The Great Torus of Jupiter

 After this many years of writing the Simple Explanation blog, what can I say here other than, "Hey! Look at that torus they're calling Jupiter!"  

Scientists have known for a few decades that the upper atmosphere of Jupiter is hundreds of degrees warmer than expected. Now they are offering an explanation that looks suspiciously like another planetary torus has been discovered. 

Using Hawaii's Keck 2 telescope, scientists looked for positively charged hydrogen particles in Jupiter's atmosphere. They found a ring around the north and south poles and particles coming in (they assume) [or going out, I would conjecture], as well as waves of heat cascading down the outside of the planet. Yes, it can be explained by the way they conjecture the mechanism, or could be explained by the Simple Explanation's toroidal core theory of planetary development. The official imagery certainly implies that as a possible mechanism. We'll await further proof at some later date.

Meanwhile, here's the link to the original article.  

Jupiter’s magnetic field lines (blue) steer charged particles in the solar wind toward

the planet’s poles, generating auroras (white) similar to Earth’s. High-altitude winds 

then carry heat (red) from the auroras toward Jupiter’s equator, warming the planet’s 

upper atmosphere, as shown in this artist’s illustration, which overlays a visible 

light image of the planet.

J. O'DONOGHUE/JAXA, HUBBLE/NASA, ESA, A. SIMON, J. SCHMIDT

J. O’Donoghue et al. Global upper-atmospheric heating on Jupiter by the polar aurorae. Nature. Vol. 596, August 5, 2021, p. 54. doi:  10.1038/s41586-021-03706-w.

Fractal antennae and DNA--It's Simple!

Once again, A Simple Explanation has proven one of its claims. Turns out there is now scientific proof that DNA responds to electromagnetic forces at fractal levels of size.  Here's the abstract of the study, published at PubMed.gov--

DNA is a fractal antenna in electromagnetic fields

Martin Blank 1, Reba Goodman

Affiliations 

• PMID: 21457072
 
• DOI: 10.3109/09553002.2011.538130

Abstract

Purpose: To review the responses of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to electromagnetic fields (EMF) in different frequency ranges, and characterize the properties of DNA as an antenna.

Materials and methods: We examined published reports of increased stress protein levels and DNA strand breaks due to EMF interactions, both of which are indicative of DNA damage. We also considered antenna properties such as electronic conduction within DNA and its compact structure in the nucleus.

Results: EMF interactions with DNA are similar over a range of non-ionising frequencies, i.e., extremely low frequency (ELF) and radio frequency (RF) ranges. There are similar effects in the ionising range, but the reactions are more complex.

Conclusions: The wide frequency range of interaction with EMF is the functional characteristic of a fractal antenna, and DNA appears to possess the two structural characteristics of fractal antennas, electronic conduction and self symmetry. These properties contribute to greater reactivity of DNA with EMF in the environment, and the DNA damage could account for increases in cancer epidemiology, as well as variations in the rate of chemical evolution in early geologic history.

***************************************

The conclusion of the article is the important part to the Simple Explanation. It is saying that DNA reacts to electromagnetic frequencies at varying scales of transmission, as the EMFs cause the DNA to respond to them as if they were antennas set up to receive these transmissions.  Because the DNA vibrates to these external frequencies, the huge proliferation of EMF devices in our environment constantly bombard our DNA with vibrations at a fractal scale small enough to cause changes to the DNA.  Although I haven't talked about the 5G networks here before, be assured that 5G exposure is extremely dangerous to our DNA. I will be avoiding it like the plague. A real plague, that is, not this excuse-of-a-plague everyone is freaking out over.  Masks won't help stop EMF bombardment!

Back to the Simple Explanation, our bodies are made up of fractals of consciousness. The Simple Explanation calls these consciousness fractals UCs, which stands for Units of Consciousness.

And our brains are made up of fractal neuronal antennae that pick up information from our environment in exactly the same way these DNA strands pick up EMFs.

