duh. And just like that, everything we thought we knew gets tossed right out the window. Took 13 billion years but this thing came in like a goddamn wrecking ball. Tough day. Hey Netflix, better have a new doc up on this breaking news STAT otherwise our Christmas supper space talks are going to be ones based upon misinformation and that is just not acceptable.