The Black Hole That Could Rewrite Cosmology

"To study the origins of our universe is to struggle with profound chicken-or-egg questions. We know the Big Bang happened. Cosmologists can see its afterglow in the sky. But no one knows whether the laws of physics or even time itself existed before that moment. Nor can we say exactly what happened next. The order in which certain celestial objects formed during the very early universe is hotly contested."

"For a long time after the Big Bang, not much of anything could form. All of space was permeated by a roiling plasma. It was too hot and chaotic for any structure to cohere. Hundreds of thousands of years passed before a tiny hydrogen atom could even hold itself together. Another 100 million years or so after that, great clouds of hydrogen condensed and stars flared into being."

The Big Bang occurred and its afterglow remains visible in the sky. Whether physical laws or time existed before the Big Bang is unknown. The earliest universe was a hot, chaotic plasma that prevented structure formation. Hundreds of thousands of years passed before hydrogen atoms could form. About 100 million years later, hydrogen clouds condensed and the first stars ignited. Most cosmologists believe stars preceded black holes, but some proposals suggest primordial black holes formed earlier. The James Webb Space Telescope has detected a mysterious, colossal object that could be a primordial black hole, and confirmation would force a revision of the cosmic formation sequence.

Read at The Atlantic