Simple Explanation Merchandise Spotted in London

 A longtime follower of A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything sent me this photo of a kid's torus skateboard design sitting beside his water bottle with a Simple Explanation sticker afixed. My London follower has even made a shortcut of Simple Explanation's name, he writes so often. Between us, we call it aseoae.  Took me a minute to realize he was referring to A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything with his aseoae! 

What a lovely skateboard and bottle!

Did you know you can purchase aseoae merchandise like the stickers and sweatshirts? Pretty cool designs! Visit my cafepress store to see the designs! 

A Simple Explanation of Human Evolution and Reincarnation

 Occasionally one of my readers asks me questions that prompt great discussions. I treasure those interactions because it gives me the opportunity to share my understanding of these topics with others. 

This current article presents a series of questions asked this week by one such reader in the Comments section of a piece posted ten years ago called "Who Am 'I' After Death?" If you would like to read that short article first, this would put the following questions and answers into context.

Information, Evolution, and Reincarnation

Ruan has left a new comment on your post "Who Am "I" After Death?":

Hi Cyd,

I would be very interested to understand how the Simple Explanation might inform the mechanisms or processes of UC formation and specifically human population growth:

- Why/how is there such an exponential growth in human population on earth?

Humans enjoy sex. Sex creates the opportunity for UCs to recycle back to earth. Sex is a portal to earth.

- What drives the formation of more and more human UC’s?

All creatures on earth begin their evolutionary journey as simple, basic fractals of the Universal Unit of Consciousness (Universal UC). The humans did not start out as freshly minted humans. They began as single-celled creatures resembling prokaryotes about 4  billion years ago and worked their way up.

 

Later UCs continue to begin their earthly journeys as simple, single-celled creatures or as cellular components of more complex organisms. No one comes in directly as a human, except for the Christ figure who entered our timeline as a fully formed human being. (another topic—don’t get distracted)

- Is it just the continual karma/meme loop attempting to restore balance?

There is no balance to restore. Everything is going along and unfolding in time.

- If so, what would be the formation feedback loop to restore such balance as it seems to be continually growing out of control?

The humans are the alpha creatures on earth. UCs follow the “upward and onward” rule. The most ambitious UCs eventually graduate to humans and cluster there at the end of the evolutionary line because there is nowhere else to go.

- Where do the growing numbers of human UC’s come from?

The growing number of human UCs have acquired enough information to become humans. Not all UCs become humans. Most continue on as other life forms. There are many more other life forms on the planet than there are humans.

- Are they formed anew or are they further fractal breakdowns of prior human UC’s?

The karmic computer recycles the meme bundles of all creatures back into the most perfectly appropriate fit for the newly instantiated creature. A skin cell will most likely come back in as a skin cell because its meme bundle has become so good at the job of a skin cell. A bird will most likely come back as a bird because its meme bundle has gained so much knowledge as a bird that coming back as a bird is the best fit.  The dog will probably come back as a dog, and so on.

Your Self’s governing Unit of Consciousness, the part that you think of as yourself, is really only one UC out of the countless billions of UCs that form your body and work to keep you alive. When you die, your fractal unit of consciousness lets go of your personal meme bundle of information that you have acquired over countless lifetimes. That meme bundle will be recycled back into the most appropriate body available as it attaches to a newly fertilized egg in need of a soul. Then, as the embryo continues to develop, more and more UCs attach to the newly developing body as each cellular component and each new cell appears on the scene, each in need of their own UC. It is these UCs that know how to build and sustain the body, based upon their own personal histories and meme bundles. It is likely that most of the components of your body were also previously components of your body in previous lifetimes; for them, your body is the most perfectly appropriate place to reincarnate. This may explain the how and why of birth defects, as the cells reincarnate meme-based trauma from previous lifetimes. It also explains innate talents and abilities that children are born with.

