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Old December 11th 17, 08:12 AM posted to sci.astro.research
Eric Flesch
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Posts: 321
Default A quasar, too heavy to be true

On Sun, 10 Dec 2017, jacobnavia wrote:
The authors of the nature paper say
that the big bang created black holes and the problem is solved


I am reminded of the creationists' thesis that fossils were part of
the 6 days of creation. Not a pleasant similarity.

[[Mod. note --
1. The authors of the nature paper do NOT say that the big bang
created black holes. Rather, they discuss "seed" black holes formed
soon after the big bang (e.g., by the collapse of the first generation
of super-massive stars).

2. The key difference between creationism and the present discussion
is that creationists have no solid data & no scientific theory with
which to study their claims or make unambiguous predictions.

In contrast, there are
* a lot of observations of high-redshift objects;
* a scientific theory (the hot big bang model) which provides a framework
for studying and reasoning about high-redshift objects, and which makes
various unambiguous predictions (e.g., the CMB) which have proven to
be correct; and
* a prediction based on the hot big bang model + well-understood
stellar-evolution theory that the first generation of stars in the
universe were relatively massive and thus would have relatively short
lifetimes before producing supernovae and black holes

It may well be that there are difficulties constructing a quantitative
theory for the formation of "black holes seeds of at least 1000 M_sun ...
by z=40" (as the authors of the Nature paper put it). But these are
*scientific* difficulties, and can be addressed by the normal methods
of science (e.g., we can see if alternative scientific explanations
work better). This is profoundly different from creationism.
-- jt]]