Romans 1:22
"The headline from Darren at Popular Mechanics (July 2025): “Scientists Found a Black Hole That Shouldn’t Exist. Now Physics Has a Problem.”
According to the standard model of black hole formation, there’s a mass gap—a no-go zone—between about 50 and 120 solar masses. When stars that massive die they explode so violently that they don’t leave behind a black hole, or … so says the theory. And yet there it is, a black hole smack in the middle of the forbidden zone, weighing in at 72 solar masses.
This is a celestial singularity in a mass range that physics says should be impossible. Like the mature galaxies JWST is revealing at red-shifts where they cannot be … theoretical faults are opening up across the scientific spectrum, and the consensus is quaking.
What follows is the predictable flurry of patchwork explanations: maybe it’s a merger of smaller black holes. Maybe the models need tweaking. Maybe pair-instability supernovae don’t behave quite like we thought. The desperation is increasing, but they placed their bets long ago and now … they will double-down.
And yet, despite the headlines and hedging, the logical conclusion following the evidence is almost never spoken aloud: maybe we don’t know what we think we know. Science has wandered far from “scientific skepticism,” from accepting its own ignorance, from allowing the observations to lead the conclusions.
"The headline from Darren at Popular Mechanics (July 2025): “Scientists Found a Black Hole That Shouldn’t Exist. Now Physics Has a Problem.”
According to the standard model of black hole formation, there’s a mass gap—a no-go zone—between about 50 and 120 solar masses. When stars that massive die they explode so violently that they don’t leave behind a black hole, or … so says the theory. And yet there it is, a black hole smack in the middle of the forbidden zone, weighing in at 72 solar masses.
What follows is the predictable flurry of patchwork explanations: maybe it’s a merger of smaller black holes. Maybe the models need tweaking. Maybe pair-instability supernovae don’t behave quite like we thought. The desperation is increasing, but they placed their bets long ago and now … they will double-down.
And yet, despite the headlines and hedging, the logical conclusion following the evidence is almost never spoken aloud: maybe we don’t know what we think we know. Science has wandered far from “scientific skepticism,” from accepting its own ignorance, from allowing the observations to lead the conclusions.
In both the micro and macro realms, the same pattern emerges: the deeper we peer, the more the standard expectations unravel, and not just in the mutable details, but in the underlying assumptions.
Consensus science has never been more technologically capable, and never more epistemologically fragile."
CEH