It seems to me that when longstanding eco-systems are destroyed, the UCs of the displaced creatures are reincarnated elsewhere, wherever the karmic computer finds the most appropriate incoming body. Surely, displaced apes are able to graduate to human bodies and societies. For example, as a bonobo-inhabited forest is destroyed, the bonobo meme bundles attach to incoming human beings and that self then continues as a human. As wolf habitats are destroyed, the wolves reincarnate as dogs. As wild grasses are replaced by crops, the plants’ UCs reincarnate as rice and corn.

Every living thing on earth is composed of countless fractals of the Universal UC. That is their ultimate home. These earthly incarnations are transitory. There is no tragic loss of consciousness at the universal scale.

- What motivates/initiates/drives the point of inception of a new human UC?

The parents have sexual encounters with each other. Conception is a natural consequence of sex.

- Is it just the seemingly free will/choice of the “parents” of a human UC?

Yes.  Parents choose to have sex. Conception is out of their control, as it occurs at a cellular level.

- Is it just the natural forces of karma/memes causing some form of attraction forces?

I had an archetypal dream about 50 years ago that explains how and when meme bundles reattach themselves to UCs prior to reincarnating. You can read the Simple Explanation blog article here.

Here’s a snippet from the dream that tells, in metaphorical language how we pick up our meme bundles and dress our  UCs in them prior to reincarnating. Read the original article for the interpretation.

There is a young woman in the hut, sitting in a rocking chair nursing a baby, and they look a lot like the Madonna and Child. There is a box sitting on a crude, handmade table in the hut. I cross the room to look into the box and recognize my clothes are in there. I suddenly notice I am naked and I take my roughly hand-loomed tunic out of the box and put it on. Yes, this is mine. I turn and exit the hut. Rather than exiting into the village, the door out of the hut puts me directly back into the long, bright corridor.  I am near the end of the corridor now. I open and enter another door, and unexpectedly find myself outside the building, back out in the night air. 

 

To me, this dream implies that my UC was self-aware between lives. The setting was archetypal—mother; father; child; dwelling; corridors—all universal types of memes that apply equally to anyone. I was naked because my meme shroud of particulars had dropped away. When I looked into the box I recognized my meme shroud and was immediately inclined to put it on. The minute I reacquired my meme bundle, I found myself in the corridor and ejected back to earth.

- Is there a higher being/level/organization/force (e.g. “God” or “Higher Beings” etc.) driving/influencing/manipulating human UC formation or is the process just left up to itself?

Yes, there is the karmic computer, wielded by the Universal Unit of Consciousness. Or, if you prefer to consider this mechanism in religious terms, please visit my Gnostic Gospel blog and/or read The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated.

- How would all the above compare for non-human UC’s (i.e. the natural world of all other life forms on earth)?

The Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything applies equally to all units of consciousness throughout the universe.

- From our scientific understanding of the natural world, there seems to be more direct/clear answers to the above, but the human UC’s seems to be exceptions or have a different set of rules?

Not necessarily, other than as explained above.  However, I happen to believe in the God Above God as described in my book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated.  I find the Gnostic view to be just as explanatory and more personally comforting for this existence I am now living. In the Gnostic Gospel, the metaversal consciousness is identified as The Father. The Universal Unit of Consciousness is The Son. The toroidal shape that surrounds our universe is the Waters, and the zero point field that emanates UCs into our space-time continuum is the birth canal of Sophia--The Mother of 10,000 Things. In Sophism, the earth is the fallen body of Logos, ruled by the Demiurge, mistakenly identified as “God,” by most religions.

- Is there a point of transition/progression from/between non-human UC’s and human UC’s?

Yes. It is based upon acquisition of information (memes) and readiness to perform as a human.

- What might be the rules or mechanisms of such transition, whether up or down or back or forth?

Units of consciousness operate under the Simple Explanation’s Golden Rule—All units of consciousness reach out to others like themselves to hold hands and work together to build things they cannot build alone. Skin cells hold hands to become the organ called skin. Organs hold hands to build organisms. Animals hold hands to build families and support societies. As this is a fractal, it works for all levels of instantiation.

