JSchneider321's comments

Ah, I've seen that part explained better elsewhere, I guess. The idea was first postulated by John Wheeler that black holes and big bangs are the same phenomenon from opposite sides, and that instead of a singularity the collapse causes a bounce that creates a disconnected spacetime. During that transition phase, when quantum forces are at play, the parameters of the child universe are set randomly to allow for variety in the offspring.

Smolin, a student of Wheeler's, took the idea and understood that the changes would have to be subtle instead of completely random. Within enough generations, more successfully reproducing universes would outnumber those that weren't exponentially, and assuming that we're a typical universe, our constants will be found to be tuned to produce black holes almost as efficiently as possible. His work is absolutely a real theory, is published, offers predictions, and is falsifiable. It's worth checking out, honestly, even if you just want to read about Einstein and Leibniz and all those guys for 300 pages or so.

Gough continues even further, suggesting SMBHs would have to be a trait found in the earliest universes even before they could form stars, which suggests that our universe should have extremely early forming SMBH and that these essentially create the structure we see in the universe. And so far it's looking like he's right. And if we determine concretely that SMBH form via direct-collapse in the early universe, I don't get how we don't just have to start over with a new model of cosmology.

Lastly, and I know this crowd hasn't really been down for natural philosophy sans-math, if black holes are the first thing to form in our universe and, based on what we know about them, they'll be the last thing around, too... Doesn't that make them seem pretty important to the function the universe seems to be performing?

And honestly, just think about how many questions it would answer. Is the universe infinite or finite? Well, it's finite but so massive and expanding at the speed of light so it might as well be? Well if it's finite, what's outside it? The parent universe! But you can't get out there, because the white hole that formed the Einstein-Rosen bridge connecting our spacetimes collapsed immediately. Well why are the constants these values in our universe? Because those values are REALLY good at making black holes so it's super trendy for universes to be more or less those numbers.

(I know I'm oversimplifying to anxiety-inducing levels and quite likely misappropriating terminology I should leave alone, but I'm just trying to illustrate possibilities. Thanks for reading!)

See, I think that's where things just need to be cleaned up and pieced together here. Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan (https://physics.yale.edu/people/priyamvada-natarajan) proved mathematically that direct-collapse SMBH in the early cosmos is possible, which Gough mentions and links to. But I agree that these elements need to be assembled into a larger, cohesive model that can be studied and ran through simulations.

However, the question remains as to how to gather experts and convince them to work towards this without some sort of ideation phase, which is, to my understanding, the phase this work is currently being presented as. A "Hey Science, come look at this, please!" invitation.

I see what you're saying, and I appreciate your thoughtful response.

I'll admit, I tend to get excited by things and lean into them harder than what most people do. However, I've taken time to consider WHY I'm so excited by this theory, and I believe it's because it has the feel to me of a solid idea that just needs the weight of the scientific community behind it.

String theory is some impressive math, and it's usefulness for practical applications really only extends as much as to say that "math is useful." If it offers predictive or explanatory powers, they're far beyond my layperson's understanding, as I can't conceptualize any part of it in a way that I apply to the world I observe. I'm not saying we don't need string theory by any means, but I do feel that CNS (and Gough's additions to it) offer more in that regard, and the postulates of the theory should be examined and tested thoroughly as a result.

I guess what I'm saying is it's not some crazy idea a wacky writer had while working on a sci-fi book. It's not some CTMU nonsense that requires its own language and mental gymnastics to process. It's applying principles we've learned in other sciences to cosmology in an attempt to understand the structure we see at all levels and to explain why the fundamental constants are what they are. Smolin presents the idea within the framework of science and society in a fascinating way, while Gough presents it the way you'd expect a writer to, so it's got even more human scent all over it, but I don't believe that should be discrediting in any way.

In your opinion, what would be the best way for Gough -- as a novelist -- to get enough experts onboard with the idea to put in the requisite research and development of the idea so that it can be improved to the level this audience is suggesting it should be? And how should he do that in a way that doesn't draw the immediate and reflexive derisive snort we've seen from this crowd?

Thanks again for responding! I really do appreciate the opposing perspective!

Okay, let's call it a speculative hypothesis. What do you think of it? Or each part separately, if you prefer. Could it be something worth pursuing to see if the math works out?

The man is an accomplished novelist, lol. The kind of ego they typically have, he'd probably rather die than allow LLM-generated content be associated with his writing.

I'm not the author (though some are accusing me of being his alt, lol), and I'll agree that Gough doesn't go as deep into the evolutionary mechanism as needed to really sell the idea to someone NOT already looking for an alternative explanation to the current model. Smolin does a better job of this in The Life of the Cosmos, to a degree, but if you guys didn't like how wordy Gough was here, you'd HATE how repetitive Smolin gets with the idea.

