I am, however, reminded that the orbit of the asteroid Juno (~250km diameter) permanently changed in 1839 without an obvious cause.
And the referenced papers:
Probing primordial black holes and dark matter clumps in the Solar System with gravimeter and Global Navigation Satellite Systems networks - https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.0...
Close encounters of the primordial kind: A new observable for primordial black holes as dark matter - https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.0...
And the PBS Spacetime: How Many Black Holes Are In The Solar System? - https://youtu.be/wh75ubECL8I
Black holes on the order of metric tons would have evaporated by now. But primordial black holes can come in any size, and there is a vast range of them that will exist much longer than the universe has already existed.
I also don't think it would really be detectable in the Sun. Perhaps there would be some transient astroseismology signature.
I don't remember any other of his books that might apply, but I haven't read all of them. (I probably should. What I have read was great.)
Hypothesis - a proposed explanation for something (such as a phenomenon of unknown cause) that is tentatively assumed in order to test whether it agrees with facts that are known or can be determined.
Theory - a scientifically acceptable or plausible general principle or body of principles based on data and offered to explain phenomena
Just because those outside of scientific fields use them interchangeably doesn't change the fact that they carry different meanings in scientific contexts.
Instead of a superintelligence killing any emerging intelligence, superintelligence is so smart that it can perturb spacetime in ways that easily kill itself.
Kind of like the idea that LLMs will give anyone with a garage the ability to create killer viruses (wild claim), a superintelligence might trivially create black holes that engulf it. If the intelligence is distributed across many agents (or nations), someone will try something stupid that kills the entire population.
It'd be even scarier if they could accidentally collapse the supposed vacuum state. Universal annihilation at the speed of light just because you got too smart.
Fragile world / fragile universe meets "too smart for your own good".
It's at least not something you'll do by accident.
"It Really Brings the Room Together" https://m.xkcd.com/1680/
M87 Size Comparison https://m.xkcd.com/2135/
Black Hole Moon https://what-if.xkcd.com/129/
We are primitive apes. We are all uniformly dumb.
There's a lot we don't know, but the fact that the universe is consistent means it has to be consistent with what we do know already. Don't be so openminded your brain falls out.
We don't know this either.
We are very limited in detection. Our energies are small.
How "standard" are standard candles and other references? Are the facts that stand as the basis for our theories even correct?
We are too primitive to be dealing in absolutes.
> We don't know this either.
See this is what I'm talking about as far as being too open-minded. Consider what it would mean for the universe to be inconsistent, particularly in relation to the astronomical observations that are the basis of this conversation.
A physics stack exchange answer about it: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/55184
The most relevant part:
> The total energy created by a PBH roughly equals the energy produced by the detonation of one tonne of TNT, but this energy is the total energy it deposits along its path through the Earths diameter, not the energy it produces on impact. So don’t expect a magnificent explosion, we’d be lucky to see a spark as it hits the ground.
PBS Spacetime - How Many Black Holes Are In The Solar System? https://youtu.be/wh75ubECL8I
And then How to spot tiny black holes that might pass through the solar system - https://www.sciencenews.org/article/primordial-black-holes-s...
That references two papers:
Probing primordial black holes and dark matter clumps in the Solar System with gravimeter and Global Navigation Satellite Systems networks - https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.0...
Close encounters of the primordial kind: A new observable for primordial black holes as dark matter - https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.0...
I think there's a PBS Space Time on it (of course)
adding: yup! love that show
https://web.archive.org/web/20260310115201/https://www.willi...
I'm not 100% confident, but rough approximation suggests that a close approach of even 5 AU even at typical interstellar velocities might have an unplesant climate impact by increasing the eccentricity of our orbit.
But our risk of getting sucked into a black hole is really tiny. (Although personally if I had a chance to enter a black hope, I would. I’m just naturally curious.)
So (and again, this is very rough approximation) I mean AU: consider the high speed of interstellar encounters so it won't be there for long, and that it takes the full pull of Sol 6 months to turn us around 180°.
Also, yes, in general this would cause a lot of the Oort cloud to destabilise and a long period of bombardment of all the planets.
5 AU is the perfect distance to really wreck Jupiter, though.
In the case that KH instabilities are weaker they claim that you can get supernovae at masses farther from the Chandrasekhar limit. This could plausibly have more of an impact on Ias as standard candles. (Though perhaps less than you might think becauseit would also likely have an effect on the shape of the light curve, and Ias are normalized based on their light curve shape.)
All that said, even if this process does occur, I doubt the rates would be high enough for it to be a substantial fraction of observed Ias.