When my housecat was stolen away and eaten by coyotes, her governing UC as the cat named Odot went out of this dimension until she was able to reincarnate as a kitten again. The UCs that made up her body were consumed by the coyote. Once inside the coyote, the UCs of the now non-functioning organs also departed to this dimension. But I think it’s possible that the UCs attached to the cat’s sub-cellular components carried on life as part of the coyote. This would be an example of lateral transfer of UCs from one creature to another, because the UCs of the organelles of a cat know how to carry on as organelles of a coyote. To them, it doesn’t much matter whose organelles they are, as long as they are still eukaryotes.

Perhaps when you eat a carrot, the UCs of the carrot are promoted to human component UCs and are able to reincarnate along with your human bundle of UCs.

- Would the above imply that there must also be similar (UC) life comparable to that on earth (i.e. “aliens”) elsewhere in the universe?

Not necessarily. Since the laws of the Simple Explanation are universal, everything described above can apply to any location within our universe.  On the other hand, it may be the case that our earth is a particular site of activity—a kind of consciousness laboratory that would make other locations redundant.  We’ll find out if/when the UFOs  land. 

We have come to the end of the questions. I hope this makes sense to you. You certainly asked the right questions!

We Can't Level Up to Create Consciousness

Here is an audio file that I recorded while walking my dog in the woods. This is when I do my best thinking. 

The topic is on "leveling up."  If you are familiar with A Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything, you know that all units of consciousness "hold hands" with others to form the next level up in complexity. This linking up is the fractal pattern that builds our universe.

i.e.: atoms hold hands to make molecules; molecules hold hands to make elements. Elements aggregate into larger forms such as minerals and planets and galaxies. As far as non-living units go, there is no higher form of consciousness than molecular consciousness. A virus is an example of a complex molecule that behaves as if it were alive, but it is only a complex molecule, albeit the smartest type of non-living molecule, able to carry out incredibly clever instructions.

Then we get to living forms. Using all of the molecular matter as building blocks: sub-cellular components hold hands to make cells; cells hold hands to make organelles; organelles hold hands to make organs; organs hold hands to make organisms--all creatures from bacteria through all types of fauna and flora. In addition to building and birthing conscious life forms, creatures also hold hands to make cultural aggregates like families and tribes, herds and businesses, cities and nations.

Looking at the diagram below, you can see how the various levels cooperate within themselves to "level up" to the next level above. The level above is more complex than the level below. There are also far fewer instances of objects/units of consciousness each time you level up. There are way more cells than organs in an organism, for example. 

For some time I have wondered if there were a qualitative difference between life forms and molecular level consciousness. Why is it that "meat" levels up to make more complex, conscious assemblages, whereas "mud" can't rise above molecular level consciousness. A statue carved out of a stone cannot give birth to baby statues or animate itself because it is not "alive." Another way to put this is that living things are able to give birth, whereas "mud" cannot give birth. Viruses, for example, cannot make baby viruses or walk about on their own steam, no matter how complex they look and behave. All that viruses can do is conquer and kill living organisms.

Another thing that cannot give birth or level up to the next unit of live consciousness is an organoid. An organoid is a collection of cells grown in a lab dish that scientists hope to prod into an organ. But, try as they may, the best organoids can only grow laterally to produce more cells like themselves. They are unable to level up to form the organ they would naturally form if these cells were embedded in a living organism. A dish of neuronal brain cells will not make a brain, for example.

The answer became clear to me during the walk I was taking in 2018 when I recorded this audio file. For you Simple Explanation followers, these musing overlap the New Gnostic Gospel material from my other blog. Before we proceed, listen to this audio, and I'll explain more afterward.

Simply put, the way that units of consciousness level up is by holding hands, sharing information, and working together with a common purpose.  This is what the Simple Explanation refers to as the "Golden Rule."

