Over the last few years, I have been thinking a ton about this style of article. They are riddled with phrases like "this shouldn't be possible", "breaks the laws of physics", "it's an impossible structure", or something along those lines.

While these phrases are partially click-bait and partially awe inspiring, I am starting to think that the approach we are taking for estimating the massive scale of things in the universe may be extremely flawed.

I don't claim to be a physicist or anything like that and am just your average internet idiot. However, it seems to me that working these problems in reverse might help. Our existing observations of the universe just seem to always put artificial caps on some problems, s'all.

So, let's take the most massive black hole we know of and then multiply it's mass by say, a few million times. Immediately, there will be a barrage of people who would post a million (probably legitimate) counter points as to why that wouldn't even be possible to begin with.

It seems that given enough time, we eventually find some "impossible" things.

While it's easy so get lost in constraints like the possible age of the universe, likely theories of early black hole formation, etc... It seems that Occam's Razor might be getting lost somewhere. I mean, even with all of our existing data that says otherwise, there is that thing that was impossible. It's right there! What would it take to form that thing even if the conditions seem absurd?

[–] kemsat 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, too many people seem to think that if we can’t predict it with out models then it can’t be possible. The truth is that models are never going to be perfect, and we’ll never be able to fully predict everything, and we’ll always be the ones that modify our models to match reality.

I chalk it up to human hubris that some people think it’s anything other than that.

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