That said, I don't think the evolutionary explanation is hand-waved into play at all. I see your point about how it's a reverse approach to how biological natural selection was discovered, but I don't think that decreases its merit in any way, either. Smolin especially takes a deep look at the star formation process, how galaxies work, the structure we see in the cosmic web (and that was 1997!) and makes the comparison to biological organisms in so much as they're dynamic, homeostatic, out-of-equilibrium systems that seem fine tuned to carry out a process of increasing complexification. This, combined with the understanding (just jump on board for the story, you can get off after if you don't like it) that universes reproduce through black holes/big bangs and the similarities are, I think, compelling.

I'm not saying this is 100% definitely the truth and everyone should abandon CDM and string theory. I just think it's a compelling idea that deserves to be considered and discussed honestly, or perhaps even earnestly.

I follow Julian on substack and found out about this discussion from there. I read this post months ago and have been itching to discuss it with people since, so I jumped at this chance. I didn't have an account yet, so I had to make one to comment. I do think it's strange that adamant defense draws suspicion, but adamant criticism does not.

I have no idea if this theory (or fun idea or whatever people want to derisively call it) is correct, but it's wild how unwilling people are to even consider alternative ideas when there are unquestionably issues with the current prevailing theory.

I've read a great deal of Julian's substack, watched a few interviews, and I find him to be deeply thoughtful and quite entertaining, and I'll admit I do find it frustrating to see people dismiss or berate him as just a crazy idea guy without having a good sense of how much has actually gone into this. It's seriously the same thing that happened to Smolin when Susskind brought his weak arguments against CNS and the theory just gathered dust.

Anyway, feel free to write me off as a bot, alt, or some rabid idiot fanboy. As a cosmology enthusiast (but certainly not a scientist by any definition) I was hoping for a discussion of the ideas in the post, but this has been enlightening in other ways, which is not without value.

I'd never heard of the site before yesterday. Doesn't some day need to be the first day everyone starts posting? And can't a theory someone read about months ago and finds compelling be reason enough to seek out others to engage with on the subject?

Are you suggesting I'm a bot or an alt from the author or something? Because that feels like an illogical leap to make based on someone posting enthusiastically about a subject. I do wonder if you'd suspect these accounts equally if the viewpoint expressed aligned with yours.

Where does it say it REQUIRES trillions? The way it reads to me, it's just associating the number of SMBHs to the number of galaxies we observe and postulates that number as a trillion, which I don't think is unreasonable given the sheer volume we see in the observable universe alone.

I missed the part where Gough claimed to be a mathematician.

How do you propose we get to a mathematical model or testable simulation without considering the theory first? Must all theories be mathematically complete before they're presented to the world?

I believe Gough has expressed properly that you're welcome to consider Blowtorch Theory and ignore CNS entirely and it still works as an astrophysical model. Honestly, the longer process of reading the series of articles on the substack where Gough explains how we got the model of the cosmos we currently have helps to explain some of the strange mismatches we've had to deal with throughout history, and CNS (developed originally by the brilliant physicist Lee Smolin) offers explanatory power using no new physics, no exotic matter, and applies the process of natural selection (which is the only observed way we've identified increasingly complixifying self-organizing systems) to the cosmos, and it works shockingly well.

I felt the same way when I first read the theory, and the idea of being inside a black hole sounded silly. But the more I read, the less crazy it sounded, and I'm at the point now where it feels crazier to ignore all this evidence.

> It can't be tested, and the predictions it makes can't be verified.

To be clear, both Smolin's CNS and Gough's uptake of the theory make predictions and offer ways to be falsified, with Gough making accurate predictions of early galactic structure that Webb would see.

It's good to see people expecting predictions and falsifiability, but I'm curious why that requirement isn't being upheld against the standard model (which has been predicting more and more incorrectly) and string theory (which is unable to offer any predictions and also expects you to believe there are 9 or 11 dimensions or something). In my view, CNS requires the fewest logical leaps of faith.

I'm curious what you mean by this. We already know with confidence that when feeding, black holes emit relativistic jets from their poles that reach distances of tens of millions of light years. How could those not affect the environment around them?

As far as if the SPECIFICS of how they work are exactly as the author surmises, I think that's something that has to come in the simulation phase once the theory is adopted and tested more thoroughly, and absolutely shouldn't be something a theory should have to establish before even being properly considered.

The parameters of the universe we live in seem fine-tuned for creation of stars, galaxies, black holes, and life. If those values change too much, you don't get any of it. That needs to be explained.

Observation also reveals startling levels of complexity wherever we look, even in the early universe where our standard model didn't predict it.

The only mechanism we know of that creates Intelligent Design-flavored complexity is natural selection. Black holes and the Big Bang already suggest physics we don't fully understand, but the evidence is compelling that they're the same phenomenon viewed from opposite sides.

CNS gives you a theory that provides both explanatory and predictive power within this framework, and (in my opinion) offers alternative explanations for many of our other cosmological mysteries like dark matter and dark energy. You can just take the direct-collapse SMBH portion if you want to and leave the rest on the table, but I feel that in doing so you're neutering what makes this theory so compelling: how (potentially) easily it can explain a wide range of observed phenomena.

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.

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?

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?

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