If this is the fractal pattern of our universe, why can't nonliving forms give rise to living forms? Why is it that computer networks will never give rise to a truly conscious AI life form? Why can't an organoid become an organ? Why can't a corporation or a city become self-aware?

Turns out the answer lies in the nature of the originating consciousness. The originating unit of consciousness, also known as the Father in religious traditions, is the only life form in the universe. Life doesn't give rise to consciousness--consciousness gives rise to life. Consciousness doesn't work its way upward from the mud; consciousness is bestowed from "above." Holding hands and working together is our universal mandate, and that is what builds our ordered universe, but it is not what gives rise to units of consciousness. 

This is what gives rise to new units of consciousness:

According to the Gnostic Gospel, all life forms are created by the Father with the help of Logos (knowledge, order, logic) and the Pleroma (blueprints, personalities, forces, natural law). Without their blessing and involvement, life cannot arise.

This is why mud, created during the Fall, cannot come alive. This is why organoids, assembled by humans, cannot level up to organs. This is why AI will never be truly alive, although as part of the Deficiency, it will do a great imitation of life. And this is why our cultural aggregations and computer simulations are not self-aware, because they come from us rather than the Father, or the originating unit of consciousness.

The reason the audio message above speaks of "the church" is because that is a Gnostic  term for the assemblage of aeons in the Pleroma whose function it is to glorify the Father.  The human churches here on earth are replicas of the church of the Pleroma, and the "devout" are replicas of the "elect" of the Pleroma. As human-made institutions, they have no life or consciousness of their own. But in "spirit filled" churches, the spirit comes down from the church of the Pleroma to enliven the assemblage. This is why I say that a true church can be considered alive. Certainly not all churches are true or alive, and not all religious folks are "devout," and that is why the audio speaks of "devout" assemblages only.

A Simple Explanation of Covid-19 -- What is a virus?

Human Papillomavirus

Polio virus

Covid-19 cross-section reveals the coiled instructions. 
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),formerly a novel coronavirus named 2019-nCoV, is a single-stranded RNA virus, with strong genetic similarity to bat coronaviruses.

Do you realize that viruses are not alive? Viruses are aggregations of atoms that form distinctive molecules. A virus is nothing more than a molecule, the same way that iron or titanium or any other element made of particles and atoms is a molecule. In other words, a molecule of Covid-19 is as dumb as a molecule of sand. 

Did you know you cannot kill a virus, because it is not alive? A virus cannot mate with another of its kind and make babies. A virus does not consume food. Viruses do not have cellular mechanisms or organs of any kind. All they are is a collection of atoms formed into molecular patterns. 

Inside the outer layer of virus atoms lies the virus cargo. The cargo is a set of instructions made of RNA or DNA. The cargo of the virus is nothing more than information, in the same way that a thumb drive or CD carries information. And, as a thumb drive needs to be inserted into a device for the information to be useful, so too a virus needs to be inserted into a living cell or organism in order to be read.

Once inside a living cell or organism, the virus cracks open and dumps its information into the mechanism of the cell, where it quickly hijacks the cell's own RNA or DNA and forces it to make copies of the viral code rather than the organism's own code. The virus, in other words, is disinformation delivered to the cell that turns the cell into a viral replicator. The cell is then forced to produce copies of the virus that burst out of the cell and go in search of fresh cells to highjack or "infect." These newly minted viruses are called "viroids." 

The hijacked cells within the organism's body, your body for example, stop doing their jobs upholding the organism's life, and do nothing but churn out defective code that goes on to infect as many cells as possible. Some of those viroids escape the host organism in the form of sneezes, coughs, sweat, blood, and feces. These viroids then roam about seeking new host organisms to infect.

If the organism's immune response kicks in, it disables the viroids and stops the spread of the invasion. In the case of a new virus like Covid-19, the organism's immune system races against time to study and learn how to defeat the never-before-encountered virus. Once it figures it out, it is then able to defeat the invader. If the organism, your body for example, cannot figure out how to defeat the invader, viroids spread throughout the body and to others outside the body until the host organism can no longer do its job of sustaining life. When the virus hijacks so many cells that the host organism can no longer effectively function, it dies.

In the "As above, so below" method of interpreting events, a viral infection is like a zombie invasion, or a vampire attack. The zombie master or vampire is not a living being. It preys upon living creatures by attacking and injecting malicious code into the victim. It sucks the life force from its victims and enlists them against their will in its ongoing campaign to survive and spread.

Going one step further, we can liken the invading virus to a zombie master who rapes and impregnates its victim and forces it to produce zombie offspring.

Here we have a group of spring-break party-goers spreading Covid-19.

The Simple Explanation would say that viruses do not level up to form new governing units of consciousness. A virus is not an aggregation of consciousness in the normal sense. A virus is, in fact, disinformation as opposed to information. A virus does does not contain a zero-point torus that links into the universal unit of consciousness. A virus does not operate according to the Simple Explanation's Golden Rule of cooperation for the greater good. 

Units of consciousness are "mud up, spirit down." A virus is only "mud." There is no animating spirit. It is not part of the life force of the universal unit of consciousness. It is a kind of anti-life force.

A virus is selfish; it only wants what is best for itself. It only wants to replicate itself; it cannot contribute to the greater good of the organism or society. A virus does not fit into the hierarchical scheme; rather, it is a physical manifestation of entropy, or destruction. For without the ability to build cooperatively with others of its kind, a virus cannot add to more complex constructions, only to destruction. If the viruses were to infect every living thing and were not overcome by living forces, the end result would be the destruction of all life in the cosmos. The only remaining forces would be atomic and molecular.

If viruses are not units of consciousness, how do they manifest willpower? Good question. For the answer to that question, we must go over to my other blog for a Gnostic Explanation of viral archons. Please follow me there...

A Simple Explanation of Natural Law

To quote from all about philosophy.org--

"Natural Law is a moral theory of jurisprudence, which maintains that law should be based on morality and ethics. Natural Law holds that the law is based on what’s “correct.” Natural Law is “discovered” by humans through the use of reason and choosing between good and evil. Therefore, Natural Law finds its power in discovering certain universal standards in morality and ethics."

So, what is, according to the Simple Explanation philosophy, the natural standard of morality and ethics? That would be the Simple Explanation's Golden Rule:

To work hand-in-hand with your neighbors, offering love, assistance, and information for the betterment of all.

What this means is that in the same way that like-minded cells form organs, and organs form organisms, humans form families and other social structures so that everyone can prosper. It means that a single unit of consciousness can only do so much, but working with others, so much more.

A Simple Explanation blog article from 2010 called "Love" describes the Golden Rule this way:

Brethren units of consciousness need information and they need love in order to join together and work toward a common goal. Particles cohere in familiar and necessary atomic patterns through information and love. Atoms arrange themselves and then cling together as molecules through information and love. Cells work together for the greater good of their organisms through information and love. Families and societies get the job of social order and cohesion done through information and love.

Units of consciousness gather their systemic patterns and the universal operating laws required to “get the job done” from the metaversal information constantly flowing into and throughout our universe. The phenomenon known as “coherence” ensures the compatibility and integrity of these universal patterns and laws. What we call “love” is the felt experience of coherence.

The metaverse comprises infinite organizational principles. Our Universe dwells in this informational sea. Consciousness surrounds our space-time continuum and directs organization inward toward our universe.This inward flowing force of coherence feels to us like love.

From another article, titled "A Simple Explanation of the Great Commandment," also first published on this blog in 2010:

The "neighbor" that I am commanded to love is any unit of consciousness that occupies the same level of complexity as my own Unit of Consciousness.  It is the job of every UC, no matter its hierarchical level of complexity and sophistication, to reach out laterally to others of its level, working together for the good of all.  A sub-atomic particle's neighbor would be other sub-atomics. A liver cell's neighbor would be other liver cells. A human's neighbor would be other humans, but also includes other complex life forms. My dog is my neighbor.

All of creation is called upon to work together with others of like kind for the survival and benefit of all. This is a Simple Explanation of The Great Commandment.

When we do not work together for the betterment of all, sickness occurs. At the human cultural level, this can manifest as corruption, terrorism, dysfunctional families, unemployment, drug addiction, and high crime. At the cellular level, lack of Golden Rule cooperation manifests in ways such as organ failure and cancer. At the ecological level, failure to live according to the Golden Rule results in catastrophic ecological collapse.

The Simple Explanation refers to all manifestations of our universe as "Units of Consciousness," because all UCs are fractals of the Originating Unit of Consciousness. The patterns repeat, no matter one's form, function, or position, because we are all fractals of the Original UC and we all repeat the same basic hierarchical forms and functions.  

This blog's most popular article, "A Simple Fractal Model of the Conscious Universe" published in 2011, describes Unit of Consciousness this way:

To put the Simple Explanation in fractal terms, our universe is populated by simple, recursive, self-similar structures of consciousness at arbitrarily small scales.  

These replicating patterns and their hierarchical structure is explained more fully in the two articles, "My Self, the Governor of Whoville" and "Nested Hierarchies."   In personal terms, my Self UC is a fractal division of the Universal UC, and so is every UC associated with everything in my body. The fractal calculations occur at every hierarchical jump of organizational complexity.

*********************

This article has explained the Natural Law of a Simple Explanation of Absolutely Everything. This Natural Law is best expressed as the Simple Golden Rule, which involves reaching out to your neighbors with love, assistance, and information for the betterment of all. This Law proves itself because of its intrinsic fractal character and universal applicability.

Reprint: Possible Detection of an Impossibly Large Black Hole

A friend of the Simple Explanation blog sent me this article, which I am sharing with you. It is yet another example that proves, if nothing else, that scientists do not really understand the universe. Couple this article with the previous article published on this blog, and you and you can see that science is flailing about, trying to write a narrative of the universe that will keep up with their latest measurements. The Simple Explanation of black holes becomes increasingly plausible, as I predicted it would.

Possible Detection of a Black Hole So Big It ‘Should Not Exist’

Black hole physicists have been excitedly discussing reports that the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors recently picked up the signal of an unexpectedly enormous black hole, one with a mass that was thought to be physically impossible.

“The prediction is no black holes, not even a few” in this mass range, wrote Stan Woosley, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in an email. “But of course we know nature often finds a way.”

Seven experts contacted by Quanta said they’d heard that among the 22 flurries of gravitational waves detected by LIGO and Virgo since April, one of the signals came from a collision involving a black hole of unanticipated heft — purportedly as heavy as 100 suns. LIGO/Virgo team members would neither confirm nor deny the rumored detection.

Chris Belczynski, an astrophysicist at Warsaw University, previously felt so sure that such a large specimen wouldn’t be seen that in 2017 he placed a bet with colleagues. “I think we are about to lose the bet,” Belczynski said, “and for the good of science!”

Belczynski’s former confidence came from the fact that such a big black hole can’t form in the usual way.

Black holes — dense, paradox-ridden spheres whose gravity traps everything, even light — form from the contracting cores of fuel-spent stars. But in 1967, three physicists at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem realized that when the core of a dying star is very heavy, it won’t gravitationally collapse into a black hole. Instead, the star will undergo a “pair-instability supernova,” an explosion that totally annihilates it in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing behind. “The star is completely dispersed into space,” the three physicists wrote.

A pair-instability supernova happens when the core grows so hot that light begins to spontaneously convert into electron-positron pairs. The light’s radiation pressure had kept the star’s core intact; when the light transforms into matter, the resulting pressure drop causes the core to rapidly shrink and become even hotter, further accelerating pair production and causing a runaway effect. Eventually the core gets so hot that oxygen ignites. This fully reverses the core’s implosion, so that it explodes instead. For cores with a mass between about 65 and 130 times that of our sun (according to current estimates), the star is completely obliterated. Cores between about 50 and 65 solar masses pulsate, shedding mass in a series of explosions until they drop below the range where pair instability occurs. Thus there should be no black holes with masses in the 50-to-130-solar-mass range.

“The prediction comes from straightforward calculations,” said Woosley, whose 2002 study of this “pair-instability mass gap” is considered definitive.

Black holes can exist on the other side of the mass gap, weighing in at more than 130 solar masses, because the runaway implosion of such heavy stellar cores can’t be stopped, even by oxygen fusion; instead, they continue to collapse and form black holes. But because stars shed mass throughout their lives, a star would need to be born weighing at least 300 suns in order to end up as a 130-solar-mass core, and such behemoths are rare. For this reason, most experts assumed black holes detected by LIGO and Virgo should top out at around 50 solar masses, the lower end of the mass gap. (The million- and billion-solar-mass supermassive black holes that anchor galaxies’ centers formed differently, and rather mysteriously, in the early universe. LIGO and Virgo are not mechanically capable of detecting the collisions of supermassive black holes.)

That said, a few experts did boldly predict that black holes in the mass gap would be seen — hence the 2017 bet.

At a meeting that February at the Aspen Center for Physics, Belczynski and Daniel Holz of the University of Chicago wagered that “black holes should not exist in the mass range between 55 and 130 solar masses because of pair instability,” and thus that none would be detected among LIGO/Virgo’s first 100 signals. Woosley later co-signed with Belczynski and Holz.

But Carl Rodriguez of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sourav Chatterjee of the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, later joined by Fred Rasio of Northwestern University, bet against them, wagering that a black hole would indeed be detected in the mass gap, because there’s a roundabout way for these plus-size black holes to form.

Whereas most of the colliding black holes that wiggle LIGO and Virgo’s instruments probably originated as pairs of isolated stars (binary star systems being common in the cosmos), Rodriguez and his co-signers argue that a fraction of the detected collisions occur in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters. The black holes swing around in one another’s gravity, and sometimes they catch each other and merge, like big fish swallowing smaller ones in a pond.

Inside a globular cluster, a 50-solar-mass black hole could merge with a 30-solar-mass one, for instance, and then the resulting giant could merge again. This second-generation merger is what LIGO/Virgo might have detected — a lucky catch of the big fish in the pond. “This can really only happen in clusters,” Rodriguez said. If the rumor is true, he, Chatterjee and Rasio will each receive a $100 bottle of wine from Belczynski, Holz and Woosley.

But there are other possible origin stories for the putative big black hole. Perhaps it started out in an isolated binary star system. After the first star collapsed into a black hole, it might have grown by stripping matter from its companion star. Later, the second star would have collapsed as well, then eventually the two would have collided and merged, sending gravitational waves cascading through the fabric of space-time.

The LIGO/Virgo team quickly announces every potential gravitational-wave event and the region of sky from which it originated, so that other telescopes can swivel in that direction. But the tight-lipped team has yet to publish detailed information about any event from the current observing run that began in April, such as the inferred sizes of the colliding objects. The team plans to reveal all by the spring of 2020 at the latest. If the oversize black hole is among the results, the analysis should also reveal how fast the hole and its companion were spinning when they collided; this information will help favor one origin story or the other, or neither.

The rumor is “pushing us to alternative formation mechanisms,” said Chris Fryer, an astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who has studied binary black hole formation and the mass gap. “In any event it will be an exciting event — if it’s true.”

As for Woosley, he still feels certain the mass gap exists, despite possible exceptions. “A likely outcome will be that when we have hundreds of black holes, we will indeed see a cliff at around 50,” he said, “but with a few events in the gap because nature abhors a vacuum.”

This article was reprinted on TheAtlantic.com.